Skip to main content

Putting places at the heart of transport decarbonisation

Date

Two stationery trains in a station

In 2019, with the help of a grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), eight leading universities in the north of England teamed up to create the DecarboN8 Research Network. The network’s aim was to find innovative, place-based solutions for decarbonising our transport systems.

Transport is a major contributor to carbon emissions and will require both infrastructure and behavioural changes to tackle, both in the UK and worldwide. DecarboN8’s focus on place was to see whether the sector could realise claims that adopting decarbonisation policies adapted to specific, on-the-ground characteristics of towns, cities and regions could deliver net zero goals at around a quarter of the cost of top-down approaches.

DecarboN8 director Professor Greg Marsden, of the Institute for Transport Studies (ITS), spotted another opportunity: to make use of additional funding streams to complement the work of DecarboN8 by forming closer bonds with a key Government partner at an important time.

The result was an EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account (IAA)-funded secondment at ITS for Richard Walker, an experienced transport planner and policy advisor in the UK Government’s Department for Transport.

Impact

  • Collaboration between the University of Leeds and the UK Government Department for Transport.
  • Creating place-based solutions to climate change and its impacts.

Key information

  • Major funders: Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)
  • Partners and collaborators: UK Government’s Department for Transport, DecarboN8
  • Disciplines: transport studies, environment
  • Investigators: Professor Greg Marsden, Richard Walker.

Policy impact towards decarbonisation

Carried out remotely after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the two-year secondment coincided with the UK’s hosting of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, giving Richard the chance to provide a central government perspective on how the DecarboN8 team could feed into the conference discussions and achieve maximum impact.

One of the project’s key outputs was a publication highlighting the key problems, principles and solutions in place-based transport decarbonisation. He covered questions including how to move forward more quickly and how to bring the public on board with the messaging.

Other outputs of the secondment included a series of briefing notes for the Local Government Association (LGA) highlighting what individual authorities could do, on a practical level, to make quick inroads on decarbonising their transport networks. The IAA funding informed the construction of a major follow-on grant, the Energy Demand Research Centre, which has a place-based theme and brings together insights across sectors.

Sharing skills and knowledge

Greg said: “We developed the idea for an IAA-funded secondment because it would allow us to do things that were connected to the larger DecarboN8 grant but which were outside the scope of that project. Richard’s involvement helped us distil our research into key takeaways and communications for our audiences at COP26 and through the LGA project – something that isn’t always our strength as academics.

“The IAA was an obvious choice because the whole ethos of the DecarboN8 project was to build connections across academia, government, industry and the third sector – so it felt like the secondment idea was closely aligned with the goals of the IAA scheme. I see the IAA as part of a broader infrastructure of interactions that make positive outcomes more likely, and as an opportunity to learn how government thinks and works; how to make your work important rather than just believing it should be important.”

Richard adds: “It’s rare as civil servants that we get the time and space to really think deeply about an issue, and that was something hugely valuable that this secondment provided. I was also able to bring a different perspective to the work of the DecarboN8 project on how to ensure the research was relevant to real-world outcomes and to government policy, which is what my entire working life is about.

“By the same token, I’d encourage academics to take any opportunity they can to spend some time in a government department. It’s a brilliant way of getting to understand how policies are delivered and how the country is run. The Department for Transport has a large hub in Leeds, so there is plenty of potential for synergy with the work of ITS academics, students and graduates.”

This project was sponsored by the UKRI Impact Acceleration Account.