Research Moving Ahead in the UK

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), a British government funding agency, has released initial funding for two geoengineering research projects. The first is a stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) project known as SPICE, or Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering. EPSRC has provided £1.6m to support particle research, construction of a 1 km pipe-balloon testbed delivery system, climate intervention computer modeling, and design of a deployable 20-25 km pipe-balloon system. SPICE is managed jointly by scientists at Bristol, Cambridge, and Reading Universities. The second project is the Integrated Assessment of Geoengineering Proposals (IAGP), a public education and outreach effort overseen by researchers from Leeds University. EPSRC has provided £1.7m to the IAGP project, results of which will inform the testbed component of SPICE. Once again, the British government is leading the way in public funding of geoengineering research.