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Energy and Energy Efficiency

Tackling a global need

The demand for energy is driven by a growing global population and increased competition for resources.

Currently, the Earth still relies on fossil fuels or traditional biomass for more than 90% of its direct primary energy consumption. At the same time, important industrial processes that we mostly remain unaware of in our daily lives, such as chemical separations, use a staggering 10–15% of the world’s primary energy consumption. This is before we start to meaningfully tackle emerging and much larger scale separation challenges, such as the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and the recovery of metals from spent batteries.

Despite commitments made by countries around the world to prepare for climate change, there’s still a very long way to go. Through our university energy research at Newcastle University’s Centre for Energy, we aim to find solutions to support a rapid transition to clean, affordable energy.

Our collaborative approach to international energy research

The Centre for Energy brings together a wealth of multi-disciplinary expertise from right across Newcastle University. By working cross-functionally to collaborate and share knowledge, we aim to unify efforts to support a swifter move to sustainable energy sources.

This multi-disciplinary approach means thinking about energy systems:

  • across scales – from individual electrons to global trading systems
  • across geographies – from the individual home and household, to communities of villages and towns, to mega cities and nations
  • across disciplines – taking into account a multitude of disciplines to address overarching problems, including the science of materials, the engineering of systems, the social sciences of energy-related behaviours, the law of energy policy and regulation, the public health impact of energy-related pollution, and the artificial intelligence of smart controls
  • across applications – such as domestic, industry, transport, and services

This multi-disciplinary approach results in a wide-ranging exploration across a variety of international energy research topics. From the atomic-scale development of new materials for better batteries, to the demonstration of pilot-scale chemical reactors that produce new energy vectors like hydrogen, we’re exploring all aspects of the energy landscape.

Find out more

Click the links below to find out more about our energy research or get in touch if you’d like to discuss things further.