7th October 2009
Sustainable Energy - a subject that should grab everybody's attention! So it comes to no surprise that the IMechE is heavily involved in promoting its own views on the assessment of the engineering challenges involved. Dr. Alison Cooke is leader of the IMechE team that presented the UK Energy Plan at a international conference in Copenhagen in September. She presented this plan and approaches from engineers from other countries to us at a joint lecture with the Institute of Physics and the Institution of Gas Engineers & Managers at the historical site of the Daresbury Laboratory .
More than 150 people attended her presentation and learned about the energy consuming habits in the UK today and the changes necessary to replace the fossil energy provides with renewable and sustainable sources between now and 2050. It was quite a shock to learn that it will be very difficult to avoid a rise in the global temperature of more than 2 °C. The most important steps are change of habit and increase of efficiency of the existing energy consumers. She further debated that the transport system must reply much more on electric vehicles and not combustion engines. Great advances can be made by solar energy sources, photovoltaic and solar power. However, the largest future sustainable energy provider in the UK will be wind farms and to a degree nuclear energy. Alternative sources such as hydrogen generators will only play a minor role.
Her summary was very interesting and gave though-provoking impulses on how each individual needs to make changes as well as how the energy problem must be tackled on a national and international level!