Integrated Planning for the Decarbonisation of the South West Peninsula’s Infrastructure System
“The South West has distinct infrastructure challenges, not least the vulnerability of many communities to rising sea levels and flooding. As engineers, we have a crucial role to play in adapting our infrastructure to cope with the impacts of climate change and redesigning infrastructure, whether that’s power or transport, to use low carbon technologies.The workshops will bring together infrastructure engineers from all backgrounds to explore the many different pathways to low carbon and coagulated a strategic approach this is fit for purpose in the South West.” [Peter Kydd, ICE Fellow and Chair of South West Infrastructure Partnership]
This project was undertaken with the Institution of Civil Engineer’s South West Infrastructure Partnership. The interdependent nature of infrastructure necessitates a joined-up approach to reducing carbon dependency that goes beyond the actions and incentives of any individual sector, town or organisation. This project brought together over 100 stakeholders from Bristol to Truro in order to map dependencies and align strategies.
The two events highlighted a recognition across the infrastructure industry of the complexity of the decarbonisation challenge and the appetite for collaborative action to address that complexity. Issues relating to fragmentation, outsourcing, contracting, focus on capital expenditure, tribalism, trust and the daunting scale of the challenge were identified as barriers to this collaboration. It was concluded that overcoming these issues requires a neutral convener to facilitate the co-production of a regional industry route-map, the collection and sharing of data to monitor progress, and support the collaboration necessary to enact the required change.
SWIP Truro 
Bristol 2020 Decarbonisation Workshop
This project was led by Dr Neil Carhart. The SWIP Truro and Bristol 2020 Decarbonisation Workshop reports can be found here:
More details on the work can be found here.