Earlier this month, Aura CDT Deputy Director, Professor James Gilbert attended the first Korea-UK Policy and Technology Forum on Net Zero: Offshore Wind as part of the UK Royal Academy of Engineering delegation.

The exchange was in partnership with the National Academy of Engineering Korea (NAEK) and is one of the Royal Academy of Engineering’s first flagship activities to be funded under the UK Government’s newly launched International Science Partnership Fund (ISPF)

The delegation involved seven leading UK offshore wind experts from the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult, Renewable UK, Universities of Hull, Plymouth, and Exeter, and was led by Professor Deborah Greaves of the Supergen Offshore Renewable Energy Impact Hub.

In addition to the forum, the delegation met government, industry and academic stakeholders to explore the opportunities and challenges for offshore wind in Korea, lessons learnt from offshore wind deployment in the UK and identify opportunities for future collaboration and knowledge sharing.

The ISPF was launched by the UK government on 1 April to “help the UK and its partners deliver bigger, better science than one country can do alone.” The bilateral exchange between the NAEK and RAE focussed on one of the ISPF’s themes: a resilient planet. Further exchanges and thought leadership workshops between the RAE and sister academies in other countries will follow.

Professor James Gilbert is based at the University of Hull’s Faculty of Science of Engineering. As Hull lead on the £7.6M EPSRC Prosperity Partnership ‘A New Partnership in Offshore Wind’ his research team developed methods to monitor the manufacture of wind turbine blades to improve quality and reduce waste. He also leads Equality, Diversity and Inclusion research through the EPSRC Supergen ORE Hub and is the Research, Development and Innovation lead for Aura, a collaboration between Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, Ørsted, University of Sheffield, Durham University and the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult.