NERI is now a Trust
We are pleased to announce that NERI is now a Trust and Gerry Carrington and Janet Stephenson have been appointed as the first trustees.
Formally, the Trust’s purpose is to “enhance New Zealand’s sustainability and to benefit the New Zealand community by stimulating, promoting, co-ordinating and supporting high-quality energy research and education within New Zealand, and to carry out any other purpose or object which relates to energy research and education within New Zealand and is charitable in accordance with the laws of New Zealand.”
In practice, this means the NERI Trust will aim to provide support for the energy research community in New Zealand, by acting collectively in ways that individual member organisations cannot. Steve Batstone, Joe Gamman and Pip Lynch have shown how this can be done and set demanding standards. As a start we will be completing some of the projects started by Steve, Joe and Pip. These include:
1) A Research Capability Map, to provide information about New Zealand’s energy research capability – energy researchers, their publications, and funded research projects. This tool will be available from our website in the near future.
2) A Demand-side Research Strategy to articulate a high-level draft strategy for investment in Demand-side Research.
3) A wiki site for energy information specific to New Zealand.
We are also considering how NERI can support a new Director and will be applying for charitable status. Between 3 and 5 new trustees are to be appointed and many other matters are to be decided. It has been proposed that the inaugural meeting of the NERI members will be in Dunedin on Tuesday 3 November where details of these plans will be discussed. The following day (4 November) is the annual Otago Energy Research Centre’s Research Symposium.
At present, Jonathon Clearwater is the part-time administrator for NERI, so please contact him at admin@neri.org.nz if you have any questions or comments.
