Britain’s energy in the spotlight at IDLES conference

Professor Tim Green, Principal Investigator on the IDLES Programme, opens the IDLES Conference at Imperial College London

Energy system experts met at Imperial College London this week to explore new evidence on Britain’s transition to low-carbon energy.

Around 100 academics, policymakers and representatives from the energy industry gathered for the two-day conference hosted by Imperial’s Integrated Development of Low-carbon Energy Systems (IDLES) programme.

The multi-disciplinary programme, now in its fifth year, brings together researchers from across the Faculties of Engineering and Natural Sciences and the Imperial College Business School to provide the evidence needed to facilitate a cost-effective and secure transition to decarbonised energy.

Funded by EPSRC and industrial partners, IDLES aims to create a modelling framework that can better coordinate the complex interactions within the energy domain to support long-term strategic planning, involving analysis of electricity, heat, gas and hydrogen networks, and energy uses in transport, buildings, and industrial processes.

The breadth of IDLES research was on display at this week’s conference which included talks on topics ranging from the influence of weather and teleworking on household energy consumption patterns to the characterisation of current and disruptive technologies for their inclusion in whole-energy system models.

“As we enter the final phase of IDLES, we are delighted to be able to not only share our work to date, but also to hear feedback from policymakers and from industry to ensure that this research can have real, lasting impact,” said Professor Tim Green, Principal Investigator of IDLES.

The conference welcomed Innovate UK’s Manu Ravishankar who delivered a keynote address on energy system innovation and Ofgem’s Strategic Innovation Fund and Rebecca Rosling, Head of Smart Customers R&D at EDF Energy, who discussed the role of the energy industry in reaching Net Zero.

Rebecca was later joined by Alec Waterhouse, Joint Head of Energy Security Analysis at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and Imperial’s Professors Mirabelle Muûls and Nilay Shah for a panel discussion chaired by Professor Green on energy systems in a changing world.

To find out more about IDLES research, visit the programme’s website here.