Status
Principle Investigator Contact Information
Name: Professor Deborah Greaves OBE
Address: University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, Plymouth, Devon, PL4 8AA
Phone: Supergen ORE Hub office number: +44 (0)1752 586102
Email: supergenorehub@plymouth.ac.uk
Description
The Supergen ORE Impact Hub is a £16.5 million Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) programme (2018–2027) which provides research leadership to connect academia, industry, policy and public stakeholders, inspire innovation and maximise societal value in offshore wind, wave and tidal energy.
The Hub is led by the University of Plymouth and includes Co-Directors from the Universities of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Exeter, Hull, Manchester, Oxford, Southampton, Strathclyde, and Warwick. The Supergen ORE Hub is one of three Supergen Impact Hubs created by EPSRC to deliver strategic and coordinated research on Sustainable Power Generation and supply.
Funding Source
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)
Funding Contact
Amy Spalding (EPSRC Portfolio lead) Amy.Spalding@epsrc.ukri.org
Location of Research
Various locations
Project Aims
Rapid Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) expansion is essential to the UK for (i) Net Zero and climate change mitigation, (ii) energy security, (iii) green growth and jobs.
- Climate change mitigation: requires ORE to be deployed 10 times faster than the current rate to meet Net Zero targets set out in the 6th Carbon budget. If we are to meet the UK plans for Net Zero, Energy Security and just transition, there needs to be a significant ramp up in underpinning research and in skills and training – it cannot be business as usual.
- Energy security: ORE growth will mitigate the effects of the cost-of-living crisis and geopolitical instability. ORE can minimise consumer energy costs, but many research and engineering challenges need addressing to realise the scale and rate of deployment required. A fourfold reduction in project consenting time is targeted, requiring a whole system approach with interdisciplinary collaboration underpinned by an integrated research and innovation.
- Green growth and jobs: The UK’s ORE industry growth underpins new high-skilled jobs, often in areas of the UK in most need of investment, supporting the levelling up agenda. With a local and abundant resource, rapid expansion of ORE for Net Zero could help to achieve a Just Transition with economic and social benefits, keeping the UK as a world leader in deployment and technology for ORE.
With an increased focus on delivering and enabling impact, the Supergen ORE Impact Hub (SOH) will drive faster ORE expansion via four high level objectives:
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Streamlining ORE projects, by accelerating planning, consenting and build out timescales
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Upscaling the scale and efficiency of ORE devices and systems, and the ORE workforce
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Competitiveness: maximising ORE local content and ORE economic viability in the energy mix, to maximise UK benefits of the drive to Net Zero
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Sustainability: ensuring positive environmental and societal benefits from ORE; a just transition
Study Progress
The Supergen ORE Hub project is currently in progress.
Key Findings
The first phase of the Supergen ORE Hub (2018 – 2023) has built a community of academics, industry and other stakeholders, successfully unifying the ORE community around common research challenges. The current phase (2023 – 2027) builds on all elements of the established structure and take this activity and impact to the next level to match UK Net Zero, Energy Security and affordability aspirations.
The work programme addresses the key drivers of streamlining, upscaling, competitiveness and sustainability through five interdisciplinary workstreams:
- Workstream 1: ORE expansion – policy and scenarios: explores future upscaling scenarios and the enabling policies required to ensure economic and system benefits, enabling retention and growth of domestic supply chains, skills and circular economy, as well as methods to include ecosystem benefits in GVA measures, facilitating sustainability, ORE’s contribution to Net Zero and a just transition.
- Workstream 2: Data for ORE design and decision-making: advances in data collection, collation, analysis and interpretation will streamline and accelerate design and decision-making in ORE projects, from the planning and consenting phase, through operations, to the end-of-life outcomes.
- Workstream 3: ORE modelling: upscaling will require more advanced modelling tools addressing more complex applications. Confidence in new tools, approaches and computing architectures requires the quantification of uncertainties through targeted development, experimental validation and aligned field measurement campaigns.
- Workstream 4: ORE design methods: new design solutions and new design methods will help achieve cost reduction and improve competitiveness needed to accelerate technologies in offshore wind, tidal and wave infrastructure.
- Workstream 5: Future ORE systems and concepts: novel frontier sustainability solutions to achieve step change advances in ORE though sharing infrastructure, multi-use and multi-turbine structures and very large and interconnected floating systems.
Further detail about each of the workstreams, including the tasks associated with them, is available on the Supergen ORE Hub website: https://supergen-ore.net/about