Energy and Resources Section

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The Energy and Resources section contributes to one of the grand challenges of our times: how to realize a sustainable energy and resource system within a world constrained by climate change and increasing resource scarcity. 

The ever-growing energy and materials demand of our society puts enormous pressure on our natural resources, harming the environment and increasing the constraints on resource availability. Responding to these challenges is a multi-disciplinary process with a large number of stakeholders, requiring understanding and inputs from a variety of disciplines to come to collaborative solutions. The E&R group offers a unique multi-disciplinary environment to develop knowledge and collaborative science projects in this complex field, with an emphasis on system analytical approaches focused on:

  • efficient use of energy and materials
  • shifting to unconventional and renewable energy sources
  • reducing unsustainable land use change
  • redirecting the industrial metabolism

Our research uses a large variety of analytical techniques and tools, drawing on our multi-disciplinary group that includes researchers with backgrounds as far ranging as engineering and policy, all dedicated to finding sustainable solutions for the future energy and resource system of our world.  

The group has a strong track record in energy efficiency, sustainable bio-based production of energy and materials, future low-carbon power generation (including photovoltaics and carbon capture and storage), and energy modelling. With our combined strengths, we develop important research directions, ranging from smart solutions to energy and resource use in cities, sustainable use of the underground, to the sustainable bio-based and circular economy, and the assessment of technologies in these future developments of the energy and resource system.

Head of Section