Alternative energy research projects awarded funding

The programme strengthens international collaboration among researchers throughout east Asia and the wider region. Proposals are sought by topic area. This call was open to proposals seeking to solve challenges facing renewable energy, energy storage and energy management systems.

Investigators from GNS Science and Scion, will work with partners in Japan and Thailand on the project ‘Surface engineering of catalysts and waste biomass for efficient hydrogen production’.

This project looks to take biological waste material, such as forestry waste, and turn it into valuable chemicals and hydrogen gas to use as an energy source. This project lays the foundation to replace fossil-fuel-based imports with zero-carbon substitutes and enhance New Zealand’s energy resilience.

Investigators from the MacDiarmid Institute based at Victoria University of Wellington will work with partners in Japan and Thailand on the project ‘Interface Materials Informatics platform for virtual screening of next generation organic solar cell devices’.

This project looks into the future of solar cell technology. The team will build a computational platform that can predict how solar cell material combinations will perform in the real world. This will greatly reduce the time and cost of searching for new materials and device structures. New Zealand expertise will be contributing to international efforts to solve a bottleneck in the commercial development of next-generation solar power devices.

Further details on the e-ASIA organisation.

e-ASIA joint research programme(external link)

$400,000 over three years will be provided to each project through the MBIE-administered Catalyst Fund, to begin work from early 2025.

Further details on the Catalyst Fund.

Catalyst Fund