Material demand reduction

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 made extremely efficiently. 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.

This project 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 how options for physical change interact with the preferences of corporate clients and individual purchasers; 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 triggers that would lead to significant change while supporting UK prosperity.

The investigators have already developed broad-ranging work aiming to justify and evaluate the technical opportunity for material demand reduction, in close collaboration with industry and government partners: the WellMet2050 project, funded as an EPSRC Leadership Fellowship, opened the door to recognising Material Efficiency as a strategy for saving energy and reducing emissions, and established several strategies for reducing total material demand. The book "Sustainable Materials: with both eyes open" arising form this project set out these strategies, and has been widely picked up: 20,000 individuals looked at the free online version of the book in its first year, and a second edition of the print version is being released in 2015. This new project aims to build on this foundation and work towards implementation of material demand reduction through a parallel programme of framing understanding and sector case-studies.

The proposal has around £5m of committed gearing, including cash commitments to support around 20 PhD students mainly to connect the work to the specific interests of consortium partners. About half of these students have now started, and their work is set into context within the work programme described in the proposal. The project is also strongly supported by several government departments and a wide network of other organisations whose interests overlap. Communication is a core part of the activity of the project, to ensure that on-going and completed work is shared as widely as possible, in the most useful form with all relevant stakeholders. Communication mechanisms include on-going development of an organic website, publication of well-designed prospectuses and reports, development of short films for specific users, speeches, seminars, an International Visiting Fellows programme, and two invite only two-day workshops.

The key mechanism for delivering impact from this project is through close engagement with all stakeholders involved in determining or benefitting from material use. In particular:

- Industry: as well as gaining greater clarity on opportunities for material demand reduction, the key opportunity for industrial partners created by this project is to seek new business opportunities related to adding more value with less material. This area has had little academic or commercial attention to date, but the WellMet2050 project has demonstrated that opportunities for new business models, new process development, new product designs, and new management of material systems can become attractive and provide profitable commercial openings. Our industrial partners have committed funding to support 20 project PhD students to deliver this impact in reality, ten of whom will have started by October 2015.

- The UK government: The government's sequence of Climate Budgets developed with the Committee on Climate Change has as yet taken no account of opportunities associated with material production and use, so the project offers some new policy options. This is of particular importance as recent policy has been unable to unpick the Gordion knot of industrial energy use: the most energy intensive industries should apparently make the most reductions in energy use, but precisely because they are energy intensive, they are also the most efficient, so further taxes or other charges on emissions or energy have little effect on their motivation. The project design includes mechanisms for regular exchange with six relevant departments in Whitehall, to raise awareness of opportunities for material saving, and to explore the policy options that might stimulate take-up.

- The Academic community: We will run two focused two-day meetings in the format of Royal Society Discussion Meetings to share our ideas with those of related academics and will also share our insights - and awareness of opportunities for extended research - through conferences, journal publication, keynote papers and a small number of high profile visiting fellows.

- Wider engagement: The project has a half-time communication officer, who through a variety of mechanisms, will ensure that project activities and outcomes are shared in suitably tailored formats with relevant stakeholder groups including NGOs such as WRAP, Industry networks such as CIRIA and BRE, the public through media releases and an organic website, or trade associations such as World Steel.

- Skills and training: The project will employ and nurture seven post-doctoral researchers, and around 20 project PhD students and will support masters and undergraduate project students, and contribute to executive education programmes in order to share well-founded insights into the use of energy and materials in UK industry and our opportunities to change demand.