Researchers at the University of Bath have been awarded a share of £10 million to look into new approaches to reach net zero carbon emissions across the UK.
The university’s Centre for People-Led Digitalisation (P-LD), which works to help industries realise the potential of putting people at the heart of making changes, will work with organisations including Bath & North East Somerset Council to investigate how important carbon-saving changes can be made.
The funding from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) will see Bath researchers working with partners from the Universities of Sheffield, Strathclyde and Loughborough.
The P-LD team will take a people-led, practical, systems-based approach which will enable businesses, industries and local authorities to decarbonise quickly, efficiently, and productively, in a fair and just manner.
A systems approach means looking at a problem or situation as a whole, rather than just focusing on individual parts.
Faced with the much more complex challenge of net zero, these transdisciplinary programmes will involve researchers from areas such as energy, environment, engineering, economics, law and policy, and social sciences, working with key non-academic stakeholders.
Together they will explore the complexity of the interactions between different elements, actors and drivers at different scales from a business to a sector, a region or a country.
Professor Linda Newnes, who leads the Centre for People-Led Digitalisation, said: “We are eager to begin this project and set to work alongside some great partner organisations, as test cases to explore how they can unlock the benefits of putting people at the heart of decisions being taken in the road toward net zero.
“Once the test cases are complete, we will share our learnings to help businesses, industries and organisations across the UK and beyond enact positive change.”
Within each of their test cases, the People-Led Net Zero team will seek to create useable models, which people embrace and want to adopt.
This will enable decision makers within charities, business or councils, to be aware of the potential impacts of a transition to a net zero approach, making effective and fair outcomes possible.
Announcing the new investments, Professor Louise Heathwaite, Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Executive Chair and UKRI Executive Champion for Building a green future, said: “The journey towards net zero carbon emissions is one of our most urgent and complex national challenges, so it’s important to understand the effects at a systems level of the many different component parts working together, for example, avoiding planting trees where the carbon store in the soil at depth is already stable.
“Through these projects UKRI aims to drive outputs that support a just, prosperous, sustainable and resilient net zero transition, removing barriers to interventions whilst at the same time avoiding unintended consequences.”
It is UKRI’s latest investment through its ‘Building a Green Future’ strategic theme, aiming to accelerate the green economy by supporting research and innovation that delivers on national priorities and unlocks solutions essential to achieving net zero in the UK by 2050.
Objectives driving the research include being able to select future-state scenarios for an accelerated transition to net zero and identifying rules and create minimal viable system model for a rapid and just transition.
