Years Active: 2014-2019

This theme will explore the current and future roles of different resources and energy vectors in the UK energy system. Its scope includes renewable and non-renewable resources: fossil fuels, critical materials and renewable resources such as bio-energy. It also includes current energy vectors (i.e. electricity, heat and liquid fuels) and how these might change in future (e.g. to include hydrogen).

It will include energy system modelling, assessments of the energy, material and water resources required for energy systems, and their ecosystem impacts, research on the political economy of international resource flows and economic, engineering and policy assessments of the interactions, synergies and trade-offs between the large-scale deployment of electricity, hydrogen and heat. Explicit attention will also be paid to the social and environmental dimensions and implications of different energy system configurations.