Examination of Witnesses (Questions 172
- 179)
WEDNESDAY 28 MARCH 2001
PROFESSOR RICHARD
BROOK, OBE, AND
DR PETER
HEDGES
Chairman
172. Professor Brook, Dr Hedges, thank you very
much indeed for coming along to the Committee this afternoon.
Professor Brook, you are an old friend of this Committee. You
last came to see us about two years ago I think. Dr Hedges we
have not met before. For the sake of the record, Professor Brook,
would you very kindly introduce yourself, the position you hold
and the responsibilities you have, and I shall ask the same of
Dr Hedges.
(Professor Brook) My current position
is that of Chief Executive of the Engineering and Physical Sciences
Research Council. This is a position which I have held since April
1994 and my term of office will be ended in September of this
year, so I complete seven years at the end of this week. As such
I am responsible for one of the six research councils that work
within the Office of Science and Technology system with the Director-General
of Research Councils, Dr John Taylor, as co-ordinator for that
group.
173. Thank you very much indeed. Dr Hedges?
(Dr Hedges) I am the EPSRC Programme Manager for Infrastructure,
the Environment and Healthcare, a post I have held for only about
four months. Before that I was responsible for another of EPSRC's
programmes in general engineering. So my specific responsibilities
are for aspects of engineering relevant to quality of life issues—renewable
energy, sustainability, waste, etcetera, etcetera. My own background
is that I have worked for EPSRC and its predecessor SERC for 10
years.
174. Thank you very much indeed. I think what
we shall do as a Committee, Professor Brook, is direct questions
to you primarily. If you think they should be answered by Dr Hedges,
either because it is appropriate or they are too difficult for
you, can you pass them on to him. If Dr Hedges feels he wishes
to make a contribution please catch my eye and I shall invite
him to do so. Can we start by asking you to outline the work being
done by the EPSRC on the renewable energy programme and perhaps
tell us at the same time about the restructuring we have read
about. Why is the restructuring taking place and what is the timescale
for its completion?
(Professor Brook) The EPSRC organises its research
support systems through eight programme areas. We have the classical
science subjects, maths physics and chemistry—and I will
not refer to those further although physicists are of course interested
in energy, as in everything—we have technology subjects,
that is a materials programme and an information technology programme,
and then we have three engineering programmes. One is devoted
to engineering for manufacturing. That is really engineering and
wealth creation. We have engineering for the environment infrastructure
and health—what Dr Hedges has already referred to as "quality
of life" issues. Then we have an engineering programme which
allows engineers themselves to point out to us where the next
step in their subject development can lie and then we have the
opportunity to support that. Our energy work lies predominantly
across these engineering programmes although there will be important
contributions from such subjects as materials in particular and,
as I have mentioned, from chemistry and from physics. The overall
energy portfolio has been estimated by an evaluation panel to
lie between £15 million and £37 million per annum. You
may say why is there so much uncertainty about that? It is the
extent to which you would include things like materials for gas
turbine engines within an energy programme. But if we take a figure
of £20 million per annum that would not be out of order.
Within that there is a renewables programme which is of the order
of £5 to £6 million per annum. As often arises with
renewables, it is difficult to make the choice at the outset that
this particular renewable is more promising than any other renewable
and insofar as the research councils are responsible for fundamental
work on new possibilities we do have reflected within our portfolio
each of the principal renewable types—wind, wave, fuel cells,
photovoltaics, and so on. The operation of the portfolio is part
training support part research support grants. The grants are
given out in two modes. One is the so-called managed mode where
we indicate to the applicant the subject area where we would wish
to receive proposals, and the other is where we leave it to the
applicant to point out to us a subject area which is considered
promising and they then say how they would wish to research it.
That is the so-called responsive mode. Both are reflected in the
energy portfolio. We have a specific managed programme in renewables
in new energy technologies. That is one of a sequence of managed
programmes which we have had in the renewables sector. Alongside
that we have the responsive mode programmes. When an evaluation
takes place it does often arise that people point out to us there
would be great benefit in some co-ordination and concentration
of effort and a clearer strategy for the portfolio than arises
from responsive mode portfolios. It is in that spirit we believe
we should cluster activity into larger groupings where we can
identify clearly the progress which is being made.
