Potential for Net-Zero Industry Is Emerging in United Kingdom

World-leading approach to industrial decarbonization advances policy and technology solutions

November 10, 2022—As carbon emissions from industry grow, now outpacing any other economic sector, fresh insights in the leading academic journal Science point to emerging industrial “clusters” in the United Kingdom (UK) for a policy, technology, and organizational roadmap to decarbonize. These net-zero UK megaprojects cluster different industrial operations together, enabling them to share their energy production, industrial manufacturing, distribution, and transportation.

Taking a close look at this cluster model, research analysis in “Industrial Clusters for Deep Decarbonization” finds promise for scaling decarbonization activities while keeping products affordable. The expert commentary is co-authored by Dr. Benjamin K. Sovacool, Boston University; Dr. Frank W. Geels, University of Manchester; and Dr. Marfuga Iskandarova, University of Sussex.

“The UK is a globally significant testbed for industrial decarbonization, ranging from its approach to clustering industrial processes to support deployment of new technologies such as carbon capture and low-carbon hydrogen to their political commitment to climate action,” said Benjamin Sovacool, Director, Boston University Institute for Global Sustainability and Professor, Earth & Environment.

The UK is at the forefront of industrial decarbonization, pushing the limits of notable Dutch, Danish, and Norwegian efforts with the goal of unveiling the world’s first low-carbon industrial clusters in the next five years—and attaining at least a 95% reduction in the UK’s emissions from industry by 2050. Propelling the megaprojects forward are the UK’s ambitious net-zero climate targets and supportive policymaking with more than £1 billion of government funding to develop low-carbon energy and infrastructure.

“Drawing on dozens of interviews, we conclude that increasing policy support and stakeholder engagement have generated confidence and strategic commitments in steel, chemical, and oil refining firms, leading to a willingness to invest billions of pounds in low-carbon technologies in the coming years,” said Frank Geels, Professor of System Innovation and Sustainability at the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research.

Where the UK has truly differentiated itself is in the scale and complexity of its megaprojects, allowing them to deploy multiple carbon-capture technologies at larger industrial operations representing far greater total emissions removed from the atmosphere. In their analysis of the UK’s net-zero cluster planning, assessing both progress and challenges, the authors evaluated six clusters currently responsible for more than 50% of the direct carbon emissions from industry. Their takeaways on the UK’s industrial decarbonization strategy reveal both important learnings for global action and the inherent challenges of rapid change.

• Collaboration between policymakers and industry expanded decarbonization planning, pushing it beyond efficiency to technology innovations: Policymakers quickly engaged industry stakeholders to develop a series of roadmaps, action plans, and strategies, leading to the UK’s industrial cluster approach with the potential for fuel switching and carbon capture and storage. This also resulted in better policymaking to accommodate considerable techno-economic differences across clustered industrial operations, along with several pending financial incentives to encourage further investment.
  
  
• Cluster-based partnerships have facilitated operational transitions: The capital and operational costs to transition from individual companies and projects to integrated clusters are steep, at upwards of tens of billions of pounds. Clustering provides economies of scale to transport and store carbon from multiple plants and use low-carbon energy sources. In the UK, significant government investment is the backbone of this transition.
  
  
• High technological novelty presents many obstacles, especially when scaled for wider systems: The UK has provided a template for accelerated megaproject development, but at the expense of a flexible environment for iterative learning-by-doing and technology transfer to subsequent projects, which can be difficult to balance with aggressive implementation targets.
  
  
• Public support for net-zero expenditures and policy is critical, with the skills development to match: UK officials have frequently engaged the communities neighboring the clusters, proactively working to increase knowledge about net-zero planning and opportunities while allaying concerns about locations of new infrastructure, national competitiveness, and offshoot environmental sustainability issues. Greater investment in training is necessary to quickly meet escalating need.

Although not all the UK’s industrial decarbonization strategy is readily duplicated elsewhere, and uncertainties still exist, the authors conclude that key aspects are transferable for urgent action: bipartisan support, consistent climate policy and net-zero targets, significant government investment, and reliance on ships and pipelines to distribute hydrogen and transport carbon for storage.

To read “Industrial Clusters for Deep Decarbonization” in Science, visit: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add0402

For related author research on net-zero energy transitions, visit:

Boston University Institute for Global Sustainability (bu.edu/igs)

Manchester Institute of Innovation Research, University of Manchester: (mioir.manchester.ac.uk)

Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex: (sussex.ac.uk/business-school/people-and-departments/spru)