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Soil is a fundamental resource yet every year some 10 million ha of cropland are lost to soil erosion, mostly due to unsustainable agricultural and forestry practices. Erosion impacts overall sustainability in two ways: (a) reduction in farmland for food production, and (b) discharge of sediments and associated contaminants into water courses polluting water supply, fisheries and aquaculture, and reducing hydropower capacity due to reservoir siltation. Soil erosion and its environmental impacts sit centrally within the Energy-Food-Water-Environment Nexus. New approaches to land management change are required to reduce socio-economic impacts of soil erosion but in spite of its significance, soil erosion is insufficiently understood in its social dimensions, and is almost non-governed in Latin American DAC countries. Two factors may explain this: (a) erosion is often slow and "invisible", or accepted as the norm, and (b) erosion is highly complex, emerging from interaction of socio-economic and natural processes, with interconnected feedbacks between external and internal drivers. Working in collaboration with researchers from Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, the Chile-UK partnership aims to develop a new integrated approach for understanding and governing soil erosion at the river basin scale. Our multidisciplinary team combines innovative scientific measuring methods and advanced Latin American approaches for socio-cultural intervention to provide a new framework within which soil erosion challenges in Latin America can be addressed.

Wind is proving to be a commercially viable source for generating electrical power. The UK is exploiting this opportunity with its consistent wind resource using wind turbines fixed to the seabed along its coastline up to 50 metres in depth. Other coastal regions around the world are considering offshore wind turbine projects and, despite some being too deep for fixed seabed wind turbines, floating wind turbines may provide the solution. 18 miles offshore Peterhead, Scotland, such a test program is in operation. Known as Hywind Scotland, the project deploys five interconnected floating turbines supplying sufficient electricity to power 20,000 UK households. The next step in development is to design floating foundation structures with commercial potential for mass production. Test level projects may then be scaled up to develop floating windfarms deploying hundreds of interconnected units supplying commercially viable electricity to the world's major coastal cities. Designs for the floating bases upon which the turbines stand remain a challenge. The Hywind floating bases must be assembled in deep water Norwegian fjords and specialist heavy lift floating cranes for construction which add to the project cost. Alternative floating base designs present different construction challenges such as large widths that make assembly and launch difficult using facilities found in typical ports. Also, the UK currently has to rely on intellectual property rights owned in the US, Norway, France and Japan to take advantage of this new technology. CPDSYS Ltd is investigating how to optimise floating wind turbine foundation design and intallation. It has developed the Drop Keel concept, a compact, shallow draft design which Atkins Engineering has analysed and identified as possessing operational performance and motion characteristics acceptable for commercial wind turbine operation. Scale model tank tests are planned with Strathclyde University for a 10MW capacity unit followed by further analysis to investigate the relationship between wave motion, aerodynamic performance and motion control systems. The objective is to produce a full scale Drop Keel foundation design protected by UK Intellectual property rights that not only supports renewable power opportunities in the UK's deeper coastal waters but also meets the demands of a global export market. CPDSYS is also investigating how the Drop Keel concept may support marginal deep water oil and gas fields by providing a source of electricity in remote marine locations that could assist with recovery of hydrocarbons similar to the way that pump jacks (nodding donkeys) power onshore oil wells.

Spinetic Energy Ltd is undertaking a radical re-engineering of wind harvesting technology, creating a panellised, modular, linkable system, designed to be as installable and cost effective as solar PV. Spinetic's "Wind Panels" will be deployable at community scale without use of cranes or other heavy equipment. Being modular, human-portable on site, and installable without specialist labour, Wind Panels are ideal for providing low cost renewable power at remote/developing world deployments. The Wind Panel design is inherently suitable for mass-production, but many of its production processes are, in principle, also amenable to manual production using relatively low-skilled labour, and without heavy industrial or high power equipment. This could make Wind Panels manufacturable on-site in remote/developing world locations, using locally sourced materials, thus significantly reducing embedded energy, and providing local employment and repair/maintenance capability. This project will examine the feasibility of designing Wind Panel components and manufacturing processes suitable for production of modular, containerised "micro-factories" for Wind Panel construction, maintenance and end-of-life re-working for other uses, e.g. in housing/irrigation projects.

Tackling climate change, providing energy security and delivering sustainable energy solutions are major challenges faced by civil society. The social, environmental and economic cost of these challenges means that it is vital that there is a research focus on improving the conversion and use of thermal energy. A great deal of research and development is continuing to take place to reduce energy consumption and deliver cost-effective solutions aimed at helping the UK achieve its target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050. Improved thermal energy performance impacts on industry through reduced energy costs, reduced emissions, and enhanced energy security. Improving efficiency and reducing emissions is necessary to increase productivity, support growth in the economy and maintain a globally competitive manufacturing sector. In the UK, residential and commercial buildings are responsible for approximately 40% of the UK's total non-transport energy use, with space heating and hot water accounting for almost 80% of residential and 60% of commercial energy use. Thermal energy demand has continued to increase over the past 40 years, even though home thermal energy efficiency has been improving. Improved thermal energy conversion and utilisation results in reduced emissions, reduced costs for industrial and domestic consumers and supports a more stable energy security position. In the UK, thermal energy (heating and cooling) is the largest use of energy in our society and cooling demand set to increase as a result of climate change. The need to address the thermal energy challenge at a multi-disciplinary level is essential and consequently this newly established network will support the technical, social, economic and environmental challenges, and the potential solutions. It is crucial to take account of the current and future economic, social, environmental and legislative barriers and incentives associated with thermal energy. The Thermal Energy Challenge Network will support synergistic approaches which offer opportunities for improved sustainable use of thermal energy which has previously been largely neglected. This approach can result in substantial energy demand reductions but collaboration and networking is essential if this is to be achieved. A combination of technological solutions working in a multi-disciplinary manner with engineers, physical scientists, and social scientists is essential and this will be encouraged and supported by the Thermal Energy Challenge Network.