Central to the UK's ambition to achieve Net Zero is the increasing transition to renewable wind energy. To achieve this goal, the UK has set out a Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution which places offshore wind at Point One in its energy strategy. Already a global leader, the UK aims to generate 50% of its electricity using wind power by 2030, nearly doubling its current output. However, the UK is facing a compelling challenge of dealing with massive amount of waste blades while benefitting from wind power. The lifetime of wind blades is 25 years. It is estimated that around 5,200 blades of ~34,400 tons will be decommissioned in the next 5 years in the UK and this number will increase by 10 times by 2050. By then, Europe will have 325,000 waste blades. It is estimated that 43 million tons of waste blades will be decommissioned globally by 2050, making it a pressing national and international issue. The wind turbine blades are predominantly made of fibre glass composites comprising glass fibres embedded in a polymer resin (e.g. epoxy). These composites are engineered to be very tough, making them extremely difficult to decompose in the natural environment. Unfortunately, the current recycling methods are either energy intensive or too expensive, leaving the waste blades to be landfilled or incinerated creating serious environmental problems. Some European countries have banned landfilling waste blades through legislation and the UK is expected to follow this trend. Construction industry is also facing a critical environmental issue because the production of cement (as the key constituent of concrete) is an energy intensive process with huge CO2 emissions. Generally, producing one ton of cement releases about one ton of CO2 in the air, making cement production account for 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The UK construction industry consumed 15,218,000 tons of cement in 2020, and it is in an urgent need of technologies for reducing cement consumption to achieve the Net Zero goal by 2050. My fellowship aims to develop a completely new and feasible technology to recycle waste wind turbine blades for making low-carbon concrete (WINDCRETE). This is underpinned by my pioneering research which shows that the silica-rich recycled powder from grinding the waste blades is chemically reactive in alkaline solution (pozzolanic reactivity), so that it can replace cement for making concrete. I will develop WINDCRETE into a new construction material through a series of fundamental research in (a) glass and polymer separation, (b) hydration and molecular modelling, (b) pozzolanic reactivity maximisation, (c) strength/durability optimisation and (d) life cycle analysis (LCA). I have engaged with 9 industrial partners across broad sectors including wind blade manufacturer, cement and concrete producer, construction and designer, waste management, composites trade association and innovator. In close collaboration with industries, I will bring WINDCRETE from the lab to the real world through a startup which is underpinned by two patents developed from this research and successful demonstrations on the partners' construction sites. WINDCRETE brings an exciting opportunity to address two global issues in both wind energy and construction industries, establishing a new paradigm in recycling waste blades while decarbonising concrete. More importantly, I will generalise WINDCRETE to extend its impact to wider industries like aviation, automobile, marine and electronics, which are using massive fibre glass composites but facing the same challenge of recycling the waste.

Chemical technologies underpin almost every aspect of our lives, from the energy we use to the materials we rely on and the medications we take. The UK chemical industry generates £73.3 billion revenue and employs 161,000 highly skilled workers. It is highly diverse (therefore resilient) with SMEs and microbusinesses making up a remarkable 96% of the sector. Today's global chemicals industry is responsible for 10% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and consumes 20% of oil and gas as carbon feedstock to make products. Decarbonisation (defossilisation) of the chemicals sector is, therefore, urgently required, but to do so presents major technical and societal challenges. New sustainable chemical technologies, enabled by new synthesis, catalysis, reaction engineering, digitalisation and sustainability assessment, are needed. In order to ensure that the UK develops a resource efficient, resilient and sustainable economy underpinned by chemical manufacturing, developments in chemical technologies must be closely informed by whole systems approaches to measure and minimise environmental footprints, understand supply chains and assess economic and technological viability, using techniques such as life cycle assessment and material flow analysis. Lack of access to experts in science and engineering with a holistic understanding of sustainable systems is widely and publicly recognised as a significant risk. It is therefore extremely timely to establish a new EPSRC CDT in Sustainable Chemical Technologies that fully integrates a whole systems approach to training and world leading research in an innovation-driven context. This CDT will train the next generation of leaders in sustainable chemical technologies with new skills to address the growing demand for highly skilled PhD graduates with the ability to develop and transfer sustainable practices into industry and society. The new CDT will be a unique and vibrant focus of innovative doctoral training in the UK by taking full advantage of two exciting new developments at Bath. First, the CDT will be embedded in our new Institute for Sustainability (IfS) which has evolved from the internationally leading Centre for Sustainable and Circular Technologies (CSCT) and which fully integrates whole systems research and sustainable chemical technologies - two world-leading research groupings at Bath - under one banner. Second, the CDT will operate in close partnership with our recently established Swindon-based Innovation Centre for Applied Sustainable Technologies (iCAST, www.iCAST.org.uk) a £17M partnership for the rapid translation of university research to provide a dynamic innovation-focused context for PhD training in the region. Our fresh and dynamic approach has been co-created with key industrial, research, training and civic partners who have indicated co-investment of over £17M of support. This unique partnership will ensure that a new generation of highly skilled, entrepreneurial, innovative PhD graduates is nurtured to be the leaders of tomorrow's green industrial revolution in the UK.