The University of Bath is to play a key role in a state-of-the-art research and innovation centre at the forefront of the UK’s ambitions to cut industrial greenhouse gas emissions.
The Industrial Decarbonisation Research and Innovation Centre (IDRIC) will act as the national focal point and international gateway for UK industrial decarbonisation.
Virtually based at Heriot-Watt University’s Edinburgh campus, IDRIC will work closely with the UK’s major industrial clusters to address the challenges of industrial decarbonisation alongside more than 140 partners as part of a drive to create the world’s first net-zero emissions industrial cluster by 2040 and four low-carbon clusters by 2030.
The University of Bath’s Centre for Sustainable and Circular Technologies (CSCT) will be involved in research projects to address decarbonisation through balancing carbon emissions within local clusters, decarbonising through reviewing land use, and producing high-value chemicals at IDRIC, which recently received £20m from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).
IDRIC will accelerate the transformation of industrial clusters into world leading low-carbon manufacturing hubs which will attract major inward investment, support job creation and underpin the UK’s decarbonisation ambitions.
This challenge aims to accelerate the cost-effective decarbonisation of industry by developing and deploying low-carbon technologies.
It also aims to enable the deployment of infrastructure at scale by the mid-2020s and to boost industry sector jobs, reduce carbon emissions and contribute significantly to the government’s carbon target to reach net zero by 2050.
Since it was set up in 2008, CSCT has received more than £40m and has graduated more than 75 PhD students. It involves more than 75 academic staff and interacts with 40-plus external partners.
CSCT co-director Prof Marcelle McManus, pictured, is Bath’s IDRIC lead and will be the research director of the new centre.
She said: “IDRIC is such a wonderful project and we are delighted that CSCT will be able to contribute its expertise.
“Decarbonisation is a crucial issue and £20m is a sizeable investment from the government. There’s significant buy-in from across industry and all of the industrial clusters – either in terms of time, money, people or all three. The potential impacts from IDRIC are huge as the UK works towards its 2050 net zero target.”
CSCTs role in IDRIC comes hot on the heels of its involvement in the £17m Innovation Centre for Applied Sustainable Technologies (iCAST) – a major collaboration between academia and industry which will put the University of Bath on the map as a centre of expertise for the sustainable use of plastics and chemicals.
The centre will lead research into sustainable chemical technologies, accelerating the UK’s transition to net zero carbon emissions.
will also help tackle the global challenges of the climate emergency, sustainable development and plastics pollution.
IDRIC will be headed by UKRI’s industrial decarbonisation champion Prof Mercedes Maroto-Valer, who will drive industrial decarbonisation as part of the UK’s journey to net-zero.
She said: “The 2020s will be key for the UK to set the pathway to meet its carbon targets and IDRIC will play a key role to accelerate the decarbonisation of industrial clusters.
“Working with the research and innovation community, we will demonstrate our international competitiveness to realise the opportunities offered by economies of scale in decarbonising industrial clusters and driving new business models.”
