UK Indemand: a National Research Centre for reducing Industrial Energy and Material use in supplying UK needs

世界上三分之一的能源用于制造产品--维持我们生活方式的建筑、基础设施、车辆、资本设备和家居用品。其中大部分能源是在生产的早期阶段需要的，以便将铁矿石或树木等原材料转化为钢板或纸卷等原材料。由于这些材料售价低廉，但消耗了大量能源，它们已经非常节能。因此，我们创造现代生活方式的关键材料--特别是钢、水泥、塑料、纸和铝--是工业能源的主要“载体”，如果我们想要大幅减少工业能源的消耗，我们需要减少对这些材料的需求。在英国，我们最近的历史导致了我们制造这些材料的大部分产能的关闭，尽管这导致了英国领土上的排放减少，但实际上我们的材料消耗已经增长，随着我们的需求通过进口来满足，世界的能源使用量和温室气体排放量都有所上升。因此，拟议的英国需求中心旨在大幅减少满足英国物理需求的行业中能源和能源密集型材料的使用。为了实现这一点，我们需要了解英国工业整个材料和能源系统的运行和表现；我们需要更好地了解我们在家庭、政府和行业采购中的消费模式，特别是与替代决策相关的模式；我们需要寻找机会，在满足同样需求的同时，创新产品、流程和商业模式，以减少材料使用量；我们需要确定在支持英国繁荣的同时将导致重大变化的政策、商业和消费者触发因素。提议团队已经与行业和政府合作伙伴密切合作，开发了旨在满足这一需求的广泛工作：在剑桥，WellMet2050项目打开了承认材料效率是节约能源和减少排放的战略的大门，并为减少总材料需求的商业增长确立了明确的轨迹；在巴斯，关于具体能源和排放的工作创建了一个被广泛采用的材料数据库，过渡和路径项目已经为低碳技术建立了一套明确的政策机会，我们现在可以应用于减少需求；利兹大学在能源和排放方面的研究表明，英国的排放量和工业中的能源需求在很大程度上是由于其他地区的生产转移而下降的，而我们消费的真正能源需求却在增长；诺丁汉特伦特大学在可持续消费方面的研究表明，我们购买的材料中有多少在降解之前就被丢弃了，研究了个人如何通过消费来定义自己的身份，并开始梳理出可能的干预措施来影响这些浪费的消费模式。该提案附带了超过500万GB的承诺，包括现金支持至少30名博士生与该中心合作，并将其工作与财团合作伙伴的具体利益联系起来。该建议还得到了四个主要政府部门--气候变化委员会以及与拟建中心利益相重叠的较小组织的广泛网络的大力支持，这些组织希望进行合作，以确保广泛参与政策和执行进程。机制，包括英国工作人员交流方案和全球学术领袖国际访问研究员方案，旨在确保中心的活动与英国和国际上尽可能广泛的活动高度关联，这些活动都有减少工业最终使用能源需求的动机。

One third of the world's energy is used in industry to make products - the buildings, infrastructure, vehicles, capital equipment and household goods that sustain our lifestyles. Most of this energy is needed in the early stages of production to convert raw materials, such as iron ore or trees, into stock materials like steel plates or reels of paper and because these materials are sold cheaply, but use a lot of energy, they are already extremely energy efficient. Therefore, the key materials with which we create modern lifestyles - steel, cement, plastic, paper and aluminium in particular - are the main 'carriers' of industrial energy, and if we want to make a big reduction in industrial energy use, we need to reduce our demand for these materials. In the UK, our recent history has led to closure of much of our capacity to make these materials, and although this has led to reductions in emissions occurring on UK territory, in reality our consumption of materials has grown, and the world's use of energy and emission of greenhouse gases has risen as our needs are met through imports.The proposed UK INDEMAND Centre therefore aims to enable delivery of significant reductions in the use of both energy and energy-intensive materials in the Industries that supply the UK's physical needs. To achieve this, we need to understand the operation and performance of the whole material and energy system of UK industry; we need to understand better our patterns of consumption both in households, and in government and industry purchasing, particularly related to replacement decisions; we need to look for opportunities to innovate in products, processes and business models to use less material while serving the same need; and we need to identify the policy, business and consumer triggers that would lead to significant change while supporting UK prosperity.The proposer team have already developed broad-ranging work aiming to address this need, in close collaboration with industry and government partners: at Cambridge, the WellMet2050 project has opened the door to recognising Material Efficiency as a strategy for saving energy and reducing emissions, and established a clear trajectory for business growth with reduced total material demand; in Bath, work on embodied energy and emissions has created a widely adopted database of materials, and the Transitions and Pathways project has established a clear set of policy opportunities for low carbon technologies that we can now apply to demand reduction; work on energy and emissions embodied in trade at Leeds has shown how UK emissions and energy demand in industry have declined largely due to a shift of production elsewhere, while the true energy requirements of our consumption have grown; work on sustainable consumption at Nottingham Trent has shown how much of our purchased material is discarded long before it is degraded, looked at how individuals define their identity through consumption, and begun to tease out possible interventions to influence these wasteful patterns of consumption.The proposal comes with over £5m of committed gearing, including cash support for at least 30 PhD students to work with the Centre and connect its work to the specific interests of consortium partners. The proposal is also strongly supported by four key government departments, the Committee on Climate Change, and a wide network of smaller organisations whose interests overlap with the proposed Centre, and who wish to collaborate to ensure rich engagement in policy and delivery processes. Mechanisms, including a Fellows programme for staff exchange in the UK and an International Visiting Fellows programme for global academic leaders, have been designed to ensure that the activities of the Centre are highly connected to the widest possible range of activities in the UK and internationally which share the motivation to deliver reductions in end-use energy demand in Industry.