Next Steps for Decarbonising UK Industry

The HICP team highly recommends this recent IDRIC report that clearly outlines the role of collaboration and dialogue in policy development.  The UK Government holds key levers for helping to overcome the technical, financial, and commercial barriers for the adoption of new technologies and practices. Government can provide a clear sense of direction, incentivise and de-risk investment in decarbonisation, and help to create markets for emerging low-carbon technologies and services. They play a key role in ensuring costs and benefits of the transition are distributed equitably across society.

However, despite ambitious targets and the development of sector strategies, the Climate Change Committee recently warned that planned policy across the UK is at risk of not delivering sufficient emissions reductions, with urgent policy action still needed to deliver key areas of policy such as hydrogen and CCS, and major policy gaps identified regarding electrification and energy and resource efficiency.

Collaboration and dialogue across stakeholders is crucial to supporting the development of effective policy action. Over the past few years, increased collaboration between industrial clusters and academia has created a strong shared ambition for reaching net zero. The drive to decarbonise industrial clusters has therefore opened an opportunity not only to spearhead the deployment of low carbon technology and shared infrastructure, but also to develop knowledge networks for the communication of best practice and shared learning between clusters and beyond.

HICP continue to support IDRIC as they foster dialogue and collaboration between government, industry, academia and other stakeholders to create a shared understanding around opportunities and potential trade-offs, finding practical solutions and thereby supporting the development of joint-up approaches across policy areas and organisations.

The report outlines 7 priority areas for industrial decarbonisation policy and can be read here