Engineering

Introduction

Energy is one of the biggest challenges in the world. The oil price has increased from less than $15/barrel to $100/barrel in 10 years and has dragged all energy prices up with it.

Global warming is accepted - even in the US - and switching back to coal, with the associated CO2 emissions is not a solution. Gordon Brown, in his first environment speech as prime minister warned that climate change science predictions are now so alarming that the current target, of attempting to cut emissions by 60%, may not be enough.

The prime minister has argued that the country needs a fourth technological revolution to build a low carbon economy and said that “Within four decades each pound of GDP needs to produce one-twelfth of the CO2 equivalent that it does today.” That is a target as least as challenging as inventing the steam engine and the internet and will be the challenge for science and engineering graduates in the coming years - and the place where really worthwhile, well-paid and interesting jobs will be found.

Transport

In the UK the overall levels of CO2 emissions are roughly constant. With so much heavy industry being transferred overseas the emissions from what is left in the UK is reducing (it doesn’t mean that the total is reducing, merely that the emissions caused by our consumption are attributed to other countries). The one area that has continued to increase for the last 50 years is transport. Emissions from this sector continue to rise.

Exactly how much energy is used and what could be done to reduce energy and emissions is subject to continuous debate but academics in Lancaster’s Engineering Department have been trying to make sense of the data for the Department for Transport. The results have been incorporated in many high-level reports including the DfT's and rail safety board's 2007 White paper on a sustainable railway.

Transport is one of those topics to which people are emotionally attached - to many people the car you drive defines who you are, in a way that could never be said of the way you heat your house. Research work at Lancaster has found its way onto the front page and editorials of the national press, on television and has been quoted in parliamentary questions in the House of Commons.