#InConversation Podcast with Professor David Rooney from Queen’s about renewable energy and electric cars

Slugger O'Toole

David Rooney is a Professor in the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Queen's University Belfast.

In this podcast, we chat about improvements in battery technology and how this will affect the growth of electric cars. We also discuss Hydrogen as a fuel source for transport.

Already nearly 50% of the electricity generated in Northern Ireland comes from renewable sources and this figure will continue to rise. We discuss new ways of generating electric such as anaerobic digestion and energy from waste. This mix of energy sources provides a challenge to the grid of how to manage it all. There are practical issues like a lot of renewable energy is generated in the West of NI, but it is mostly used in the Belfast area. We need to improve the transmission network as well as reconsider projects like the interconnector.