Energy & Environment Overview

“Effective action on the scale required to tackle climate change requires a widespread shift to new or improved technology in key sectors such as power generation, transport and energy use… The private sector plays the major role in R&D and technology diffusion. But closer collaboration between government and industry will further stimulate the development of a broad portfolio of low carbon technologies and reduce costs.”
Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change - October 2006

At QinetiQ, we pride ourselves on our ability to provide brilliant solutions to important problems. And there is no problem more important in the world at the moment than how to tackle climate change whilst meeting a growing global demand for energy.

The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change identified the role that technology has to play. At QinetiQ, we work closely with our customers to help them achieve the benefits to their business that technology can deliver.

Within Energy and Environment we focus on the following four key areas:

Primary energy supply
• Producing novel devices for oil and gas exploration and production
• Developing advanced batteries
• Testing batteries
• Improving the efficiency of gas turbines for power generation
• Advising on the specification and use of fuels and lubricants
• Providing calibration services for energy companies

Renewable energy
• Assessing the impact of wind turbines on radar
• Assessing the impact of offshore wind turbines on the marine environment
• Applying smart materials to create stealthy wind turbines
• Monitoring the condition of wind turbines and applying condition-based monitoring
• Measuring wind speed and direction to site wind farms in optimum locations

Lower carbon transport
• Deploying new technologies to improve aviation’s performance on emissions and noise
• Deploying new technologies to improve air traffic management and thus enable sustainable aviation
• Making fuel cells for zero-emission vehicles
• Designing hybrid-electric drives for more fuel efficient large vehicles

Pollution
• Assessing the impact of new military equipment on the environment
• Assessing the impact of environment on defence operations
• Providing remote sensing data and analysis
• Developing sensors and sensor networks to improve modelling and monitoring