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Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund
Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs
Illegal wildlife trade (IWT) is a widespread and lucrative criminal activity causing major global environmental and social harm. The IWT has been estimated to be worth up to £17 billion a year. Nearly 6,000 different species of fauna and flora are impacted, with almost every country in the world playing a role in the illicit trade. The UK government is committed to tackling illegal trade of wildlife products and is a long-standing leader in efforts to eradicate the IWT. Defra manages the Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund, which is a competitive grants scheme with the objective of tackling IWT and, in doing so, contributing to sustainable development in developing countries. Projects funded under the Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund address one, or more, of the following themes: • Developing sustainable livelihoods to benefit people directly affected by IWT, • Strengthening law enforcement, • Ensuring effective legal frameworks, • Reducing demand for IWT products. By 2023 over £51 million has been committed to 157 projects since the Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund was established in 2013. This page contains information about Rounds 7 onwards. For information about Rounds 1 to 6, please see the IWTCF website -https://iwt.challengefund.org.uk/
China - Newton Advanced Fellowship
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
Awards for early to mid-career international researchers who have already established (or in process of establishing) a research group. Awards support researchers in their own country, providing funding for training and development in collaboration with a UK partner, with the intention of transferring knowledge and research capabilities to partner countries.
China - Newton International Fellowship
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
Scheme supports early-career international researchers to spend two years undertaking research at a host university or research institution in the UK, enabling them to benefit from a period within a first class research environment in some of the UK’s best universities. Awards provide stipend, research monies, and relocation costs.
Newton Advanced Fellowships (Year 4 Round 2) NSFC
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
This programme focuses on mid-career researchers in Newton Fund countries, and develops their research strengths by providing support for training and development in collaboration with a UK partner with the intention of transferring knowledge and research capabilities to researchers in partner countries.
Newton Mobility Grants (Year 4 Round 2) NSFC
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
This programme supports researchers in Newton Fund countries to develop collaborations with UK researchers. These awards are particularly suited to initiate new collaborative partnerships, between scholars who have not previously worked together, or new initiatives between scholars who have collaborated in the past.
Newton Advanced Fellowships (Year 5 Round 2) NSFC
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
This programme focuses on mid-career researchers in Newton Fund countries, and develops their research strengths by providing support for training and development in collaboration with a UK partner with the intention of transferring knowledge and research capabilities to researchers in partner countries.
Newton International Fellowships (Year 6 Round 1) NSFC
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
Enables talented early career post-doctoral researchers from partner countries to spend two consecutive years undertaking research at a UK host institute. The fellowship supports talented early career researchers from partner countries to develop their research capabilities by hosting them with some of the best research departments in the UK.
Newton International Fellowships (Year 6 Round 1) CAS
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
Enables talented early career post-doctoral researchers from partner countries to spend two consecutive years undertaking research at a UK host institute. The fellowship supports talented early career researchers from partner countries to develop their research capabilities by hosting them with some of the best research departments in the UK.
FENGBO-WIND - Farming the ENvironment into the Grid: Big data in Offshore Wind
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
The proposed project will develop an integrated computational simulation approach capable of handling the complex interactions between the local atmosphere, the coastal ocean and sedimentary environment, farm aerodynamics, turbine response and grid integration in offshore wind farms. This will target a substantial reduction in the cost of energy in offshore wind by exploiting: high-fidelity optimization of array design and operation, tailored to a specific site and able to deal with realistic marine atmospheric boundary layer conditions, in particular the very slow dissipation of rotor wakes; combined with big-data analysis of very-large-scale simulations of the whole system under extreme conditions, to minimize integrity risks without overly conservative safety factors. Both situations will be investigated within the context of the development of offshore farms off the Chinese coast, which brings particular challenges regarding coastal characteristics (e.g. high sediment concentrations) and extreme events (in particular typhoons). To achieve this we propose a multiscale approach to wind farm design and network integration that considers, first, a more accurate characterisation of extreme events (and active mitigation strategies) in the analysis through highly-resolved computer simulation; second, new optimization techniques for the design and operation of wind farms that allow for sustained power extraction using relevant knowledge of both the marine atmosphere and individual turbine (aeroservoelastic) dynamics; and third, robust grid design and operation strategies that accommodate wind resource variability and maximise the sustainability of energy generation. FENGBO-WIND will carry out the most ambitious computer simulations to date on farm dynamics and farm/environment interaction, to build physics-based predictive capabilities on farm output and investigate long-term interactions between farms and their local environment. An interdisciplinary consortium of experts, including Earth/environmental scientists, civil and electrical engineers, and fluid dynamicists, have been assembled to tackle this challenging computational problem. The team will have access to (1) the world's largest supercomputer (Sunway TaihuLight) to carry out full system simulations of energy output and farm state for specific environmental scenarios, (2) operational data from existing wind farms off the Chinese coast as well as conditions at a target site through a partnership with a local grid company, and (3) performance data for a state-of-the-art wind turbine design from the leading Chinese manufacturer. The results will be benchmarked against state-of-the-art industrial design tools and protocols for grid integration for offshore wind farms.
