£250m of funding has been awarded to UK universities to set up PhD-level doctoral training centres for research into climate change, low carbon technology and energy efficiency.

One of the universities to bag a chunk of the pot is the University of Leeds, which has won a £6.5m grant to fund 50 science and engineering PhD students who will research carbon capture, sequestration, energy efficiency and the use of waste materials for power.

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council grant will fund a new doctoral training centre at the university focusing on technology for a low carbon future.

Professor Paul Williams, head of the Energy and Resources Research Institute at the University of Leeds, said:

“The centre will focus on the development of technologies for a low carbon future, providing a challenging, exciting and inspiring world class research environment for the development of tomorrow’s industry and research leaders. Our vision is to create young engineers and scientists who can participate in research through the design and appraisal of sustainable energy systems by the integration of science, engineering and wider socio-economic concepts.”

A number of other universities around the UK have also been awarded a share of the EPSRC £250m funding pot for clean tech and low carbon research (the EPSRC funding isnt’ exclusively for cleantech research and will also go to several projects focusing on the problems of the UK’s ageing population and high-tech crime).

The other cleantech projects include the University of Birmingham (hydrogen, fuel cells and their application), the University of Nottingham (efficient power from fossil energies and carbon capture technologies), University of Reading (technologies for sustainable built environments) and the University of Strathclyde (wind energy systems).

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