Adopting the Committee on Climate Change's recommendation to net zero emissions by 2050 demonstrates a clear commitment to leadership in the face of climate emergency. If this is to be achieved, decarbonising the industrial sector represents a critical challenge. However, at present, decarbonisation solutions are not economically competitive. It is critical to the UK's international competitiveness that this is underpinned by implementation of world-leading innovation, and therefore, ensuring research and innovation communities work together for timely industrial implementation.

This project focuses on engaging academia, industry, policymakers and other stakeholders to develop an interdisciplinary consortium and subsequent proposal for the Industrial Decarbonisation Research and Innovation Centre (IDRIC). I will facilitate collaboration between researchers to foster co-creation of new interdisciplinary research and innovation programmes. The transformative innovation proposed here will be developed to address head on complex social and environmental challenges and contribute to low-cost transitions to new socio-technical systems.

The Centre's agenda will be shaped initially by consultations, as well as network analysis, mapping and market analysis. Collaborative events and virtual environments will develop the co-creation of the cross-cutting challenges. I will embed EDI principles in the design of the Centre's engagement strategy.

Potential Impact:
During the initial six months we will co-create the Centre's Impact and Communications Strategy with the following goals:
- Foster the development of the consortium which will constitute the core of the Centre and strengthen the partnership ethos;
- Assess the wider landscape, including emerging concerns and needs as well as new developing research areas to inform the Champion and the developing consortium; and
- Identify effective ways of engaging and generating societal impact and economic growth. These will lay the way for the Impact and Communications Strategy of the fully funded Centre (Stage 2).

Beneficiaries include research experts in decarbonisation across disciplines; relevant UKRI hubs/Supergens/centres; the 6 identified industrial clusters, relevant Catapults and Innovation Centres, relevant industries and associations, and investors; policymakers and regulators to ensure the Centre's research has an impact on public policy; and general public and local communities.

IDRIC will create the best possible environment by bringing together transformative innovation and networks capable of supporting world-leading expertise and scaling up of technologies required for industrial decarbonisation. As a result, the UK will become global leader in Clean Growth and UK clusters will be top areas for global inward investment, securing 1.5 million jobs and exporting goods and services worth ~ £320 billion, and potential growth of UK's clean economy between £60-170 billion by 2030. There are wider benefits to our society, the co-benefit of cutting CO2 emissions is cleaner air with effects on public health, the economy, and the environment.

The proposed plans will maximise the impact of the Centre as well as the programme as a whole. A key function of IDRIC's core team is to deliver co-created knowledge exchange activities with national and international outreach to facilitate the adoption of technologies and practices across the Industrial Decarbonisation ISCF challenge.
The Centre will use complementary routes to impact through policy engagement, including the Impact Forum, policy briefings, workshop for policy-makers and will publish a position paper 'Research agenda for the decarbonisation of UK industry' based on the submitted proposal and activities from Stage 1.

Engaging non-expert publics and communities will be supported by the HWU Engage team and the Centre will explore how decarbonisation can be integrated into mainstream media as well as pilot the IDRIC's STEM Hub to shape future initiatives in schools across the UK as part of the Stage 2 proposal.

A dedicated website, digital tools and social media will be established and utilised to promote understanding and disseminate information to academic and non-academic audiences. The Centre will use cutting edge technology to create rich immersive experiences to disseminate and communicate.