IEMA and Leeds team up to build momentum for Circular Renewables

IEMA and the University of Leeds are organising a series of events to support circular economy approaches for renewable energy technologies.

With renewable energy technologies set to grow exponentially over the next decades, demand for materials will surge. Billions of tonnes of materials will be required, such as low-carbon steel, copper, aluminium, cobalt, molybdenum, vanadium and neodymium, to build wind and solar farms and to roll out electric vehicles.

While renewables are undoubtedly an essential part of climate action, sourcing materials does come with its own sustainability impacts. It can also not be taken for granted that every country can access the materials that it needs for the energy transition, with resource access risks proliferating. Circular economy approaches can help to curb such risks.

IEMA and University of Leeds’ invite the growing community of researchers, innovators, companies, policy makers and others who are interested in embedding circular economy solutions into renewable industries. Starting with six sessions, solutions will be shared with a view to understand the current state of the art. This will help to raise understanding about the level of ambition that can be set by companies and governments and, conversely, to identify gaps in the knowledge base for further research, development and innovation.

The sessions aim to cast a wide net, covering a broad range of renewable energy technologies such as wind turbines, solar panels and other solar products, bioenergy, electric vehicles and various forms of energy storage such as batteries and geosolutions.

Six bimonthly sessions will be organised in 2023-2024, inviting diverse speakers to present and discuss the following topics on circular renewables:

19 September 2023: Introducing circular renewables
28 November 2023: Supply chains
23 January 2024: Recycling vs. Durability
26 March 2024: Recycling: the good, the missing and the imaginary
21 May 2024: Remanufacturing: the future?
16 July 2024: Accelerating circular renewables

The one-hour webinars will run from 13:00-14:00 hrs (GMT) and are open to everyone. Please visit the IEMA website for further details and registration links for each session.