Public Funding for Rosyth Royal Dockyard Limited

he ambition for transition to a Net-Zero economy creates unique challenges and opportunities that vary across the UK. The Shetland Islands, with their unique maritime eco-system, face implications and requirements for significant investments required to reach Net-Zero status. These demand careful planning and prioritisation of the stages for the Net-Zero transition. Financial, environmental, technical and human resources should be considered to create optimal, feasible, sustainable plans in the framework of circular economy. NEPTUNE aims to facilitate this process by proving the feasibility of **developing a desk-based Decision Modelling and Support System (DEMOSS) digital tool to help analyse, scope and develop plans for supporting the maritime eco-system's transition to zero emission.** This will be based on a toolkit focusing on the reducing the cost of planning and implementation of zero-carbon energy systems for the islands' maritime and land-based assets. The pilot case will be based on the Shetland Islands but the tool could be used as an exemplar for other islands or ports and possibly scaled up to national level This will facilitate the transformation of Shetland's current dependency on fossil fuels to affordable, renewable energy for both associated marine assets and onshore facilities, communities and industries. It will pave the way for and help to de-risk creating a green hydrogen export business at industrial scale on Shetland by harnessing offshore wind power and creating new jobs (Project ORION\*). \*The Orion Project, initiated in April 2020, is a partnership between Shetland Islands Council, OGTC, Strathclyde University, and HIE that aims to transition Shetland away from its fossil fuel dependence at a local and industrial scale. The three key scopes of the project are the production, use, and export of hydrogen fuel and its derivatives, electrification and repurposing of onshore and offshore assets including oil and gas facilities, and industrial transformation centred around the Sullom Voe oil and gas region to service the future hydrogen, tidal, and offshore wind sectors. The project aims to connect developments ranging from the 457 MW wind farm that will be operational in 2024 to multiple future gigawatt projects in offshore regions.

This project will be led by SupplyVue, with the support of CarbonChain and WMG to develop a new digital platform, CarbonVue, for adoption by UK manufacturers. It will provide visibility of carbon in the end to end supply chain, enable integrated real time carbon and productivity management, and provide a framework to foster greater collaboration, in order to reduce carbon emissions. The core innovation in this project is a system that will attribute carbon impact to each individual supply chain activity (every make or move operation), using a mass balance approach to generate an absolute measure of carbon per kg of product -- akin to the calorie measure of food. Manufacturers face a major challenge to deliver the UK's Net Zero carbon emissions by 2050 commitment. Achieving Net Zero by 2050 will require businesses to make carbon a central tenant of managing their supply chains, adding to the classic management of cost, quality and service. Supply chain efficiency and carbon emission management need to be managed together, but this joined-up capability is currently not available. Poor supply chain collaboration is a barrier to end to end efficiency and low carbon cost. Our novel approach to improving supply chain collaboration is to use the measurement of carbon: independent of cost, but is a measure of efficiency, and can act as a point of arbitrage. This will enable conversations on how to re-configure the supply chain without having to share sensitive cost information. Unifying the supply chain partners against a common low carbon goal. CarbonVue will be tested by Tata Steel and GKN to optimise the flow of product between their businesses, showing how better collaboration can empower suppliers to add value for better outcomes for all. Babcock International will provide specific insights for product development from their sector and their position at the top of a supply chain with many SMEs, in preparation for a future deployment project. The need for the UKs' manufacturing sector to be more productive and to reduce carbon emissions is a clear imperative but improvement is slow and needs a catalyst. This project has that potential, but the approach needs to be proven. The funding from InnovateUK will enable this project to proceed, will make the development more efficient and effective, and provide a much faster route to market and scale by providing a validated credible industrial reference.