Wolfson GBF awarded Green Future Fellowship

Governing Body Fellow, Professor Moritz Riede from the Department of Physics is one of 13 Green Future Fellows to receive landmark funding from the Royal Academy of Engineering. Some £39 million is going to the first such cohort to develop innovative solutions that tackle multiple causes of the climate crisis and mitigate and adapt to its impacts.

Professor Riede’s focus is on accelerating the commercialisation of organic photovoltaics (OPV) – thus providing clean energy anywhere in the world at a fraction of the environmental footprint of traditional solar panels. OPV are solar cells made from carbon-based materials. These panels are flexible, lightweight and can be used on almost any surface. They already work well in the laboratory, but they are not yet good enough for factories to make cheaply at scale. OPV will complement traditional solar panels where they do not work, for example on curved surfaces, transparent building facades, or wearable electronics, and provide clean energy at a fraction of the environmental footprint of traditional solar panels. Professor Riede will use AI and robots to test thousands of designs automatically and quickly to improve OPV so they match what the best labs can do – accelerating OPV commercialisation, supporting UK Net Zero goals and advancing a fair clean energy transition everywhere.

‘We know organic photovoltaics work very well in the lab,’ comments Professor Riede. ‘The challenge is achieving the same at scale in factories in a way that is both fast and affordable. That is what the climate urgency demands right now and that is what we are solving. Focusing on industrially relevant materials and proven processes, we want to be able to scale organic photovoltaics, the greenest most equitable form of solar energy reaching low-, middle- and high-income countries alike.’

For the full press release, click here.