I would like to thank everyone who attended the breakfast seminar sessions at the Eco Innovation Centre. The sessions have become increasingly popular and around 90 of you made it to the last three events and it was standing room only at a couple of the sessions! Needless to say, we are planning further briefings and details of these will be circulated in the near future.

Please find details of some upcoming events and recent news stories from Peterborough in the newsletter below. As always, please visit www.envirocluster.net to stay up to date with all the news from the environment sector in Peterborough.

Gareth Jones
EnviroCluster Manager

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The Technology Strategy Board has recently announced that they have two new funds for green housing and for carbon reductions from heavy industry.

Up to £15 million of new funding is being made available to support innovative research into technologies that can cut carbon emissions from heavy industries such as power plants.

From June this year, the Technology Strategy Board - in partnership with the Department of Energy and Climate Change and the Northern Way forum - will make the cash available through their Collaborative R&D grant programme. 

It is hoped the funding competition will help develop innovative new Carbon Abatement Technologies that can reduce emissions from fossil fuel power stations and other CO2-intensive process industries. 

The scheme will look to support a wide range of R&D projects, including improving the efficiency of existing technologies, developing carbon capture technologies, investigating advanced gasification technologies, and researching economic and energy efficient alternative uses for CO2, such as industrial feedstock.

For details of this fund, click here.

The development of environmentally friendly buildings is to be accelerated following the announcement today of Technology Strategy Board investment in six innovative new research projects, worth £6 million.

The government-funded organisation that has been created to drive technological innovation in the UK will also soon open three more funding competitions to find new technologies that will cut the environmental impact of buildings, investing a further £24 million.

The Technology Strategy Board is investing £3 million to support the six projects and, taking into account contributions from the companies involved, the total value of the new research announced today will be over £6 million.

For details of this fund, click here.

There is an international race to develop biofuels which can match the performance and cost per mile of fossil fuels whilst being truly sustainable. Renewables East has received funding from the East of England Development Agency to set-up Biofuels East, a virtual Advanced Biofuels Hub to foster collaboration between academia and the industry.

If you are working on biofuels in academia or industry, or if your activities are impacted by developments in this field, join us at the Biofuels East Launch Event at Queens' College on 24th March. We will examine the performance and sustainability of biofuels, showcase the advanced technologies being developed in the East of England, and bring together a multi-disciplinary delegation to encourage collaborative projects.

To read the rest of the story and for more information on the launch event, click here.

Forum: 13/3/9, location in the Peterborough area, to be advised.

Please confirm your attendance to martin@specialistsupplies.co.uk by the 7/3/9 to make sure we have enough numbers so its worth your time to run the event.

Four firms from Peterborough were praised in the regional awards for resource efficiency held by Eastex materials exchange.

Eastex is a free scheme which helps organisations in the East of England limit what they send to landfill. Through the website http://www.eastex.org.uk/ users can list materials they would like to get rid of, whilst others list items they are looking for. The scheme is based on the idea that one businesses' waste is another's raw material.

The Eastex awards, which were held earlier in February, highlighted the achievements of organisations striving to reduce business waste sent to landfill. Winners were selected for their achievements in reducing their own waste, and helping other businesses reduce, reuse and recycle.

Compass Peterborough collects broken or unwanted electrical goods and furniture, refurbishes the items and sells them on for a fraction of the original price. The re-use charity received an award for their support of the local community in Peterborough through the reduced price goods scheme.

To read the rest of the story, click here.

Please register for free at www.envirocluster.net

If you work for an environmental company or organisation in the Greater Peterborough area (see map) then get involved with EnviroCluster and register with the site for free. This will give you access to the entire site where you can find information on business opportunities, business and social networking events, access to your own control panel where you can submit your own news and events to the site, registration for frequent EnviroCluster email bulletins, and a listing in the members directory. If your organisation is already in the directory, then sign-up to edit your listing. Please encourage all of your colleagues to register with EnviroCluster to make us an even stronger EGS community in Peterborough.

EnviroCluster seeks to support and develop Greater Peterborough's environmental goods and services sector by identifying and exploiting business opportunities and by encouraging start-ups. EnviroCluster also attracts inward investment through networking activities and demonstration projects. EnviroCluster is privately-funded and is led by UK CEED. The initiative is also helping Peterborough to become the UK's Environment Capital.