Aim
Major progress is still required to make sufficient advances in industrial emissions in the UK as identified by the Climate Change Committee (CCC). Through this funding opportunity, we aim to drive a sustainable industrial future, shifting the UK away from environmentally detrimental industries and processes to more sustainable and circular alternatives.
This funding opportunity will focus on an existing critical mass of research to deliver a cross-sectoral systems approach, working closely with industry and policy-makers to scale up, drive impact and translation and ensure the entire system delivers.
The objectives of this funding opportunity are to:
- support one virtual centre of excellence that enables high-greenhouse gas (GHG) emitting UK incumbent industries to shift towards sustainable operations with net zero/negative GHG emissions, enabling thriving biodiversity, economic and societal resilience, employment growth and resource & energy security
- advance the UK’s transition to net zero by building on previous UKRI investments (such as the Industrial Decarbonisation Challenge and Transforming Foundation Industries Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund programmes, as well as programmes such as National Interdisciplinary Circular Economy Research (NICER) Programme)
- deliver excellent, leading-edge engineering and physical sciences and transdisciplinary research
Scope
This funding opportunity will focus on delivering directly against the Sixth Carbon Budget by 2030 and will grow the UK research capability in how to:
- scale up sustainability solutions and technologies and ‘learn by doing’ through partnering with active demonstration and deployment programmes across the UK; and
- do this with a true ‘systems approach’, where the interdependencies between decarbonisation, circular economy and resource & energy efficiency are truly understood and optimised for the most sustainable and inclusive outcome possible.
The outcomes of this investment will enable:
- industry to shift their products, systems and services to clean alternatives, which in turn will lead to sustainable skills, jobs and wealth creation in the industrial heartlands of our nations and regions
- security of UK supply of feedstocks, materials, fuels, and the creation of value from waste through greater circularity of resource streams in the UK (approaches for which could include industrial symbiosis)
- creation of new jobs, businesses, supply chains and industries that exploit (or leverage and build upon) UK research strengths
- influence on emission reductions
- ability to supply both UK needs and export sustainable solutions and products to the rest of the world.
The virtual centre of excellence will:
- build a transdisciplinary, inclusive team covering the essential engineering, physical sciences and other requisite areas, focused on a clear strategic vision
- create a critical mass centre to act as a focal point for industry to share common challenges
- explore the associated engineering & physical sciences and other interdisciplinary research questions
- deliver a stakeholder, specifically industry, co-created programme of research that directly advances the UK’s net zero transition
- look at all aspects of sustainability rather than individual challenges such as decarbonisation and circularity in isolation.
- deliver outputs such as:
- technologies, products, and processes to reduce our demand on fossil fuels, including resource & energy efficiency improvements, diversification and security of energy supply and defossilisation of feedstocks
- new, scalable, and commercially viable low and zero emission alternative technologies and (where appropriate) processes
- solutions for the breadth of our energy intensive industries which are cross-industry with cross-sector impact
- synthesis and consolidation of current research to inform industry and policy in near term
- facilitation of ‘learning by doing’ with industry demonstrators, deployments and lessons learned cycles
Sectors
For the purposes of this funding opportunity, ‘Industry’ refers to those UK incumbent energy-intensive industries ,as defined by the UK Industrial Decarbonisation Strategy, which are:
- metals and minerals
- chemicals
- food and drink
- paper and pulp
- ceramics
- glass
- oil refineries
- less energy-intensive manufacturing, including the manufacturing of vehicles, wood products, pharmaceuticals and electronics, among other such industries.
Any research area or technology is in scope as long as it can be justified in how it will facilitate the outcomes articulated in this funding opportunity.
This investment should not solely focus on the discovery and development of individual technologies but on the integration and application of these technologies as a system to support the transition to more sustainable industrial processes and operations. It is expected that this investment should collaborate with other major programmes that are focused on technology discovery and development where appropriate (for example, hydrogen, nuclear fission, advanced manufacturing)
Industry engagement and co-creation
A key aspect required of the Centre is true co-creation with industry from the outset, where stakeholders collaborate around emerging opportunities and quick wins in order to meet the needs of industry now as well as in the future. To ensure that research outcomes can be exploited by industry, we are looking for clear evidence of genuine, substantive partnerships, with co-creation and co-delivery of projects and activities. As well as this expectation for co-creation from the outset, the Centre should welcome new and additional industry engagement at any time throughout the lifetime of the investment and have a clear strategy and framework to support this.
The investment should explore ‘learning by doing’ as far as possible by collaborating with industry to see what works and partnering with demonstration and deployment programmes as far as possible.
Specific funding opportunity information
There will be £21 million available, with £18m over seven years for ‘core’ funding, and £3 million for years one to three for the first wave. These are the EPSRC contributions which are funded at 80% FEC over seven years.
There will be £18 million core level of funding provided by us, for example to cover:
- salaries of core team including thought leadership team, postdoctoral research assistants, management team
- resources for integrating lessons learned and horizon scanning (workshops etc.)
- a flexible fund to support secondments or agile research on emerging topics and to support the involvement of discrete parts of the community, outside of the centre, that would bring significant benefit to the programme but have not otherwise been engaged
- governance, monitoring and evaluation activities
- impact activities (including stakeholder and user engagement, policy engagement and public engagement)
- networking and community building activities, to enable engagement and collaboration across key disciplines, sectors and investments, and with policy officials
- travel and subsistence.
Additionally, there will be three waves of funding available to be used for specific research activities.
These waves of funding could, for example, be used to bring in new partners or to respond to specific emerging research needs. Funding for wave one (£3 million in years one to three provided by us) will be included for the successful application and should therefore be accounted for and justified in the full proposal.
Funding for wave two (£2 million in years four to five) and wave three (£2 million in years six to seven) should be conceived based on findings from the Centre’s initial work and will become available in future years following assessment and approval.
Funding will be released for subsequent waves through an assessment process, this will be defined by us and we will retain responsibility for funding decisions throughout. These waves provide a further opportunity to, for example, bring on new partners and funders and respond to new and emerging opportunities.