Newton Advanced Fellowships (Year 2 Round 2) NSFC
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
This programme focuses on mid-career researchers in Newton Fund countries, and develops their research strengths by providing support for training and development in collaboration with a UK partner with the intention of transferring knowledge and research capabilities to researchers in partner countries.
Newton Fund China programme delivery
DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY
Newton Fund China programme delivery to support the delivery of ODA activities in Newton Fund countries
FountainVest China Growth Fund LP
British International Investment plc
A fund targeting high-growth industry-leading companies in China, with a focus on first-generation entrepreneurs.
Happy Travel Rolling Investors LP
British International Investment plc
Fund vehicle set up specifically to invest in Plateno Hotel
China - Researcher Links Workshop Grants
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
China - Researcher Links Workshop Grants is funded through the UK Government’s Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Newton Fund and delivered on the UK side by the British Council. This activity contributes to the Newton Fund’s work in building research and innovation partnerships with countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America to support economic development and social welfare, tackle global challenges and develop talent and careers.
Investigation of the novel challenges of an integrated offshore multi-purpose platform
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
The Made in China 2025 report, highlights ocean renewable energy technologies as one of the 10 areas of opportunity for UK and Chinese companies. The "Outline of the National Marine Economic Development Plan" specifically targets the development of novel ocean farming methods, more productive but also more socially and environmentally compatible. In the EU, the "Blue Growth" program aims at sustainable growth in the marine and maritime sectors, already representing 5.4 million jobs and generating a gross added value of 500 billion euros a year. Offshore structures are very costly. The main idea of a Multi-Purpose Platform (MPP), integrating (for example) renewable energy devices and aquaculture facilities, is to find the synergies to share manufacturing, installation, operation and maintenance, and decommissioning costs. This has the potential to, save money, reduce the overall impact, and maximize the socio-economic benefits. MPP development poses cross-disciplinary challenges, since they simultaneously aim to achieve several potentially conflicting objectives: to be techno-economically feasible, environmentally considered, socially beneficial, and compatible with maritime legislations. In the EU, previous research focused on farms of multi-megawatt MPP (ocean renewable devices + aquaculture systems), with very few/no attempts to investigate lower rated power systems suitable for island/coastal communities. In China, previous projects aimed at island communities focused on renewable energy, but they did not integrate any aquaculture elements. Therefore, for island communities, novel fundamental questions arise, especially in terms of techno-economic feasibility and assessment and maximization of socio-environmental benefits at a completely different scale, but still requiring a whole-system, cross-disciplinary approach. The proposed solution is to investigate which are the specific challenges arising from the integration of these different offshore technologies, and with a multi-disciplinary approach to tackle them, making sure that all the dimensions (technological, economic, social, environmental, legal) are taken into account. The renewable energy technologies (Which wind turbine? Which wave device? What kind of solar panel?) and aquaculture systems most suitable for the needs of an island community will be identified, and the "cross-disciplinary" questions will be defined, e.g. "What is the impact of the noise generated by the renewable energy devices on the (closely co-located) aquaculture species growth rate?". Answering these questions, the novel contribution will consist in developing approaches to assess the feasibility of an MPP system, focusing on: global MPP dynamic response to metocean conditions, overall integrated control and power management strategies, environmental impact, socio-economic risks and benefits. The potential of these methodologies will be then show-cased through two case-studies, one focusing on an island community in China, and one in the UK. This consortium brings together internationally recognised experts from three Chinese and three British universities and institutes, for a total of 20 investigators, in the fields of solar and offshore wind and wave energy, control systems for renewable energy devices, environmental and socio-economic impact of renewables and aquaculture systems, aquaculture and integrated multi-trophic aquaculture development, and ecosystem modelling. These investigators are also leading members of the research community, directly involved in: Renewable Energy Key Lab of Chinese Academy of Sciences, IEC and Chinese National Standardization Committee for Marine Energy Devices, Supergen Wind Hub, EU Energy Research Alliance JP Wind, ITTC Ocean Engineering Committee, the Royal Institution of Naval Architects Maritime Innovation Committee, ICES WG-Marine Mammal Ecology, International Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem, Ecopath Consortium Advisory Board.
