10 key lessons for industrial decarbonisation practice and policy
Why an interdisciplinary approach matters to reach net zero
Industrial decarbonisation stands as a formidable challenge of our era. It’s a key step towards reaching the UK’s net-zero emissions targets. Here we summarise ten learnings that could help guide the journey to decarbonisation.
Key takeaways
- Industry is a crucial but extremely challenging sector to decarbonise, essential to reaching net zero.
- Industrial decarbonisation in the UK is a call to reimagine industries, revitalise communities, and safeguard our planet.
- It is a transformative process requiring innovation, multidisciplinary collaboration, and a deep commitment to a sustainable future
Industrial decarbonisation: what we have learned
As industries seek to mitigate their carbon emissions and transition towards net-zero operations, there is a clear need for innovative solutions, interdisciplinary collaboration, and evidence-based strategies. What might that look like in practice? Massive technology up-scaling, accelerated investment, and substantial science-supported policy changes.
The Industrial Decarbonisation Research and Innovation Centre (IDRIC) – one of the Bennett Institute’s research partners – has integrated expertise and insights from various disciplines and sectors in real-world contexts to identify ten important lessons for industrial decarbonisation practice and policy.
- Expediting industrial decarbonisation requires the advancement of theoretical knowledge through concepts and frameworks. These enable the exchange of best practices across various industrial clusters.
- Industrial decarbonisation is a particularly spatial phenomenon in the UK across clusters, which makes it a place-based process.
- Net-zero industry has strong actor coalitions driving it, and broad support at multiple levels of the private sector and government.
- The UK is featuring or piloting numerous policy innovations or experiments where it acts as a global laboratory for policy innovation.
- Industrial decarbonisation has the potential to yield immense co-benefits beyond emissions reduction.
- Industrial decarbonisation involves a diversity of technical options, there is no one- size-fits-all solution.
- Skills, capabilities and workforce dimensions are critically important.
- Community perception of decarbonisation practices and engagement matter.
- Industrial decarbonisation brings into focus issues of equity, justice and just transitions.
- Net-zero implementation strategies needs strong leadership, policy certainty and robust governance to overcome barriers.
Multidisciplinary collaboration is essential
The critical point underscoring these ten lessons is the imperative of a multidisciplinary research and innovation portfolio to devise solutions for the transition of industries towards achieving net-zero emissions. This approach spans disciplines but also units of analysis and geographic scales of action.
The complexity of industrial decarbonisation demands an integrated approach that draws from diverse fields, including science, engineering, policy, and economics. Singular solutions, disciplinary boundaries or isolated efforts are rarely enough to address the multifaceted challenges industries face in reducing their emissions to zero by 2050.
Industrial decarbonisation offers significant co-benefits
The analysis of our research and innovation outputs reveals that industrial decarbonisation co-benefits resonate across local, national, and global dimensions. Beyond emissions reduction, these efforts would yield employment opportunities, community resilience, enhanced public health, improved trade competitiveness, innovation, and geopolitical gains. These co-benefits underscore the holistic nature of industrial decarbonisation’s impact, extending its reach far beyond carbon reduction goals.
Read the full findings
This article is a summary of IDRIC’s first Research Synthesis Report, Ten interdisciplinary lessons for industrial decarbonisation practice and policy, which was published in March 2024 and authored by:
Benjamin K. Sovacool, Abbas AbdulRafiu, Marc Hudson, Marcelle McManus, Anna Korre, Isobel Marr, Clare Howard, and Mercedes Maroto-Valer
It was later published as a peer-reviewed article:
Benjamin K. Sovacool, A AbdulRafiu, M Hudson, M McManus, A Korre, I Marr, C Howard, and M Maroto-Valer. “Beyond the factory: Ten interdisciplinary lessons for industrial decarbonisation practice and policy,” Energy Reports 11 (June, 2024), pp. 5935-5946.
Funding
This work was supported by the UKRI ISCF Industrial Challenge, through the UK Industrial Decarbonisation Research and Innovation Centre (IDRIC) award number: EP/V027050/1, under the Industrial Decarbonisation Challenge (IDC)