175. Is this the multi-disciplinary research
projects referred to in your brief?
(Professor Brook) This is the new managed programme
that will replace the so-called RNET programme which is in the
brief. There is to be a meeting in June of this year where the
energy community will come together and advise us of the shape
which that programme should have and then that can be included
in the form of thinking for it. Dr Hedges is going to be responsible
for the operation of that programme and it may be that he can
give you a better picture of the timing.
176. When he does, again in your note to us
you talk about wanting to encourage "the submission of more
adventurous, multi-disciplinary research projects", perhaps
he could touch on that point and how you are going to encourage
these projects.
(Dr Hedges) It is a good question. What we have found
in the past is that with the managed programmes we have operated
like the renewables and energy technology programme we tend to
fund a lot of individual projects that tackle one particular aspect
of a technology or a particular way of developing wave energy,
for example, and we provide in the brief examples of projects
we have funded in this area in recent years. Increasingly in this
area we have been getting advice from industry and academics alike
that in order to really stretch the boundaries of the technology—with
the view we get increasingly from colleagues and from DETR that
we are talking about major step changes in technology that are
needed—a multi-disciplinary approach is crucial. That is
often quite difficult to support through individual research projects
of two or three years' duration. The intention, therefore, is
to fund much larger consolidated projects over a four or five-year
timescale with a strong emphasis on multi-disciplinarity. How
we are going to generate those projects is to some extent open
to debate. We have some ideas now about how the system might work
but what we certainly expect is we will be spending more of our
own management effort on trying to broker collaborations between
academics and industrialists for example, which we traditionally
have not done. What we have said is: "The door is open, come
and tell us what projects you want to do." Increasingly in
the future what we want to do is to try and marry up groups with
related interests and try and consolidate their support together,
so it will be a fairly interactive process. The workshop in June
is going to be the first stage in that process.
177. My final question before we go to Dr Kumar
is back to Professor Brook: NERC have told us that they have been
given the lead in co-ordinating cross research council activities
on sustainable energy. Why is this? What does this mean? And what
is the difference between their approach and your approach?
(Professor Brook) The last question is the one I should
answer first. I hope there will be no difference between the approach
of the NERC and that of the EPSRC. It has been a special ambition
of John Taylor in his period as Director-General to ensure that
the research councils are capable of acting as a coherent unit
in addressing national concerns. The history of NERC's involvement
with sustainability began with the last spending review where
the OST did put forward bids to the Government indicating where
science would be of particular importance in the coming years—the
genome challenge, basic technology, e-science (that is the link
between information technology and science)—and sustainability
was mentioned. At that point it was sustainable land use which
was given particular emphasis and it was therefore quite natural
that the Natural Environment Research Council would be the one
associated with it, but the response from the spending review
debate was that sustainability should be given importance and
it should be recognised to include the energy sector because of
the crucial importance of global warming and other climate events,
and therefore the NERC was asked to take that on as well. So there
is now a group which John Lawton, the Chief Executive, is leading
which is bringing together the programmes of the different research
councils and making sure that that can be presented as a coherent
addressing of energy.
178. Are there any problems with this in your
mind? Are the two research councils working well enough in a mature
enough way not for anyone to say: "My nose is being pushed
out. There is favouritism. Their work is inferior to ours and
yet it is being taken more notice of"? Is that sort of thing
out of the window?
(Professor Brook) It is very natural that such concerns
should be expressed about a national system which has six research
councils, but I do believe that in recent years the system has
shown itself capable of acting in an organised and generally collaborative
manner. So that would not be my worry. I think the conceptual
difficulty which I have is the linking of sustainability with
energy. I can see the connection, of course, but sustainable land
use has a very different cultural climate from the energy sector
with its very rapid fluctuations caused by oil prices, etcetera,
etcetera, so it is an issue of the tail and the dog slightly.
179. It is almost as though the linkage is a
word that happens to be "sustainability"?
(Professor Brook) That is a risk.
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