The UK’s power industry needs 150–200 new doctoral researchers over the next ten years to design fossil-fuel power plants that capture their own carbon emissions. Without these specialists, the country will struggle to build the next generation of coal and gas-fired power stations that generate electricity efficiently while releasing near-zero CO₂. The problem is not just technical: engineers must also understand economics, policy, and public acceptance to get new plants built and operating. Nine major energy companies—including Doosan Babcock, E.ON, Rolls Royce, and EDF—have already committed to supporting the centre, and steelmaker Corus has joined for work on reducing emissions from iron making. If the centre succeeds, it will produce a cohort of research leaders who can deliver large-scale fossil energy projects with carbon capture, keeping the UK’s power grid reliable during the transition to low-carbon energy. The training programme also includes collaborations with China and social-science modules, ensuring graduates can work across disciplines and national boundaries. This is a skills pipeline, not a laboratory breakthrough—but without it, the technical advances already made in carbon capture may never reach commercial scale.
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The goal of the proposed EngD Centre is to produce research leaders to tackle the major national and international challenges over the next 15 years in implementing new power plant to generate electricity more efficiently using fossil energy with near zero emissions, involving the successful demonstration of CO2 capture, and also in reducing CO2 emissions generally from coal utilisation, including iron making. These leaders will be part of the new breed of engineers that will be thoroughly versed in cutting edge energy research and capable of operating in multi-disciplinary teams, covering a range of knowledge transfer, deployment and policy roles and with the skills to analyse the overall economic context of their projects and to be aware of the social and ethical implications. This proposal has involved wide consultation with the power generation sector which has indicated that the number of doctoral researchers required in the UK for the major developments in large-scale fossil energy power generation involving efficiency improvements and CO2 capture can be estimated conservatively as 150-200 over the next ten years. The Centre will play a vital role in meeting this demand by providing training in highly relevant technological areas to the companies concerned, as well as the broader portfolio of skills required for future research leaders. Further, Doosan Babcock, Alstom, E.ON, Rolls Royce, EDF, RWE, Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE), Welsh Power and Drax Power all support this bid and are willing to participate in the proposed Centre from 2009 onwards. Further, in terms of reducing CO2 emissions generally from coal utilisation, including iron making and smokeless fuel, this has drawn in other industrial partners, Corus and CPL. The innovative training programme involves a number of unique elements based around the social sciences and activities with China and is designed to ensure that the research engineers are not only thoroughly versed in cutting edge energy research but capable of operating in multi-disciplinary teams covering a range of knowledge transfer, deployment and policy roles and the ability to analyse the overall economic context of projects and to be aware of the social and ethical implications. The academic team draws upon the internationally leading fossil energy programme at Nottingham but also on colleagues at Birmingham and Loughborough for their complementary research in high temperature materials, plant life monitoring and energy economics. Given that virtually all of the research projects will benefit from using pilot-scale equipment in industry linked to the advanced analytical capabilities in the MEC and our overseas partners, together with the Group activities undertaken by the yearly cohorts, the training programme is considered to offer considerable added value over DTA project and CASE awards, as testified by the extremely high level of industrial interest in the proposed Centre across the power generation section, together with other industries involved in reducing CO2 emissions from coal utilisation.
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