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Dr. Jonathan Scurlock, Chief Policy Adviser, Renewable Energy, Climate Change and Non-food Crops, National Farmers’ Union presents this seimnar.
Biography: As a senior adviser to the NFU, Dr. Scurlock’s broad range of duties draw upon his expertise in energy and climate change policy, the global carbon cycle, renewable energy, bioenergy and bio-based materials. He advises the NFU President and management on the interaction between energy and agricultural policy, including Climate Change Levy sector agreements and carbon footprinting, and carries out occasional government consultancy work for BERR and Defra.
Dr. Scurlock’s background is in academia and government research. He worked previously on biomass and other renewable energy projects with regional and local government as well as private sector partners, through the community forests in North East England and Merseyside. Prior to that he was a scientist with the US Department of Energy at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, working on biofuels and climate change.
Dr. Scurlock is also a Visiting Research Fellow at the Open University’s Energy and Environment Research Unit. The author of more than 50 research papers and book chapters, he was educated at Oxford and London Universities, and spent 10 years in the academic sector, specialising in biomass energy, the carbon cycle and plant physiology. He has work experience in more than 30 countries, particularly on the African continent.
Abstract: Bioenergy has come full circle since its replacement by coal and then oil in the 19th and 20th centuries. Beginning in the 1960’s and 70’s, public faith in science and technology was succeeded by sceptical environmentalism and a new paradigm of sustainable development. Already aware of oil depletion and the possible alternatives available through plant biology in the late 1970’s, my own career path progressed through photosynthesis physiology and the assessment of net primary productivity of vegetation with the biomass energy group then at King’s College London. Today, as an adviser to farmers in England and Wales on the economic opportunities emerging from government policy on the use of natural resources for energy, I look forward to the rapid modernisation of biomass energy for heat, electricity and transport, in a world where traditional biomass still provides the fourth largest energy source.
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