Science parks play a critical role in achieving net zero emissions, serving as hubs for research and development of renewable energy technologies.
That was the conclusion of Professor Paul Monks, Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero, in his keynote address winding up the UKSPA three-day anniversary conference at Warwick University.
Successful science parks, he said, have already taken steps towards achieving net zero emissions.
“Science parks are a kind of cauldron of innovation. They play a really specific part in our innovation network and they are critical, not only as incubators of science but also leading the way of the decarbonizing cause.”
The shift to net zero was a systems problem, he said. “Clearly there’s two things you need to do in order to make that system work. You need to feed it money, because this is an economic challenge as much it is a technical challenge.
“Also we can’t just do this. People use technology. Technology doesn’t really use itself. So this is in some sense is also consumer behaviour change. This is a social, economic and technical change and that’s important to thinking about about this problem.
“The danger of systems problems is they can overwhelm you. The challenge of systems problems is you have to be working on everything, everywhere, all at once.
“It is a three-legged stool, a social, economic and technical challenge.”
The drive to net zero also involved resource efficiency, said Professor Monks.
“It’s about disruptive technology. It’s about the built environment, carbon capture usage and storage. Innovation is critical to delivering net zero. We have 80% of the technology that we need to deliver decarbonisation by 2030. Looking at 2050, that number drops to around 50%.
“We need new technologies, we need to deploy them to market and we need to scale them by 2050, in order to decarbonise.
“There’s a great frustration in government; it recognises the UK is the best place to grow innovation but it’s not the best place to scale it. We do that translation actually pretty well at that kind of what I call the kilo scale.
“But the kilo to the ton scale is where we struggle and we do not make the innovation oven-ready enough. I think the way that we can get innovative finance to come alongside our innovation and science parks is important to delivering that outcome and the net zero innovation that we need in the industrial growth.”
Another role would be in decarbonising science parks, installing more solar panels. But Professor Monks also raised the Kettering Energy Park project, which generates enough power to run itself and feed back into the national grid entirely through renewables.
Science parks were also incubating the next generation of jobs in the net zero carbon economy. The green sector is one of the largest sectors of jobs growth in the UK.
“Science parks are critical in driving the knowledge-based economy. We are providing an environment for collaboration and entrepreneurship; they foster innovation, support, skills and education to promote collaboration.”
Author: Simon Penfold
Photography Credit: Ed Nix
