£8 million to develop low-carbon technologies
4 Dec 2015 by Evoluted New Media
NERC has announced £8 million for research ensuring the access of elements needed for environmental technologies.
NERC has announced £8 million for research ensuring access to elements needed for environmental technologies.
The research will aim to find out more about how e-tech elements – elements used in lithium car batteries, solar panels and wind turbines – and rare earth elements behave within the Earth and the environmental implications of mining them, through four projects.
Professor Duncan Wingham, NERC chief executive, said: “Our investment in this much-needed research is needed to help industry develop low-carbon technologies that will reduce the UK’s carbon footprint. The projects we’re announcing will help address the global security of supply of elements that are essential to these environmental technologies, and help develop methods to extract and recover them while minimising the environmental impact of this activity.”
The four projects – part of NERC’s Security of Supply of Minerals programme – will aim to enhance global supply of these e-tech and rare earth elements in two ways: through improved understanding of how they move through natural systems; and by using this information to develop better ways of recovering them to reduce the environmental damage this currently causes.
“More research into this area is to be welcomed as it will have an important bearing on the future of the UK’s renewable energy industry. Solar panels and batteries which can store renewable electricity rely on certain elements, so it’s vital we’re able to source them. It’s essential that the industry develops knowledge and expertise on how to source these elements in the least impactful way to the environment, and the NERC research will help address this,” said member of the NERC Council, Juliet Davenport.
