The EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training on Offshore Wind Energy and the Environment

Project Description

The move to cleaner economic growth is one of the greatest industrial opportunities of our time; a key industrial challenge for the 21st Century is to secure a resilient renewable energy supply. The offshore wind (OSW) industry underpins UK solutions to this challenge, with exponential increase in capacity planned to reduce carbon emissions in line with UK's climate 2050 commitments. Due to favourable geography, local expertise and government support, the north-east UK is a global leading location for OSW development and is thus a key region for UK industrial and economic growth. This UK-based research, development and innovation (RDI) sector has, if fully harnessed, a potential cumulative gross export value of over £1,000 billion for the period 2018-2050. However, projected growth in OSW is predicated on a move to larger sites in more hostile environments further from shore. This introduces a unique set of challenges at the interface of engineering and environmental sciences that requires public investment.

Aura (www.aurawindenergy.com), the north-east UK coalition of academia and industry, led by the University of Hull, is beginning to address the multidisciplinary challenges facing OSW. Building on this, the EPSRC-NERC Centre for Doctoral Training in Offshore Wind Energy and the Environment (Aura CDT) will enable the UK to properly meet needs, and fully exploit opportunities, in OSW. The CDT will combine sector and place with academic expertise to enable cohort-based training of graduate students at the interface of engineering and environmental sciences. This will produce the future multidisciplinary leaders in OSW desperately required to accelerate innovation in the UK OSW industry, to reduce costs and increase offshore infrastructure reliability, thereby enabling the UK to meet and maintain future commitments in renewable energy and carbon reduction.

The Aura CDT will be delivered by 4 institutes, Hull, Durham, Newcastle and Sheffield, led by Prof. Parsons, Hull (PI), supported by 13 Co-Is and >30 staff, who together form a diverse but complementary teaching/training and supervisor pool. Partner institutes provide 30% match funding to the CDT. An additional 30% match funding will be provided from >10 industry and government partners, including Siemens and Orsted (respectively the industry leaders in OSW manufacture and operation) and OREC and NOC (respectively the government vehicles for RDI in offshore renewables and marine technology). The entire Aura CDT will be overseen by a CDT Management Board and an Academic Oversight Committee, drawn from partner institutes, and a separate Strategic Advisory Board, drawn from industry and government. Hull will provide a senior programme manager to aid the running of the CDT on a day-to-day basis.

Supported by the expertise of the 4 partner institutes, the Aura CDT recognises and emphasises the importance of maintaining cohort-based studentship development as an enabler for true multidisciplinary RDI. To deliver this the Aura CDT will foster a cohort ethos via a 1-year MSc, hosted by Aura at the University of Hull. The MSc, supported by all 4 institutes, provides graduate students with an integrated engineering and environmental sciences overview of OSW. Industry and government lenses on OSW research and innovation will be built in to the MSc via guest lectures, continued professional development (CPD) and industry-led group research projects. Following the MSc, students will be distributed within partner institutions and industry, to conduct a 3-year PhD via blue-sky and applied RDI. Embedding PhD students within industry will ensure that there are direct career pathways beyond academia for those who choose that route and provide an industry network for those who pursue an academic career. The cohort ethos will be maintained by a joint institute on-line workspace, based on Vitae, 6-monthly cohort workshops and an annual CDT conference for CPD and end-user engagement.