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工业生产产品——建筑、基础设施、车辆、资本设备和维持我们生活方式的家庭用品。这些能源大部分是在生产的早期阶段，用于将铁矿石或树木等原材料转化为钢板或卷筒纸等库存材料。由于这些材料价格便宜，但消耗大量能源，因此它们已经非常节能。因此，我们创造现代生活方式的关键材料——尤其是钢铁、水泥、塑料、纸张和铝——是工业能源的主要“载体”，如果我们想大幅减少工业能源的使用，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我们关闭了大部分生产这些材料的能力，尽管这导致了英国领土上的排放减少，但实际上我们对材料的消费在增长，世界对能源的使用和温室气体的排放也在增加，因为我们的需求是通过进口来满足的。因此，拟议中的英国需求中心的目标是能够在供应英国物理需求的工业中显著减少能源和能源密集型材料的使用。要做到这一点，我们需要了解英国工业的整个材料和能源系统的运作和性能；我们需要更好地了解我们的家庭消费模式，以及政府和行业的购买模式，特别是与更新决策有关的消费模式；我们需要寻找机会在产品、流程和商业模式上进行创新，在满足相同需求的同时减少材料的使用；我们需要确定政策、商业和消费者的触发因素，在支持英国繁荣的同时带来重大变化。提案团队已经开展了广泛的工作，旨在与行业和政府合作伙伴密切合作，以满足这一需求：在剑桥，WellMet2050项目打开了将材料效率视为节能减排战略的大门，并为减少总材料需求的业务增长建立了清晰的轨迹；在巴斯，关于实体能源和排放的工作已经建立了一个广泛采用的材料数据库，过渡和途径项目已经为低碳技术建立了一套明确的政策机会，我们现在可以将其应用于减少需求；在利兹的贸易中体现的能源和排放方面的工作表明，英国工业排放和能源需求的下降主要是由于生产转移到其他地方，而我们消费的真正能源需求却在增长；诺丁汉特伦特大学的可持续消费研究表明，我们购买的材料中有多少在被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。该提案包括超过500万英镑的承诺负债，包括为至少30名博士生提供现金支持，以与该中心合作，并将其工作与财团合作伙伴的具体利益联系起来。该提案还得到了四个主要政府部门、气候变化委员会和一个广泛的小型组织网络的大力支持，这些组织的利益与拟议的中心重叠，并希望合作以确保在政策和交付过程中充分参与。各种机制，包括在英国的工作人员交流研究员计划和全球学术领袖的国际访问研究员计划，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联系，这些活动共享减少工业最终使用能源需求的动力。

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.