RESEARCH THEMES Policy and Innovation

Science and engineering alone cannot solve the climate crisis or ensure energy security. New technologies and services count for little without policy and regulatory frameworks that support their diffusion, promote investment, manage energy demand and protect both consumers and the natural world. Our Policy and Innovation theme reflects the need to reshape our institutions and governance systems and design new policy frameworks and strategies to unlock the full potential of the energy transition.

Working in collaboration with social scientists, economists and lawyers across the UK and around the world, Imperial’s policy experts draw on our world-leading science and engineering expertise to produce multidisciplinary research that identifies solutions to complex policy problems. Our researchers produce rigorous analysis of the economic, social and environmental implications of policy and market interventions and investment options, helping to lay the groundwork for change.

Centre for Climate Finance & Investment

Led by Professor Michael Wilkins, the Centre for Climate Finance & Investment's purpose is to unlock solutions within capital markets to address the challenges posed by global climate change. It undertakes interdisciplinary research combining academic rigour and industry relevance. Through collaboration between academics and practitioners, the centre is generating a new understanding of the risks and investment opportunities arising in this changing climate; through climate scenarios, nature based-solutions, renewable energy, and climateresilient infrastructure.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/business-school/ faculty-research/research-centres/centre-climatefinance-investment/

MIACCTS (Modelling, Integration, Assessment and Commercialisation of Clean Technological Systems)

Led by Dr Gbemi Oluleye from the Centre for Environmental Policy, MIACCTS is centred on accelerating the uptake of clean technological solutions (TS) for decarbonising industrial and domestic end-use systems. The research is divided into four streams: Modelling, Integration, Assessment and Commercialisation. The modelling stream involves development of state-of-art models from first principles, regressed data, and detailed simulations to replicate the TS. The best placements for TS in industrial systems are determined under the integration stream by mathematical optimisation and heuristics. The assessment stream involves development of novel methods for environmental, economic, technical and market potential assessments of integrated TS. The commercialisation stream develops pathways to show how TS cost reduces based on the innovation trilemma.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/o.oluleye

MODEL Motivational Design Lab

Led by Professor Sebastian Deterding, Chair in Design Engineering in the Dyson School of Design Engineering, the MODEL Motivational Design Lab explores the use of design techniques to motivate sustainable behaviours at scale, focussing on the potential of social and intrinsic motivators and material design to solve coordination and collective action problems in energy supply and demand and circular economies.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/s.deterding

System and Circular Design

Based in the Dyson School of Design Engineering, investigators in the System and Circular Design group use system thinking and the concept of circular economy to understand how to make consumption more sustainable, eventually reducing CO2 emissions across the product life cycle. One of the key focus of this group is 'Design for circular consumption (of resources such as energy)', which has immense potential for achieving the decarbonisation target. However, it is under-explored as the majority of current circular economy approaches put emphasis on the recovery and production phases, leaving out the critical consumption phase.