Leeds will head up new ‘Decarbon8’ network in bid to dacarbonise UK transport

The DecarboN8 network will focus on tackling surface transport emissions, which form 26 per cent of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions. These include emissions from transport vehicles such as cars, vans, buses, heavy goods vehicles and trains. They will also examine emissions from the construction and maintenance of these vehicles and infrastructure.

The network, worth £1.25m and funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, will be comprised of experts from the N8 Research Partnership, a collaboration of the eight most research intensive universities in the North of England, as well as experts from government and industry.

Tackling the decarbonisation of transport is complex, partly because different places – from rural environments to stand-alone towns to dense urban areas – require different approaches. The north is an ideal area for this research as it has a wide range of locales, socio-economic circumstances and travel patterns.

The project will look specifically at how different places could be rapidly switched to electromobility for personal travel, and how different decarbonisation strategies needed for cars and heavy vehicles can interact with each other.

Professor Greg Marsden, who will lead the project in Leeds, said: “Reaching zero carbon emissions by 2050 represents a huge technological, engineering, policy and societal challenge for the next 30 years.”