DecarboN8 role: Theme lead – Future Transport Fuels (to 2020)
Job title: Professor of Energy
Organisation: Newcastle University
Profiles: Google Scholar | LinkedIn
Dr Sara Walker has experience of energy efficiency and renewable energy at the building scale, including building energy performance, as a result of over 20 years in academia and industry. Her research interests focus on the decarbonisation of buildings, and the associated energy system impacts of potential transitions to new technologies – including vehicle-to-building issues and the impact of electric vehicles on networks. Dr Walker is an Associate Director of the EPSRC National Centre for Energy Systems Integration (CESI). The Centre aims to apply modelling, simulation, and scenario frameworks, to consider possible energy transitions, by adopting a multi-scale and multi-vector approach within a highly collaborative environment. Dr Walker is currently Deputy Academic Director on the Active Building Centre (ABC), an Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund £36m project to understand the potential for building loads, including electric vehicle charging, to be controlled in such a way as to offer new energy system services. She is also Deputy Director of the EPSRC Supergen Energy Networks Hub, which brings together the vibrant and diverse energy networks community to gain a deeper understanding of the interactions and inter-dependencies of energy networks.