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Accelerating the Decarbonisation of Mobility: Working Across Boundaries

This Summer School is aimed at PhD students and Early Career Researchers working on any aspect of the challenge of decarbonising mobility in both the passenger and freight sectors. The scale of the challenge is huge and the scope of what needs to be done equally broad. Developing different energy pathways for a wide range of mobility technologies creates huge engineering challenges. These are deeply intertwined with implementation issues surrounding the allocation of space, funding and business models and social imaginations of the ways in which people and businesses will move around and the policy environments through which this unfolds. The Summer School is focussed on building skills to appreciate how to connect across disciplines, modes, scales and methods to better equip attendees for the challenges researchers are now tasked with addressing.

Benefits of attending the Summer School:

• Gain an appreciation of the scale and scope of the challenge of decarbonising transport
• Understand how different disciplinary perspectives contribute to the decarbonisation agenda
• Develop new skills to help connect your work to that of other researchers and practitioners
• Develop exciting new ideas to tackle the decarbonisation challenge for transport
• Appreciate the importance of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion to your research and practice

Who is this for?

The Summer School is supported by Cut Carbon which brings together a set of EPSRC funded Networks each tackling a different part of the decarbonisation challenge. The networks cover a range of engineering challenges but also address the relationships between technological change and social change and between institutional structures, policy design and technology. The Summer School is primarily aimed at PhD students and Early Career Researchers working in the area of decarbonising transport. If your work is relevant and this sounds like the kind of environment that you would like to be part of then we would like to hear from you.

When and where will it be?

27-29 September 2022, National Railway Museum, York

What will it cost?

The Summer School is fully funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. The course is free to attend for PhD students and Early Career Researchers based in the UK. Once at the event, food and accommodation will be provided. Travel to and from your place of residence (in the UK) to the Summer School will also be covered though we may ask you to purchase travel tickets in advance to be reimbursed.

How to apply

Complete and submit the Summer School Application Form by 17:00 GMT on 24 June 2022.

Officials responsible for decarbonising UK transport met with leading researchers from the Cut Carbon Network yesterday, to discuss cutting-edge evidence about how best to deliver the transition to net-zero in the transport sector.

While most sectors have reduced their carbon emissions in recent years, emissions from transport have remained stubbornly high, now making up 33% of the UK’s emissions. To deliver net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, major improvements to how we get around are needed across the UK.

In 2019 the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) invested £5 million in five research networks to find solutions to different aspects of the transport challenge: place-based solutions, electrification, freight, hydrogen, and aviation.

Yesterday the networks shared their initial findings at an online Symposium attended by officials from the Department for Transport; the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government; and the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy; as well as a number of leading experts in the field.

Transport Minister, Rachel Maclean MP, who addressed the Symposium, said:

“In order to achieve our net-zero transport goals, we need to do everything we can to make all our journeys cleaner, greener and more efficient. Part of this will involve providing specific adaptable solutions for different cities, across the country.

To help tackle climate change and take a leading role in re-building the economy for the benefit of people and the communities that need it the most, we’re putting a green recovery for transport at the forefront of all our decisions.”

The Symposium was co-organised by EPSRC Transport Decarbonisation Champion Greg Marsden, Professor of Transport Governance at the University of Leeds, who said:

“Decarbonising transport requires an ambitious combination of changes to how people and goods move about, the technologies in use and how they are powered. Such a transition over the coming decades will be very difficult to achieve and, as such, requires a close collaboration between government, industry, and academia. The discussions at this Symposium recognise the scale and scope of the challenge and show how we can build the joint knowledge and capacity to succeed.”

The research networks are continuing to develop cutting-edge evidence to support the UK’s transition to net-zero by 2050 and to inform the development of the Decarbonising Transport Plan in the run up to COP26, due to be hosted by the UK in Glasgow in November 2021.