Global Centers Track 1: CLEETS - CLean Energy and Equitable Transportation Solutions

Transport energy demand accounts for 24% of greenhouse gas emissions in the UK, the single largest sector, more than energy supply, business or residential. 90% of these transport emissions are from road transport: 52% from cars, 16% from vans, and 19% from HGVs. Clean energy solutions are becoming available, in particular through battery electric vehicles and the use of hydrogen. They will have a wide societal impact, bringing benefits through reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and on local air quality to improve health outcomes.

However, there are multiple barriers to deployment of these technologies, including how such a system transformation that relies on expensive and extensive infrastructure change can be implemented, and there are risks that uptake of the solutions will have unequal benefits for different communities.

The Global Center on CLean Energy and Equitable Transportation Solutions (CLEETS) will provide the evidence base for decision making for transport decarbonization, from rigorous interdisciplinary research on, and robust analysis of, the potential clean energy solutions, their impacts across society, and how to overcome the challenges of implementation.

The West Midlands and South Wales regions of the UK, and the Great Lakes Megaregion, are road transport hubs, with significant manufacturing industries including in the automotive sector. Patterns of transport demand, and political
structures are different, but the ambitions to decarbonize are shared. The regions will be case study areas that allow us to test methodologies and develop system solutions that can be applied globally.

Research is needed to improve our understanding of how we can decarbonize transport equitably, and what impacts that will have. Our research will be delivered through 'Thrusts' in:
- Clean and equitable transportation: studying the interventions required to deploy clean energy transportation technologies, and modelling emissions at a local scale.
- Transport energy infrastructure: assessing how to achieve net-zero infrastructure resilience in transportation and energy systems, and resource implications of the technologies.
- Climate change: analysing the cascading effects of decarbonizing transport, helping to mitigate climate change impacts, reduce vulnerability to hazardous events and improve health outcomes.

Crosscutting research will consider issues across these Thrusts, integrating and converging knowledge from the project as a whole, in the UK and US:
- Decision support tools for energy and climate justice: by developing a visual analytics decision support tool that integrates participatory and iterative design approaches.
- Public health and economic impact of decarbonization pathways: our assessment of health impacts, disease cases, and economic costs will combine the WM-Air Air Quality Lifecourse Assessment Tool with the decision-support toolkit.
- Governance and policy to support decarbonization pathways, including regulation, funding, taxation, and research, where local governments will play an important role in shepherding innovation to maturity.
- Data and cyber security: building a platform that understands the multiplied dependencies between transport, energy and smart city systems.
- Coupled Infrastructure Systems: developing a model for energy-transportation transitions, including the 'hard' engineering infrastructure, and 'soft' infrastructure of institutions and organisational structures.

The project will also have an educational platform, allowing for the exchange of undergraduate and postgraduate students between the UK and US, and to learn from the research being undertaken by research groups in both countries.