News
Connecting Energy & Education for 25 Years!
On Thursday 5th December we held our Energy & Education Connected Conference at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. The event, our first annual conference since 2015, marked our 25th anniversary in the sector, and proved to be a great success, highlighting the exciting and successful journey that TEC has made during that time.
We welcomed University professionals which included Members and non-Members over four disciplines; procurement, estates, environment and finance, giving them a unique opportunity to network with colleagues from other institutions and disciplines.
Our Strategic Partners and Framework Suppliers; AUDE, EAUC, Mitie Energy, EDF Energy and Corona Energy exhibited during the refreshment breaks and were on hand to answer any queries and give an update on how they have been of benefit to our membership and the sector.
We were very lucky to have a special guest Pepper the robot, kindly organised by EDF Energy, who introduced the event. Pepper is the world’s first social humanoid robot able to recognise faces and basic human reactions. Pepper has been making her way round the Education Sector helping with research projects within Universities so it seemed very fitting to have her as our VIP guest.
The morning session sought to reflect on the past 25 years, appreciate the challenges we face now and prepare for the future energy and carbon landscape. Speakers included Tom Palmer (from Cornwall Insight) who summarised regulation, policy and supply markets, and Georg Mueller (from Reuters Refinitiv) who presented on the predictability of hot and cold snaps and the impact of climate change. The morning sessions also included updates on how TEC started and evolved, presented by our MD Richard Murphy. In addition, Jo Butlin, TEC’s non-executive chair, discussed 25 years of distribution in the Energy Sector and Sarah Buchan, Head of Communications and Marketing, talked us through how to communicate with Generation Z, coming to an educational establishment near you. Stephen Creighton, Head of Member Services, closed the morning sessions by recapping on the fantastic year TEC has just had.
The afternoon sessions offered a choice of workshops presented by JRP Solutions, Ongen, Schneider, Ramboll and kWIQly. The topics included behavioural change, implementing renewable technology, BMS optimisation, district heat networks and gas and electricity analytics.
We would like to thank all guest speakers. All topics were very well received and the full PowerPoint presentation can be found here.
During the event we were raising money for our chosen charity, Student Minds, who are the UK’s student mental health charity. We are delighted to announce we raised £245 for the charity. Many thanks to our framework suppliers and strategic partners for donating prizes.
Kate Miller from Student Minds said; “We are incredibly grateful that The Energy Consortium chose to support Student Minds at their annual conference. The brilliant total of £245 raised will enable us to empower more students and members of the university community to look after their own mental health, support those around them and create change. On behalf of the whole Student Minds team, thank you!”
We want to thank everyone who attended the event and we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. We have included a link to photos of the event here, use the password energy to view. We will also be sharing a short video of the conference, available via our new web site early next week. We look forward to seeing you at our workshops next May, the dates to be confirmed early next year.
