| Academic Year | 2024-2025 |
| lhayes03@qub.ac.uk | |
| Institution | Queen's University, Belfast |
Biography
School: School of Natural and Built Environment
Pronouns: he/him
Project: AgriTherm: The role of Geothermal Energy in decarbonising the UK Agri-Food sector
Supervisors: Ulrich Ofterdinger, Mark Palmer & Jean Christophe Comte
Undergraduate Education: BSc Geoscience, University of Aberdeen
Postgraduate Education: N/A
Research: Agriculture is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions in the UK. In Northern Ireland, agriculture remains the highest-emitting sector and the only sector to have shown an increase since the base year of 1990. Overall, the UK’s agri-food industry is responsible for almost a quarter of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. Geothermal energy can provide an abundant source for reliable 24/7, ‘always-on’ energy, which ranges from deep high temperature applications for electrical power generation to lower temperature systems for Direct-Use Geothermal Energy (DUGE) applications for heating & cooling.
DUGE has significant potential in a range of end-use sectors, in particular for the agri-food sector. In food production, DUGE can be used to create the optimal environment for both growing produce (space heating) and supporting post-harvest preservation (drying, dehydration, cooling and cold storage) as well as increasing productivity in greenhouse farming and aquaculture. In food processing, DUGE can yield high rates of decarbonisation in processing industries with high heat demand that require pasteurisation (e.g. dairy industry), sterilisation (e.g. drink & food canning) or fermentation & distillation (e.g. beer, wine and spirits), all of which form key agri-food industries across Northern Ireland.
The integration of DUGE into existing farming and processing practices as a means to replace fossil fuels and using DUGE to open new markets for diversifying the UK agri-food sector away from carbon-intensive practices towards new markets. DUGE holds potential in decarbonising the Agri-Food sector in the UK, which is key to delivering on the national Net Zero Targets.
While Direct Use Geothermal Energy resources are widely available across the UK and the application of DUGE in the agri-food sector has been well established in other countries, the successful adoption of DUGE across the UK agri-food sector still requires better functioning markets as well as coherent policy frameworks.
In this project, we will use Northern Ireland as a case study, and we will collaborate and utilise the expertise from across the areas of Earth & Environmental Sciences, Social Sciences, Agri-Food, Finance, Energy Policy and Management to develop and co-create a joint proposition for the application of Direct-Use Geothermal Energy for the UK agri-food sector. We will engage with stakeholders across the Agri-Food sector to co-analyse the opportunities and challenges for DUGE and to jointly develop tailored implementation approaches. The project aims to combine both technical evaluations of available DUGE resources for the Agri-Food sector with active social science research highlighting current barriers for the uptake of DUGE across the agri-food sector and evaluating market-forming strategies and underpinning financial instruments to realise the potential for DUGE applications across the industry.
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