While one issue continued to dominate the public consciousness in 2021, one of the positives to come out of the coronavirus crisis was a sense that science, technology and innovation had the extraordinary ability to rise to global challenges — such as Net Zero.

But additionally, it also emphasized how connected and integrated are our communities, our economies and our environment. And how these challenges need to be tackled in an equally integrated and systematic way.

In two areas in particular, we saw incredible progress over the year; decarbonising local places and the digitalisation of the energy system. In both cases, Energy Systems Catapult has led the way in creating new markets for innovators.

Our Place-based Net Zero Toolkit, including the pioneering Local Area Energy Planning is increasingly helping local authorities, energy networks, businesses and communities, by combining cutting edge whole system modelling with local stakeholder insights to support informed decision-making on infrastructure and business investment to create innovative low carbon markets in local places.

While our efforts in driving the Energy Data and Energy Digitalisation Taskforces has seen a huge amount of support across the sector, with many stakeholders wanting access to more data, better digital systems, and practical tools to help them navigate the complex landscape.

While there is an increasing appreciation of the growing importance of digital and data skills and literacy. We have seen new digital and data jobs created, collaborative industry groups emerge, numerous data projects receive significant funding and new data centric products and services launched. This is just the start of the transformation, but it is a fantastic start.

Key points

Energy Systems Catapult is here to help innovative businesses tackle the most difficult challenges facing the energy sector, as the UK moves to a net zero economy and during 2021:

• Whole System – we delivered modelling work to determine how Drax’s North Yorkshire power plant and Ellesmere Port industrial cluster could support the transition to Net Zero and the impact of high offshore wind on the energy system. We supported marine energy projects looking at creating hydrogen from excess marine tidal power and another developing tools for ocean energy innovations. While markets, policy and regulation team continued important work on net zero carbon policy and electricity market reform. Other Whole Systems projects  included: the EV Energy Taskforce and our Energy launchpad supporting the HSBC sponsored Climate Innovation Platform alongside the University of Birmingham.
• Decarbonising Homes – making it easy and desirable for people right across the UK to decarbonise their homes, led to projects, such as the Electrification of Heat – installing heat pumps in 750 homes, working with Nesta to help Scotland better understand which dwellings are most and least well suited to heat pumps and helping innovators such as Evergreen, Ventive and Sero accelerate offerings to market. Projects featured include:
• Digital & Data – ion the slip-stream of the “game-changing” Energy Data Taskforce, we supported a range of projects, including Modernising Energy Data programme  helping the energy sector to discover and access data to drive innovation and Western Power Distribution’s Presumed Open Data challenge to demonstrate value in increasing data accessibility.  Other projects include: Amp X testing their digital energy assistant and arbnco testing their new digital air quality platform in our  Living Lab.
• Place – the urgency of Net Zero requires place-based strategies to drive low carbon deployment of at scale. Our Local Energy Asset Representation tool mapped a visual baseline of energy assets within 16 local areas to help planners and businesses make strategic investment decisions. The Welsh Government become the first UK authority to adopt Local Area Energy Planning within official planning policy, while Ofgem commissioned the Catapult to deliver a LAEP Methodology for energy networks. While Energy Launchpad International developed Virtual Missions to India and Thailand with a highly agile, engagement programme, that included: 400 collaboration partners identified, 78 organisations engaged, 103 virtual meetings, one pilot project secured with a local stakeholder and 21 distribution, MoU and other agreements signed.