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Written Question
Institute of Commonwealth Studies: Closures
Monday 23rd November 2020

Asked by: Earl of Sandwich (Crossbench - Excepted Hereditary)

Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what action, if any, they (1) have taken, or (2) intend to take, in response to the School of Advanced Study’s proposal to close the Institute of Commonwealth Studies; and what assessment they have made of the importance of that institute to students from Commonwealth countries.

Answered by Lord Callanan - Shadow Minister (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)

Universities are independent, autonomous organisations and are therefore responsible for their decisions relating to research priorities and which activities to support. We would expect universities to regularly review and develop their strategic research priorities, and that this may result in some internal restructuring to better support these priorities.

Written Question
Ayrton Fund
Tuesday 7th January 2020

Asked by: Earl of Sandwich (Crossbench - Excepted Hereditary)

Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how many least developed countries are benefiting, or will benefit, from the Ayrton Fund, announced at the UN General Assembly in September; and what forms of climate change in those countries will be addressed.

Answered by Lord Duncan of Springbank

The Ayrton Fund is a commitment that the UK Government has made to spend £1bn on Official Development Assistance (ODA)-funded research, development and demonstration (RD&D) in clean energy technology and business models for developing countries over five years from April 2021. The commitment will address development challenges in low-carbon energy (supply), low-carbon societies (demand), and smart and flexible energy delivery and storage to meet a range of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), such as Goals 7 and 13. Tangible examples of areas that the Ayrton commitment will seek to impact include:

  • providing affordable access to electricity for some of the 1 billion people in ODA-eligible countries who are still off the grid, including through innovative solar technology for their homes
  • enhancing large-scale energy technology to replace polluting diesel generators and ensure clean energy can be stored and not lost
  • designing clean stoves like electric pressure cookers for some of the 2.7 billion people who still rely on firewood – with the smoke damaging their health as well as the environment
  • working with energy-intensive industries and governments to achieve industrial decarbonisation
  • supporting the development of technologies and business models for sustainable cooling – residential air conditioning alone is expected to raise global temperatures by 0.5°C in the years ahead
  • designing low-emission and electric vehicles to cut pollution and make transport systems cleaner and greener.

The Ayrton Fund will be delivered through a series of expanded and new programmes and platforms, which will be available to all ODA-eligible countries, depending on the specific programme. Since some of these programmes and platforms are still to be developed, and since many will use open competitions to allocate the support, it is not possible to state at this stage exactly how many least developed countries will benefit (although they will all be potentially eligible).