To exchange expertise and better understand the strengths and weaknesses of local decarbonization plans in the UK, which can be applicable to the EU’s localised decarbonization plans, on April 23, 2024, CMCC team from LOCALISED consortium hosted a talk by Dr. Kyle Herman from the University of Sussex (UoS) titled “Shoreham Port’s Decarbonisation Plan: Orchestrating Complexity for Mission-Driven Innovation and Technological Integration”. 

According to the official estimates, industrial regions and clusters in the UK are important for the economy, employing 1.5 million people across steel, oil refining, chemical, and other energy-intensive industries, and worth £320 billion in goods and services. Yet, they are a major source for the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), cumulatively generating nearly 32 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent annually.

To revive declining industries, and to meet GHG reductions by 2050, the UK has earmarked substantial public funds—worth billions of pounds in the coming years—to drive industrial decarbonisation across its regional clusters. Following on from the much larger cluster decarbonisation competition—the industrial decarbonisation challenge—the UKRI recently awarded £6 million in funding to ten local industrial decarbonisation clusters (LIDPs), two of which are Ports (Port of Poole and Shoreham Port). 

This research explores Shoreham Trust Port, outside of Brighton & Hove in the South of the UK. Researchers from UoS ground their study in the innovation ecosystems approach, given the plurality of actors and technologies involved. They then apply orchestration in multi-stakeholder networks theory to examine Shoreham Port’s industrial decarbonization mission as it undergoes collective and collaborative planning, experimentation, and production of its 2035 net-zero goals embedded in its decarbonisation plan. 

They use a multi-modal approach consisting of fifty semi-structured interviews, one survey for each industrial partner, a separate survey for local tenants, and a techno economic assessment of energy, emissions, costs. 

The data will then undergo several different transformations:

• Interview data will be cleaned and summarised using natural language processing (NLP); a link/edge analysis will be conducted for actor network; 
• The surveys will feed into the techno economic analysis, providing assessment of current and future costs, investments, and opportunities for the LIDP.

The results of this research will shed light on:

• The immediate and medium-term net-zero investment opportunities;
• How this project can leverage the findings to quickly drive net-zero in Shoreham Port;
• How orchestration and orchestrators have managed the emerging complex system for industrial decarbonisation in Shoreham Port.

On the 23rd of April, our LOCALISED partner CMCC is organising a compelling webinar titled “Shoreham Port’s Decarbonisation Plan: Orchestrating Complexity for Mission-Driven Innovation and Technological Integration”, featuring esteemed speaker Kyle Herman, a Research Fellow at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) within the University of Sussex Business School.

The industrial decarbonisation challenge aims to accelerate the cost-effective decarbonisation of industry by developing and deploying low-carbon technologies. It aims to boost the competitiveness of key industrial regions and drive inward investment, creating and protecting jobs for a low-carbon global economy with growing low-carbon export markets.

Shoreham Port Industrial Cluster Decarbonisation Plans research project focuses on governance for industrial decarbonisation projects in Shoreham Port. The study aims to explore the diverse strategies, best practices, enablers and impediments, adopted by key actors and other core themes such as skills and social acceptance. It will focus on cross-collaborative learning from similar mini-clusters, especially those that have also recently been awarded UKRI funding. Furthermore, it will collect evidence on business models, planning & consenting, environmental permitting and licensing, standards, health and safety regulations, and skills & training to inform policymakers at local, regional, and national levels. The study is led by Professor Andy Davies, with support from a full-time research fellow, Dr. Kyle S. Herman, and further support from Stephan Manning.

This Shoreham Port Industrial Cluster Decarbonisation Plans research project is funded by UKRI Local Industrial Decarbonisation Plan Competition.

Together with a focus group of future users, the consortium partner Climate Media Factory (CMF) is developing the »LOCALISED Climate Action Strategiser« (formerly »Decarbonisation Profiler«), a state-of-the-art planning tool for European cities and regions. 

The first in a series of workshops took place in November 2023 and focused on the tool’s basic structure and features: Where does the tool accommodate the users’ intuitive way of using it? Where do they feel lost or blocked? How visually appealing do they find the tool on a scale of 1-10? Are all the features in the “right place”, and is something missing?

The results and impulses of this first workshop have been implemented in the tool development. Now, a minimum viable product version is being prepared. This version will be tested and evaluated in the second focus group workshop at the end of April.

For anyone already interested in the Climate Action Strategiser, the upcoming European Urban Resilience Forum in Valencia (26-28 June 2024) offers a great opportunity to test the tool and give feedback. There, the CMF will present and discuss the tool in a highly-interactive workshop session together with the participants and invited city representatives. Your feedback is explicitly wanted and will help to make this tool as useful as possible for cities & regions!

If you’re generally interested in discussing and/or testing the tool development with us, you’re always more than welcome to get in touch with Tobias Gralke

The Polish partner of LOCALISED, the Institute of Fluid-Flow Machinery, Polish Academy of Sciences (IMP PAN) was a strategic partner of the Climate Congress of Poland, which took place on 19-20th March 2024 in Warsaw, Poland.

The Climate Congress of Poland is an annual event that this year hosted 26 discussion panels, 150 speakers and panel members, and numerous exhibition stands from research institutes, industry as well as other organizations. This edition of the event attracted 1280 registered participants, with backgrounds in research, industry, politics and the general public.

The partner IMP had an exhibition stand where its involvement in different projects, including LOCALISED, was presented. In addition, IMP organized its own discussion panel on the decarbonisation of district heating while Weronika Radziszewska was an expert in the discussion panel on the future of energy. A video which included a presentation of LOCALISED was looped on the different screens in the exhibition hall.

On 26-28 June in Valencia, Spain, the 2024 edition of the European Urban Resilience Forum (EURESFO) will take place to address some crucial aspects of resilience, sustainable development and recovery. This year, the LOCALISED project is co-organising the event giving a particular contribution in regard to multilevel governance, cooperation, and the imperative of a just transition.

In 2023 EURESFO reached a significant milestone with the celebration of the event’s 10th anniversary. The commemorative edition reflected on progress made in the field of urban resilience over the past decade. On 26-28 June 2024, the 11th edition of EURESFO is set to be co-organized and hosted by the City of Valencia, distinguished as the European Green Capital for 2024.

EURESFO has served as a pivotal European initiative since 2013. Organised by ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability and the European Environment Agency (EEA), it has been acting as a unique exchange platform in the field of resilience. The event brings together city representatives, experts, and stakeholders from local and regional institutions to discuss strategies, initiatives, and actions affiliating to climate change adaptation, disaster management, and the cultivation of urban resilience. Participants are invited to share their experiences and perspectives on an array of topics that delve into the challenges inherent in urban resilience planning and implementation.

• Multilevel governance, cooperation and just transition: resilience leaves no one behind.
• Water resilience and the Blue Economy in and beyond the Mediterranean region.
• Enabling the transformation to resilient, adaptive, and climate-neutral cities and regions.
• Special focus stream: Post-conflict Resilience and Recovery, focusing on Ukraine

LOCALISED will contribute to Thematic 1, particurarly looking at how to better integrate mitigation and adaptation measures, and how to ensure a collaborative environment in local administrations.