Life Cycle and Material Resource Impacts of Improved Thermoactive Geostructures

Within the same time period, significant new construction ("It is estimated that 3.5M new houses need to be built by 2031 to accommodate an expected 5.5% increase in the UK's population," p.3) stands to create large quantities of embodied GHG emissions. Embodied emissions related to the transport and production of materials used in buildings and infrastructure can be reduced through material reduction and optimization in design, reuse, and replacement with low-carbon, zero carbon, or carbon-sequestering materials. Between now and 2050 it will be critical to reduce and eventually eliminate both operational and embodied emissions. As electricity sources become heavily renewable, the transition to electric heating for buildings (rather than onsite use of oil or gas) will reduce the GHG intensity of heating. [Case for GSHPs]
Building on the premise of the SaFEGround project-that "the combined use of advanced heat-pump technologies and of the thermal capacity of the ground and thermo-active geostructures (TAGs) can markedly reduce system costs, operating expenses, reduce emissions, and improve the stability of the UK power system in deep decarbonisation scenarios"-and the need for embodied emissions reductions in tandem with operational decarbonisation, the project will explore opportunities for the stabilisation and storage capabilities introduced by GSHPs and TAGS to support embodied carbon reduction external to the heating system-at the scale of the building, neighborhood, and city. Also, it will explore opportunities to align and co-design policies aimed at increasing widespread deployment of GSHPs and TAGs with policies aimed at reducing embodied carbon in buildings and infrastructure. Moreover, the project will use Life Cycle Analysis to make a holistic impact assessment of TAGs in the UK in the context of city and national scale energy needs and material resource flows. Also, this study will evaluate the material resource intensity of improved TAGs, environmental impacts of material and technological innovations in TAGs resulting from demand for minerals and materials, as well as energy use and emissions resulting from the construction stage, in addition to the evaluation of the material resources intensity of improved TAGs. The expected outcomes of the project are: (1) Develop LCA of improved TAGS (2) Understand material sources, demand, and supply chain analysis (3) Link above to: need for skilled labor and workforce development, land use impacts, long-term impacts of shifting reliance toward local and decentralised energy sources and storage and (4) Evaluate/suggest possibilities for alignment of material and technological innovations with building sector decarbonization policies and initiatives, city and national decarbonization goals, and climate commitments.

The primary impact of the FIBE2 CDT will be the benefit to society that will accrue from the transformative effect that FIBE2 graduates will have upon current and future infrastructure. The current FIBE CDT has already demonstrated significant impact and FIBE2 will extend this substantially and with particular focus on infrastructure resilience. There will be further impacts across academic research, postgraduate teaching, industry-academia partnering and wider society. Our CDT students are excellent ambassadors and their skills and career trajectories are inspirational. Their outputs so far include >40 journal and conference papers, contributions to a CIRIA report, a book chapter and >15 prizes (e.g. Cambridge Carbon Challenge, EPSRC Doctoral Prizes, best presentation awards). Our students' outreach activities have had far reaching impacts including: Science Festival activities and engineering workshops for school girls. Our innovative CDT training approaches have shifted the culture and priorities in academia and industry towards co-creation for innovation. Our FIBE CDT features in the EPSRC document 'Building Skills for a Prosperous Nation'. Our attention to E&D has resulted in 50% female students with the inspirational ethos attracting students from wide ranging educational backgrounds.

FIBE2 CDT will build on this momentum and expand the scope and reach of our impact. We will capitalise on our major research and training initiatives and strategic collaborations within academia, industry and government to train future infrastructure leaders to address UK and global challenges and this will have direct and significant technical, economic and social impacts for UK infrastructure, its associated stakeholders and civil society at large.

As well as the creation of cohorts of highly skilled research cohorts with cross-disciplinary technical skills, further specific impacts include:

-a transformational cross-disciplinary graduate training and research approach in infrastructure with depth and breadth.

-new forms of Industry-University partnerships. Co-creation with industry of our training and research initiatives has already led to new forms of partnerships such as the I+ scheme, and FIBE2 will further extend this with the 'employer model' variant and others.

-skilled research-minded challenge-focused graduates for UK employers who will derive significant benefit from employing them as catalysts for enterprise, knowledge exchange and innovation, and thus to business growth opportunities.

-enhanced global competitiveness for industrial partners. With our extensive network of 27 industry partners from across all infrastructure sectors who will actively shape the centre with us, we will deliver significant impact and will embrace the cross-disciplinary research emergeing from the CDT to gain competitive advantage.

-support for policy makers at the highest levels of national and local government. The research outcomes and graduates will contribute to an evidence-based foundation for improved decision-making for the efficient management, maintenance and design of infrastructure.

-world-class research outcomes that address national needs, via the direct engagement of our key industrial partners. Other academic institutions will benefit from working with the Centre to collectively advance knowledge.

-wider professional engagement via the creation of powerful informal professional networks between researchers, practitioners, CDT alumni and CDT students, working nationally and internationally, including some hosted by FIBE2 CDT industry partners.

-future generations of infrastructure professional inspired by the FIBE2 CDT's outreach activities whereby pupils, teachers and parents gain insight into the importance of infrastructure engineering.

-the generation of public awareness of the importance of a resilient infrastructure to address inevitable and often unexpected challenges.