Imperial researchers in world-leading partnership targeting industrial emissions

Researchers from Imperial College London will play a key role in accelerating industrial decarbonisation through a new partnership.

The Industrial Decarbonisation Research and Innovation Centre (IDRIC) has received £20m from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) as part of a £166m funding package aimed at accelerating the UK’s transition to a green economy. 

The Centre brings together academics from across the UK to conduct high-impact multidisciplinary research into industrial decarbonisation as part of a drive to create the world’s first net-zero emissions industrial cluster by 2040 and four low-carbon clusters by 2030.

Imperial College London will play an important role in the Centre’s work, leading a number of projects related to carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS), CO2 transport and storage networks, and the use of hydrogen. 

Professor Anna Korre, Co-Director of Energy Futures Lab and Professor of Environmental Engineering at the Department of Earth Science and Engineering, is one of IDRIC’s three Research Co-Directors and will lead the Centre’s pillar on Systems and Scale-up.

“We’re delighted to be working with colleagues and industrial partners across the UK to advance important research that will build the evidence needed to dramatically reduce the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions from industrial clusters,” said Professor Korre. 

“This work is critical to the UK’s success in meeting its 2050 Net Zero target and will help realise the Prime Minister’s ambition, set out in the Ten Point Plan last year, of creating thousands of new green jobs.”

Academics from Imperial’s Departments of Chemistry, Mechanical Engineering, Earth Science and Engineering, and Chemical Engineering will be involved in the Centre.

“At Imperial, we have a wealth of experience in conducting multidisciplinary research aimed at advancing solutions to major societal challenges, so it is wonderful to see so many of our academics engaged in this new centre,” said Professor Nigel Brandon, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering.

 “The technologies, processes, frameworks and policies they will develop will help grow our industrial sector and set the UK on the path towards a fully decarbonised future.” 

IDRIC, part of the Industrial Decarbonisation challenge, delivered through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF) by UKRI, will be based at Herriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and headed by Professor Mercedes Maroto-Valer, UKRI’s Industrial Decarbonisation Champion.

Dr Bryony Livesey, challenge director for the Industrial Decarbonisation challenge, said: “The introduction of the IDRIC concept shows the commitment to not only fund largescale decarbonisation efforts, but to make sure we continually learn from and adapt to their early results and challenges.”

“By enabling the Centre to build evidence on a range of areas from direct costs and emissions to skilled jobs and wider net zero policy, we believe we are creating a more adaptive and responsible path for the UK’s big industry to take to remain at the forefront of a global low-carbon future.”