Renew started up in 1979 as the bimonthly renewable energy newsletter of NATTA, the OU-based Network for Alternative Technology & Technology Assessment which I had set up in 1976. It was backed by the OU Alternative Technology Group (ATG), which Godfrey Boyle had then just set up, and which, in 1986, became the Energy and Environment Research Unit (EERU), still under his leadership. I was a member of both. In this extended post I look back at what happened next.
EERU prospered, producing some innovative courses and info packs and carrying out pioneering research. Indeed Godfrey Bevan, at one stage the civil servant head of the government’s renewable energy team, commented ‘I think the country owes a great debt to the ATG/EERU as pioneers in the field, which it will never even know about.’ Renew also thrived, with up 500 NATTA subscribers, until it went electronic (and free), as Renew on line, in 2008. I have continued with it independently, after I retired from full time work the OU in 2009- when I became an Emeritus Prof.
However, the past isn’t dead. The NATTA web site has archive links to Renew on Line, and, with the closure of my office at the OU in 2023, the Mills Archive in Reading has taken on all the earlier paper issues of Renew, as well as the many NATTA reports and all the back issues of Undercurrents, the pioneering UK Alternative Technology magazine which ran from 1972 from 1984, edited by Godfrey Boyle.
The Mills Archive has, in the past, mainly covered traditional wind and water mills, but has recently expanded its remit to also cover modern wind and other renewables. It says that it ‘protects, preserves & promotes the history of milling and renewable energy for people to learn about & enjoy. It does this to ensure that the roles of milling, renewable energy, and their contributors – from ancient times and up to the present day – are understood, valued and recognised as integral to people’s histories & lives today’.
So, as became clear on a recent visit, it’s now working through the early history of ‘modern’ renewables in the UK, with hopefully my stash of papers helping and also being aided by donation of material from Peter Musgrove, a one time Reading University-based wind energy pioneer. See the Mills Archive newsletter, Renewable roots for how it sees things so far.
With that big project in mind, to provide some of context to the historic Renew/NATTA material, in this post I look back at the work of EERU at the OU. As can be seen from the account below, during its prime, in addition to supporting Renew, EERU was also itself quite active externally. Although, under Godfrey Boyle’s direction, it focused mainly on research and energy course production, it also continued my earlier practice of making submissions to government inquiries.
So here is a partial list for the period 1997-2008:
*Evidence on employment implications of nuclear & its alternative to the 1979 Windscale Public Inquiry and to the 1981 House of Commons Select Committee on Energy, and on renewable energy policy to the 1984/5 Sizewell B Public Inquiry, and to also the 1989 Hinkley Point C Public Inquiry.
*Evidence on Public Attitudes to Windfarms on behalf of NATTA to the House of Commons Welsh Affairs Committee, 1993.
*Evidence on renewable energy strategy to the 1994 DTI Nuclear Review.
* Evidence on renewable energy R&D requirements, for the DTI Renewable Energy review, 1998.
*Evidence to the DTI's Office of Science and Technology consultation on 'Foresight 2000', 1998.
*Invited submission, on 'Energy and Environment' on behalf of NATTA, to the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, 1998.
*Submission to the Dept. of Environment, Transport and the Regions consultation on Climate Change, 1999.
*Invited evidence on Renewable Energy Policy in Europe to the Lords Select Committee on the European Communities, 1999.
*Submissions to the DTI to its Renewable Review, and to Customs and Excise on the Climate Change Levy, May 1999.
*Submission to a MAFF consultation on Energy Crops 2000.
*Invited Submission on wave and tidal power to the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology, 2001.
*Invited presentation on Non Fossil Energy R&D policy to the Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology, 2002.
*Submission on wave and tidal power to the Governments Energy Review 2006.
*Submission to the Governments Nuclear Review 2007.
*Submission to DEBR consultation on UK Renewable Energy Strategy 2008.
EERU clearly was a ‘frequent intervener’ in Whitehall policy circles. Mention should also perhaps be made in this context of my work for National Audit Office review of the UK Renewable Energy R&D programme (1993), and the Cabinet Office PIU Energy review (2001), as well as with the Chief Scientific Advisor’s Energy Research Review Group later that year.
In parallel with this, I had taken over as director of EERU (for 1998-2005), while Godfrey Boyle was chairing a major course production exercise, which included work on the two linked energy books published by Oxford University Press. The one he edited on renewable energy, with contributions from, amongst others, myself and other EERU staff, such as Bob Everett, became a best seller and has gone into several editions.
After that, EERU started up a series of major international energy policy conferences at the OU:
*Nuclear or Not? Does nuclear power have a place in a sustainable energy future? (March 2005).
*Locating renewables in community context- planning issues and local ownership (Nov. 2005).
*Coping with Variability- Integrating Renewables into the Electricity System (Jan. 2006).
*New Europe, New Energy- Renewables for the expanded EU (Nov. 2006).
This series led on to a series of books, from 2007 onwards, for the Palgrave Energy Climate and Environment series, which I edited, as well as some books for the Institute of Physics, based on my post-OU retirement teaching experience on renewable energy MSc courses around the UK. The IoP also contracted me to produce a weekly blog on renewables which ran for several years, latterly as part of their Physics World series, which is still archived. That has continued subsequently as the independent weekly NATTA blog Renew Extra.
As can be seen it was a busy few decades, but, although EERU kept going for a while after Godfrey Boyle retired in 2011, sadly, it did not survive. However, although the subsequent energy research team led by Bill Nuttall mostly focused on other areas, including synthetic hydrogen and (unlike EERU) nuclear technology, there has still been some EERU type work going on at the OU. For example, in addition to the long-running renewable energy course module and wider OU activities in relation to sustainable living and environmental justice, Prof. Stephen Peake is active on sustainable energy and climate policy, and some of the other old EERU lags are also still active- including Derek Taylor and Tam Dougan. And the OU continues to support the production (by Tam and I) of a version of the Renew newsletter for students on its energy courses. So links continue. For a recent example, EERU had organised a national conference on renewable energy education ‘creating the knowledge & skills base’ back in May 2003. That topic has become very relevant recently as renewables have expanded vastly - there are green skill gap issues. OU Visiting Research Fellow Terry Cook and I have been exploring this area of late. So we are still at it, pushing on with new ideas. Though sadly without Godfrey Boyle, who died in 2019. So too, a bit later, did Janet Ramage, a long-term EERU stalwart. An end to an era.
It will be interesting to see what the Mills Archive makes of all this history. There is a lot of it: the above doesn’t touch on the academic and research publications that emerged from EERU. Or look at the wider impact of the extensive OU teaching materials that EERU produced. Or indeed the impact of the local activism and national conferences co-ordinated by NATTA around the country over the years – like the one on tidal power it organised on the end of the old Birnbeck Pier in Weston super Mare in 1982. I did run a retrospective review of Renew’s output and focus in this Blog series a while back, and the Mills Archive seems to like looking back at the Undercurrents coverage. Maybe that’s because, with the future so uncertain just now, we can perhaps learn something from the past.
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