Arrival & Networking

@festivalofinnov #InnovateMalvern #environment #sustainability #GreenEnergy

Welcome

Adrian Burden, Festival Founder & Managing Director of Innovate Malvern CIC

@apburden

Symposium

Chair: Mike Goodfellow-Smith, Director of Quest for Future Solutions.

10:10

Liveable Cities & iBUILD - innovative approaches to future-proofing our cities

Urban landscapes, the areas where the majority of the UK’s citizens live and work, are unique reflections of the place’s history and development. This provides the ‘canvas’ on which civil engineers seek to create their ‘modern art’ of infrastructure systems that support society by facilitating the utility and transport services that enable places to function. As well as functioning effectively and efficiently, these creations need both to meet the aspirations of the people and places that they serve and satisfy the crucially-important criteria associated with sustainability, resilience, liveability, and smartness. They equally need to harmonise with the existing natural and built environments in which they must operate. The question is: how can these multiple demands be met? The answer: application of ingenuity to problem solving (which is what engineers do) and innovation (the tangible outcomes from this ingenuity) drawing on the evidence base of infrastructure and cities research. This presentation will span the spectrum of problem definition through to innovation, illustrated by city system examples.

Professor Chris Rogers is Professor of Geotechnical Engineering in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Birmingham. His research portfolio includes infrastructure engineering and urban sustainability, resilience and liveability. In the project iBUILD, he is working with engineers and economists to explore alternative business models emerging from considerations of infrastructure interdependencies. He also leads the Liveable Cities Programme Grant, exploring the performance of future cities in relation to citizen and planetary wellbeing. He chairs the ICE’s Innovation & Research Panel and Futures Group, and is a member of the Lead Expert Group of the UK Government Foresight Future of Cities project.

10:35

Addressing issues of risk and insurance with climate change

The United Nations has established taskforces to look at how to redefine our financial and insurance systems to enable a more sustainable world, living within climatic boundaries. We all know how insurance underpins many parts of our lives today. What innovation within the insurance industry will help us stop dangerous climatic change? This will be the focus of this presentation.

Dr Louise Pryor is an actuary and a Director of Callund Consulting Ltd. She has an MA in Maths and a PhD in Computer Science, and during her career has worked as an actuary, university lecturer, software development manager and software risk consultant. She is currently a consultant specialising in financial modelling and climate change. Louise chairs the Resource and Environment Board of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, and is an Honorary Senior Research Associate in UCL’s Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management.

@LouisePryor

11:00

Innovation in demand side response

As decarbonisation of the UK electricity grid continues, and more electricity comes from variable renewable resources, National Grid face new challenges to keep supply and demand in balance. There has always been a case for electricity consumers to use energy flexibly - avoiding the times of day when electricity is most expensive. Henrietta will discuss the many technology innovations that will help us all use energy more flexibly - including smart meters, batteries and electric vehicles. She will also discuss many of the regulatory changes and how these will impact the financial incentives for businesses..

Henrietta Stock is a Chartered Engineer and Director of Peak Time Consulting. She has a MEng from the University of Cambridge and has extensive experience working in the energy sector, including with Shell Aviation and EDF Energy. Henrietta was also Technology Acceleration Manager at The Carbon Trust and is also currently Energy and Carbon Manager at SES Water. She has worked on numerous energy efficiency and energy management projects including smart metering, demand response, carbon capture and renewable energies.

@hettystock

11:25

Energy efficient actuators to save the world

RIFT Technology is a Malvern-based company that has developed an actuator that uses 75% less energy than a traditional motor driven system. When you consider that around half of the world’s electricity is consumed by electric motors, this innovation could make a massive difference to energy-related environmental issues such as climate change. This innovation is now also being used to generate renewable energy from waves.

Tonya O’Donnell is Marketing & Sales Director of RIFT Technology. Tonya has worked in numerous IT training, consulting and project management roles before joining the family business in Malvern. She has a BSc in Marine Biology and Biological Oceanography from Bangor University. 

@RiftDriven, @TonyaTemplar

11:50

Critical materials and the circular economy

A material is deemed to be critical when it is at risk of short supply but is economically important. Some of the materials on the EU critical materials list include cobalt which is used in batteries, rare earth metals in magnets and platinum group metals in catalysis. These materials are used in many high tech industries and in clean energy technologies including for example wind turbines, electric vehicles, electronics and solar panels. At end of life the products which contain these materials are often difficult to recycle and these valuable materials are often lost to landfill. This talk will outline the challenges for recycling of critical elements contained in magnets and automotive batteries and propose innovative solutions to extract and to re-process these materials. 

Professor Allan Walton is Professor of Critical and Magnetic Materials in the School of Metallurgy and Materials at the University of Birmingham. He is Co-Director of the Birmingham Centre for Strategic Elements and Critical Materials (BCSECM ) and the ex-chair of the UK Magnetics Society. His research interests include hydrogen processing of materials, coating technologies, casting of rare earth alloys, characterisation of magnetic materials and recycling of critical and strategic elements.

@eps_unibham

12:15

Closing remarks.

Mike Goodfellow-Smith, Symposium Chair.

12:30

Lunch & Networking

Opportunity to chat with the speakers and discuss what you have heard over a light buffet lunch and refeshments.

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