The Black Country is one of seven strategic industrial clusters across the UK being supported by BEIS and Innovate UK to decarbonise by 2040\. By 2030, without radical action, Black Country industry will be responsible for 2.3MtCO2 emissions a year, from an industrial base of more than 3000 energy-intense businesses, many still engaged in the region's traditional metal processing operations. This project aims to reduce these emissions to zero by 2030 through a co-ordinated programme of transformational projects focused around a new type of industrial estate: the zero carbon hub. Zero carbon hubs will be based around anchor industrial processes, strategically-selected to match Black Country skills and strengths (for example aluminium reprocessing). Each hub will contain a mix of businesses carefully selected to complement each other by thinking about their energy and waste flows. For example, where metal manufacturing results in significant quantities of waste heat, this might be used to generate steam for use in food processing or urban agriculture, or supplied to neighbouring housing or offices via district heating schemes. Each hub will have its own energy centre, designed to work alongside a decarbonised national electricity grid to supply Black Country industry with clean power and heat at globally-competitive costs. Many of these energy centres will be built around Black Country-manufactured new energy technologies converting commercial waste into heat, electricity and hydrogen. The project will work with other industrial clusters around the UK coast to build new supply chains and markets for hydrogen and carbon. We will work with the Universities of Birmingham and Warwick and with the Industrial Decarbonisation Research and Innovation Centre (IDRIC) in Edinburgh to deploy the latest energy technologies and circular economy methods in the Black Country. We anticipate developing four demonstration hubs during the two year period of the project and stimulating the deployment of a further 10-50 to achieve the cluster's zero carbon goal by 2030\. Innovate UK funding will be used alongside a small amount of economic development funding to stimulate over £1bn of commercial investment in the region.

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Awaiting Public Project Summary

The project will deliver a step change and innovative improvement to how sustainable energy is produced and delivered in Sub Saharan Africa. It specifically regards the use of waste and biomass as a source of energy for industrial and domestic users with wide ranging carbon and social impacts. Current sustainable energy projects in the territory that deliver impactful sustainability and social results are challenging to fund and deploy because of the lack of sufficient de-risking of key project drivers. These barriers to entry include aspects such as security of quality feedstock supply, local regulatory approvals, and bankable offtake agreements combined with appropriate technology choice. Additionally, social impact and the energy trilemma are often overlooked in such project ventures. This project will deliver industrial research that is the critical enabler to commercial deployment and builds on detailed feasibility work already completed by KEW. The project output will derisk the investment decisions to deliver cheap, secure innovative renewable energy, which will improve industrial performance & waste management infrastructure whilst delivering a significant step-change improvement in the health & welfare of the local population, particularly amongst the female population, by replacing wood with clean, sustainable domestic fuel. Overall, the deployment of KEW modules in Kenya, critically de-risked through the InnovateUK funded Project Alpha, tackles two major issues through enabling greater value to be ascribed to waste and providing sustainable, affordable energy. Firstly, informal waste picking and the associated social & health hazards would be replaced by properly-paid safe work. This is a very significant opportunity to develop and introduce a working integrated waste management system into an area where the waste management is a massive social, economic, and environmental issue. Secondly, the industry can be supplied with reliable electricity and heat at lower costs (and much lower carbon footprint) than existing sources (much of which rely on importing fuel oil) as well as cooking gas, utilising clean-burn DME fuel produced using KEW's and strategic partners, can be provided to local people to replace charcoal/wood and reduce deforestation and respiratory disease (especially if not using a burn stove).