Resilient Integrated-Coupled FOW platform design methodology (ResIn)
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
This project will enhance the design and development of floating offshore renewables, in particular offshore floating wind as commercially viable electricity infrastructure through a risk based approach allowing to build resilience against extreme events. The socio-economic challenge is the increasing energy need in emerging economies, such as China, which causes grave air pollution and CO2 emissions. The project work focusses on China, where heavy air pollution alone is estimated to have caused 2.2million premature deaths. Sustainable energy generation, thus replacing coal-fired power plants is one of the solutions to address this problem. In China specifically, the energy demand is at its highest along the industrialised and densely populated coastal regions. The challenge for a renewable energy supply is that the solar, wind and hydro resource are primarily located in the NW and SW of China and electricity transmission via the grid is already constrained. The Chinese government therefore has identified offshore wind energy as one of the primary energy resources with a potential of over 500GW of installed capacity, capable to produce up to 1,500 TWh of electricity per year, which would offset as many as 340 coal-fired power stations. Whilst initial installations in shallow waters near the coast have been made, over 1/3rd of the resource is located in deeper water (>40m) and will require floating installations. Offshore wind energy generation is currently more expensive than fossil fuels in China, and the risk of typhoon damage is high. The project has a fourfold approach: 1.Enhanced environmental modelling to accurately determine extreme loadings; 2. Assessment of novel, porous floating offshore wind structures and active damping mechanisms; 3. Enhanced numerical modelling techniques to efficiently calculate the complex coupled behaviour of floating wind turbines; 4. Risk based optimisation of devised designs and engineering implications. This combined approach is carried through distinguished scientific research expertise and leading industry partners in the field of offshore wind. To maximise the impact and benefits of this research the project places large emphasis on knowledge exchange activities, industry liaison and the establishment of cross-country research capacity to foster the global commercial realisation of offshore floating wind energy. The project is an interdisciplinary, cross-country collaboration with leading research Universities and industry partners. The academic expertise from the University of Exeter, the University of Edinburgh and University of Bath in the areas of Environmental assessment and modelling, Hydrodynamic design, Advanced computational modelling and risk based reliability engineering is matched with Dalian University of Technology and Zhejiang University as two of the leading Chinese research institutions in Ocean Engineering and Offshore Renewable Energy. Whilst the project carries out fundamental engineering research, strong industrial partnerships in both countries will facilitate industry advice and subsequent research uptake. The strong industrial UK support for this project through the ORE Catapult, DNV-GL, ITPE is matched with wider international support through EDF (France) and DSA (Canada), as well as the Chinese project partners MingYang Wind Power Ltd (3rd largest wind manufacturer in China), the National Ocean Technology Centre, NOTC, (institutional responsibility for marine spatial planning) and the 'Shanghai Investigation, Design & Research Institute', SIDRI (State-owned offshore wind project developer in China), demonstrates the timeliness and industrial relevance of the proposed research. All partners are committed to support the establishment of a long-lasting research base to develop resilient and cost effective offshore floating wind energy systems through collaborative research and innovation efforts, as well as capacity building and knowledge exchange.
