Profile
Prof Peter Connor
Research Interests
Prof. Peter Connor researches and teaches in the area of national renewable energy policy and regulation. He has a particular interest in the design and implementation of policy and regulation as it impacts on renewable energy sources of electricity and heat within the UK and at the level of EU Member States. He is also interested in policy and regulation as it applies to the technologies and behaviours relating to enabling measures for renewable energy such as those concerned with smarter delivery of energy. Peter is overall project lead on the current SHIFFT (Sustainable Heating: Implementation of Fossil-Free Technology) project, a €5.7M research project supported by INTERREG 2 Seas. The project aims to support cities in four countries in developing strategies to decarbonise their heat as well as to help communities develop practical heat solutions.
Peter is the University of Exeter’s Principal investigator on the ICE project (Intelligent Community Energy). Merific is a €4.8M project funded through the INTERREG IVa programme with partners in Cornwall and Brittany. It is a multidisciplinary project with input from a diverse group of Exeter academics. Peter leads on policy and regulatory issues relating to renewable energy, on developing a general methodology and on seeking stakeholder input into the project. The project also contains core research strands which move forward the work of PRIMaRE and further advance CSM’s work in overcoming the technical challenges for marine renewable, with a particular focus on moorings and resource assessment. The project will also work to develop a structural simulation of the marine sector to maximise the learning benefits from the project (Childe) and adds further depth to the work carried out in Exeter’s Biosciences department, in considering the environmental impacts of marine renewable energy.
Peter is also working on the initial stages of a UKRI GCRF project "Energy Democracy and the Politics of Energy Transition in African countries". This is a new project supported by the UKRI GCRF funding stream ‘Beyond Technology’ and will consider the many elements impacting democratisation and inclusivity around energy choices in communities. Its research focus will be in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Nigeria. The primary research work will be to consider how the strategic political understanding of many of those countries dominated by grid extension to enable energy access can be changed to incorporate the substantial decentralized, off-grid provision that will be necessary to achieve both effective outreach and low carbon transition.
Peter is also invovled in the H2020 Melody project to investigate the potential for the production of Redox Flow batteries using widely available resources in place of the rare earth metals currently used in many of the market leading battery technologies