KEY POINTS:
In the fight against climate change, academics are on the front line; inventing, designing and producing technologies that could yet deflect a planet bound for destruction.
In London, scientists at Imperial College are creating the means to liquefy carbon dioxide and then store it in vast, underground chambers.
Further north, at Manchester University, chemical engineers are aiming to fuel farms by converting chicken droppings into power.
Then there are the management researchers at Queen's University Belfast who are developing new ways to measure carbon efficiency, and the physicists in Cambridge attempting to initiate a solar energy revolution.
Together, they are just a tiny fraction of the vast number of academics across the world now working in this ever more critical field.
"The flow of ideas is crystal to the emergence of a low-carbon economy," said Garry Staunton, head of low-carbon research at the Carbon Trust. "We see lots of ideas coming out of universities and we are pleased to engage with them."
But he warned that "research in isolation" was not going to slow the process of climate change. Referring to the "journey to commercialisation", Staunton stressed the importance of getting the technologies to the market.
Staunton added that many academics faced a conflict because they were judged by the work they published in prestigious journals, something that could stop their inventions receiving a patent. "Where we find [universities] struggling somewhat is in going out to commercialise the inventions," said Staunton. Nevertheless, it is a tension that he and the researchers themselves are determined to overcome.
In October the UK's Carbon Trust, which supports the development of low carbon technologies, announced a £5m ($13.5m) programme in partnership with Cambridge University that aims to unlock organic photovoltaic (PV) technology (which converts light into electricity) to deliver solar energy at radically lower costs.
In sticking with Staunton's mantra on commercialisation, the trust stressed that the aim was to turn "solar PV into a cost-effective energy source within 10 years". The target is to deliver CO2 savings of more than 1 million tonnes a year by 2017.
Another £1m project to fund seven "pioneering technologies" includes two that are university-based. Researchers at Coventry University are being backed in their work to produce technologies that could reduce the energy used in the processing of aluminium by 20 per cent.
Meanwhile, academics at nearby Warwick University also received money for cutting-edge research into a new process that will reduce the energy used in painting cars.
"Universities and research are fundamental" when it comes to carbon-reducing technologies, according to Dr Simon Buckle, director for climate change policy at Imperial's Grantham Institute for Climate Change.
"But it has to be focused."
Buckle and his colleagues are working with engineers, medics and physicists from the university on a host of innovations aimed at either slowing the process of climate change or dealing with its consequences.
One project aims to make carbon sequestration - which prevents emissions by storing the gas underground - a reality. "How do you capture carbon dioxide, pipe it, bury it and know it will be safe for a long time?" asked Buckle. "Because China is building two new power stations a week."
But it is not just about physical inventions. Medical researchers from the university are working in Bangladesh, whose low-lying location makes it especially vulnerable to flooding while sea water leaks into the drinking system. There, they are focusing on the links between climate change and health.
Buckle also talked about cutting-edge modelling systems used to predict the consequences of catastrophic changes such as ice sheets melting faster than expected. "We do not know how far we are from the edge of the table," he added.
In the centre of Manchester, more unusual inventions are under way.
Scientists are working on turning four tonnes of chicken droppings each day into a small-scale power plant. Then there is the "Manchester Bobber", a floating device that will in the future, harness wave energy for people to use.
Another project that has already received a lot of attention is the fleet of "cloudseeders" designed by Professors John Latham and Stephen Salter. The ambitious idea, which was featured in the BBC film Five Ways to Save the World, aims to thicken up clouds to reflect more of the sun's rays by pumping fine particles of sea-water up from a futuristic fleet of yachts.
The idea was born, Latham said at the time, in a conversation he had had with his son, Mike, decades earlier. Mike had asked him why the clouds he could see from a mountain were shiny on top and dark below.
Latham explained that they acted like a mirror for incoming sunlight. "Soggy mirrors, Dad," replied his son.
But scientists are not the only ones. At Queen's University Belfast, there is heavy investment into the area of management and sustainability.
There, Professor Frank Figge is working on how best to measure the environmental performance of firms.
The future, he argues, will see more investment in those companies that produce high levels of GDP relative to their carbon dioxide emissions. For example, he hopes to see a shift from oil and gas companies towards those focused on services or engineering. Figge also monitors the way that businesses report their environmental record.
"It is astonishing the amount of errors in the environmental reports of major companies," he said.
One huge firm with offices across the world reported no travel for all its employees in the Republic of Ireland. "No cars, no flights, no anything. I am assuming they did not swim from the office to London," said Figge.
The same report suggested that 99 per cent of the waste generated outside of the UK by the company was being produced in Belgium. If it were true, it would mean that each employee in the small office was throwing away 1.75 tons of waste every day. He said that auditors failed to pick up many mistakes because environmental reporting was "light years" behind financial reporting.
It is people like Figge, Buckle, Latham and Salter who are at the cutting edge of research into how to slow down, or learn to live with, climate change. The challenge now is for them to turn those ideas into reality - and quickly.
- Observer