Extreme wind and wave loads on the next generation of offshore wind turbines
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
In many areas around the world dominant load on offshore wind turbines is from environmental forces. One example of this is in China where typhoons can do considerable damage to offshore installations. This project builds up from fundamental modelling of the underlying environment and how offshore wind turbines interact with this, to analyzing the structural response and design scenarios. The project will have four themes: The first stage examines the wave environment in areas of moderate depth and complex bathymetry with wind input. The second and third stages of the project will analyse loads from wind and waves on offshore wind structures. The fourth stage will examine the associated structural and geotechnical design. An ongoing theme throughout the project will be directed towards outreach, networking and dissemination. The project will improve our understanding of the underlying physical processes as well as exploring the design and environmental implications. In particular, the first theme will provide a better fundamental understanding of typhoon-wave interactions, an important topic in its own right in ocean environmental science. The project will use a wide-range of techniques to tackle the particular problems. These range from analytical modelling of the underlying equations, numerical modelling, physical modelling, and analysis of field data. Insight from all these approaches will be pooled to tackle the challenge of designing offshore wind turbines in harsh maritime environments.
Modelling, Optimisation and Design of Conversion for Offshore Renewable Energy (UK-China MOD-CORE)
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
China has the world's largest installed capacity for wind energy and is rapidly developing its wave energy technologies. Strong growth in both offshore wind and wave are needed to displace fossil fuel generation in order for China to achieve a sustainable economy. For this to happen, greater investor confidence and commercial debt are needed. This is possible if a significant reduction in costs at all levels are achieved, thereby reducing the cost of energy to a point where it competes with fossil-fuel generation. However, the high risks of offshore renewable energy (ORE) have impeded faster development. In China, onshore wind power is severely curtailed due to crowded transmission corridors. Exploitation of offshore wind would better match the population distribution in China, and so hence there is a strong motivation to exploit this ORE. In order to accelerate this development, new technologies are desperately needed to improve the performance in terms of cost, efficiency and reliability (availability). In addition to offshore wind, other forms of marine renewable energy will also play indispensable roles in the future renewable energy mix. Because these technologies are less mature, this development involves even higher risks. As yet none of the wave energy generation companies have shown to be commercially viable without economic support mechanisms. Recognising the high risks involved and the development work that is urgently needed in the industry, this project aims to carry out fundamental modelling and validating work that will lead to the capability of virtual prototyping. Such a capability will significantly accelerate and de-risk the development work in industry. Complementary expertise in China and the UK are combined to address the requirements of overall system performance from ORE devices (wind and wave) to grid, and focuses on the critical technical aspects that will dictate the design decisions. This will be achieved through multiple scale (dimensional and time-wise) and multiple resolution modelling, taking into account the specifications and utilisation of materials and components in the designed systems subject to optimal control. The modelling will cover the manufacturability of the designs and will consider environmental constraints including impact on sea life in different locations. These will be important as ORE development is scaled up in the future. The outcome of research will be demonstrated through a series of case studies including both systems for large wind farms and wave arrays, and also small scale devices supplying energy to off-grid islands. Although China is the primary beneficiary of this activity, there are possible future secondary benefits to the UK. The project members have long track records in modelling and design of components in wind and marine renewable systems. The project allows the researchers to interact and carry out studies cutting across the borders of different engineering disciplines, enabling hi-fidelity modelling and virtual prototyping.
Leaders in Innovation Fellowships Programme v2, 3, 4, 5, 6 =, 7 2015-21
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
The Leaders in Innovation Fellowships programme builds technology entrepreneurship capacity of select partner country researchers who are developing a business proposition for their innovation which must meet a development challenge. Selected researchers benefit from focussed short term training and long term support through access to expert mentors and international networks.
China - Industry Academia Partnerships Programme (IAPP)
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
China - Industry Academia Partnerships Programme (IAPP) is funded through the UK Government’s Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Newton Fund and delivered on the UK side by the Royal Academy of Engineering. This activity contributes to the Newton Fund’s work in building research and innovation partnerships with countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America to support economic development and social welfare, tackle global challenges and develop talent and careers.