Preparing for Climate Change through Energy Internet and eVehicles: UK government to link funding to universities based on CO2 reduction

Energy Internet and eVehicles Overview

Governments around the world are wrestling with the challenge of how to prepare society for inevitable climate change. To date most people have been focused on how to reduce Green House Gas emissions, but now there is growing recognition that regardless of what we do to mitigate against climate change the planet is going to be significantly warmer in the coming years with all the attendant problems of more frequent droughts, flooding, sever storms, etc. As such we need to invest in solutions that provide a more robust and resilient infrastructure to withstand this environmental onslaught especially for our electrical and telecommunications systems and at the same time reduce our carbon footprint.

Linking renewable energy with high speed Internet using fiber to the home combined with autonomous eVehicles and dynamic charging where vehicle's batteries are charged as it travels along the road, may provide for a whole new "energy Internet" infrastructure for linking small distributed renewable energy sources to users that is far more robust and resilient to survive climate change than today's centralized command and control infrastructure. These new energy architectures will also significantly reduce our carbon footprint. For more details please see:

Using autonomous eVehicles for Renewable Energy Transportation and Distribution: http://goo.gl/bXO6x and http://goo.gl/UDz37

Free High Speed Internet to the Home or School Integrated with solar roof top: http://goo.gl/wGjVG

High level architecture of Internet Networks to survive Climate Change: https://goo.gl/24SiUP

Architecture and routing protocols for Energy Internet: http://goo.gl/niWy1g

How to use Green Bond Funds to underwrite costs of new network and energy infrastructure: https://goo.gl/74Bptd

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

UK government to link funding to universities based on CO2 reduction

[This is a very bold initiative by UK government and reinforces the message that universities should be on the front line of moving to a zero carbon society. Research universities are among the worst culprits in terms of CO2 emissions. As I mentioned in previous posts although there is no precise data, back of the envelope calculations suggest that Higher ed produces anywhere up to 10% of all CO2 in the USA. This is greater than the combined emissions of steel smelting and cement manufacture. Universities on average produce between 200,000 to 500,000 metric tons annually of CO2 of which one or third or half is from the campus IT and data centers. But there is good news. IT and cyber-infrastructure not only has the potential to become zero carbon in its own right, but also help the university achieve lower reductions through various “smart” applications, and more importantly through the development of “gCommerce” it can provide a reward system to students and faculty to reduce their personal CO2 footprint. Thanks to Tom Baumann for this pointer. Some excerpts from the web page – BSA]

http://www.carbonoffsetsdaily.com/global/government-funding-to-reward-greenest-universities-3996.htm

Government funding to reward greenest universities

The government is planning to link the funding available to universities and colleges with their performance in reducing carbon emissions.

Universities secretary John Denham said yesterday that energy efficiency and emission reduction would be key priorities in a forthcoming government plan to build a framework for the future of higher education over the next 10 to 15 years. He confirmed that it planned to link success in cutting emissions to funding agreements from 2011.

In his annual grant letter to the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), Denham asked the Council to set out a strategy for curbing emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.

“Last year, I set out our ambition that capital funding for institutions should be linked to performance in reducing emissions,” he wrote. “Following your advice to me, I am now confirming that such links should be in place for 2011-12.”
He added that while the higher education sector had originally been asked to deliver a strategy to cut emissions by 60 per cent by 2050 and 26 per cent by 2020, the 60 per cent target had now been raised to 80 per cent in line with the government’s wider climate change bill.

Denham also urged universities and colleges to begin emission reduction investments as soon as possible, writing that he hoped “that some of the capital expenditure I have asked you to bring forward into 2009-10 will support strategic, long-term action to tackle climate change”.

In addition to calling on universities to take direct action to curb emissions, Denham also urged the HEFCE to step up efforts to remove barriers to research partnerships between universities and businesses, particularly in clean tech-related fields such as science, technology, engineering and mathematics.