| EPSRC Reference: |
EP/S032061/1 |
| Title: |
Decarbonising the UK's Freight Transport |
| Principal Investigator: |
Smith, Dr T |
| Other Investigators: |
| Mander, Dr SL |
David, Professor B |
Brett, Professor D |
| Pawling, Dr RJ |
Karamperidis, Dr S |
Rehmatulla, Dr N |
| Piecyk, Professor MI |
Viola, Professor I |
Mangan, Professor DJ |
| Cebon, Professor D |
Turan, Professor O |
Hudson, Professor D |
| Murphy, Professor AJ |
Greening, Professor PK |
Shearing, Professor P |
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| Researcher Co-Investigators: |
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| Project Partners: |
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| Department: |
Bartlett Sch of Env, Energy & Resources |
| Organisation: |
UCL |
| Scheme: |
Standard Research |
| Starts: |
01 July 2019 |
Ends: |
01 March 2023 |
Value (£): |
865,735
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| EPSRC Research Topic Classifications: |
| Energy Efficiency |
Sustainable Energy Vectors |
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| EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications: |
| Energy |
Transport Systems and Vehicles |
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| Related Grants: |
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| Panel History: |
| Panel Date | Panel Name | Outcome |
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02 Apr 2019
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Decarb Transport Full Prioritisation
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Announced
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Summary on Grant Application Form |
Like energy and automotive before it, UK freight transport is now on the cusp of a socio-technical transition away from fossil fuel dependency. This transition will require major investment to fleet and infrastructure, cause disruption to assets and business models, and will trigger significant reconfiguration. Whilst the scaling up of fossil phase-out is most likely to occur from the 2030s onwards, the next 10 years of investments are critical to enabling the transition, and to mitigating transition risks to the "hard to abate" freight sectors, and by association UK trade.
Our concept to address this challenge is for a Network of broad but interconnected academic excellence integrated with key and leading stakeholders in freight decarbonisation, that collaboratively develops and applies knowledge and understanding of rapid freight decarbonisation. We will use this Network to collect and distil current knowledge, as well as to identify and de-risk the key remaining research challenges that can unleash significant freight-decarbonisation targeted investment and guide enabling policy.
This Network connects five freight transport investments made by the EPSRC with a track record of a whole systems approach to decarbonisation of UK freight flows (international and national), and of closely integrating and embedding research with industry and policy makers alike.
The Network's efforts will be guided by a number of features of UK freight transport including: (i) significant fixed infrastructure with long timescales for investment (ii) lack of consensus on the specific technological solutions for each mode (iii) a complex combination of national and international transport systems (iv) besides the road and rail network, a limited scope for public sector investment (v) Complex governance involving a mix of UK, EU and international (UN) regulation.
The Network will align and integrate directly with UK government and existing initiatives including (i) Industrial strategy (ii) Clean Growth Strategy (iii) Road to zero (iv) Clean Maritime Council (v) UN agency fora (vi) World Bank's Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition (vii) ongoing work on aligning investment to decarbonisation with: European Investment Bank, UK private sector institutions, IFC and IMF, and leading investment NGOs: 2 degrees investing, World Economic Forum, Global Maritime Forum, Global Shippers Forum, UK FTA.
To achieve this Network's objective of unleashing significant investment for freight decarbonisation, it is organised into five multi-modal and cross-cutting thematic areas and executed through a three-step approach:
Theme 1: Role of data and models for unlocking implementation decision making
Theme 2: Managing macroeconomic, policy and technology uncertainty, whilst mitigating climate risk in investment decisions
Theme 3: Fuel and propulsion technology pathways
Theme 4: Aligning drivers for decarbonisation investment/policy with local (inc. air pollution), UK, EU and Global climate policy and integrating into private sector decision making
Theme 5. Coupling the evolution of logistics with decarbonizing freight
Step 1: Refinement of current knowledge and perspectives into a focused set of research questions covering each of the five themes
Step 2: Commissioning of a series (~13) small projects which can develop further understanding of these questions and the methods suitable for addressing them
Step 3: Distillation of the Network's knowledge, in combination with the outputs of the small projects, to produce a strategy to drive freight decarbonisation investment, and an agenda and plan describing a series of further collaboration and funding activity that can sustain the Network
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Key Findings |
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This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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Potential use in non-academic contexts |
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This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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Impacts |
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| Description |
This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk |
| Summary |
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| Date Materialised |
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Sectors submitted by the Researcher |
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This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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| Project URL: |
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| Further Information: |
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