Energy and sustainability

Other external funding

Tour Energy section have been involved in two projects funded by the European Regional Development Fund through the Northern Periphery and Artic (NPA) funding stream.

HUGE - Hydrogen Utilisation and Green Energy

The Hydrogen Utilisation and Green Energy (HUGE) project is a 3-year project which began in June 2019. HUGE's ambition is to raise awareness of the use of green hydrogen as a viable energy vector for remote and rural communities in housing, transport and industry.

HUGE aims to create the HUGE Output Tools (HOT) - a set of publicly available tools that will help organisations assess the technical and financial viability of hydrogen across a variety of applications in remote and rural locations. HUGE will also create a virtual platform - Hydrogen Knowledge and Technology Transfer (HTT) - which will allow hydrogen actors to meet, discuss ideas and contact other organisations within the green hydrogen supply chain. The HTT platform will also contain a directory of hydrogen training, including online courses created by the HUGE project.

The HUGE partnership is led by Environment Research Institute, North College UHI and includes a wide range of partners across the NPA region in research, industry and public bodies. Other partners include The Highland Council; Action Renewables (Northern Ireland); Aran Islands Energy Co-op (Ireland); NUI Galway (Ireland); Lappeenranta University of Technology (Finland); University of Faroe Islands (Faroe Islands); Icelandic New Energy (Iceland).

During the COVID-19 period, HUGE will be hosting public online webinars on hydrogen. For more information on these and the wider project, please visit the Huge Project wesite.

eLighthouse - Towards Energy Efficient Communities

eLighthouse was a 3-year project funded by the NPA that closed in 2019. This project supported actions that increased energy efficiency in buildings and increased the uptake of renewable energy, thus decreasing carbon dioxide emissions.

The project was led by Oulu University of Applied Science in Finland and the partner consortium include research institutes and public bodies. Partners included: City of Oulu municipality (Finland); Cork County Council (Ireland); NCE Insulation (Ireland); Umea Kommun (Sweden); Umea University (Sweden); Nordland Institute (Norway); Centre for Atrtisk Teknologi (Greenland) and The Highland Council.

More information can be found on the project website.