The impact of the Cardiff Capital Region's £8m Challenge Fund

An event showcasing the impact of the Challenge Fund from the Cardiff Capital Region (CCR) was recently held at the former RWE coal-powered power station at Aberthaw in the Vale of Glamorgan - which the region acquired two years ago and has been rebranded as CCR Energy.

The CCR, made up of the ten local authorities of south east Wales, has ambitious plans for the site to become a leading UK renewables hub creating and supporting thousands of jobs. The Vale of Glamorgan-based former power station, and nearly 500acres of land, was acquired via the CCR’s £1.2bn City Deal.

In particular the event provided a platform for decarbonisation challenges that have been supported by the £8m City Deal backed Challenge Fund - which is being delivered in a partnership between the CCR and Cardiff University.

The fund is a mission-led approach to innovation at a regional level that seeks to bring together societal challenges and public sector ‘challenge holders’ (those with the problem to solve) and innovators with ideas that might be developed into solutions.

It has been running for over three years and in that time it has supported eight innovation challenges, with a total commitment of over £5.5m in awards to challenge holders.

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Some challenges have not yet reached their conclusion and benefits are expected to accrue over time so it remains early in terms of recording outcomes. However, taking the Challenge Fund together with its capability development sister programme Infuse, the evidence gathered to date suggests that over 80 jobs have been created or safeguarded, over £3m of private sector investment and £2.4m of public sector funding has been leveraged, and over £1m of additional value has been created across 40 new collaborations.

As one would expect from an innovative and experimental programme, the journey has been somewhat circuitous and not without its detours and frustrations but there are encouraging signs that this is an approach that can be made to work in supporting regional innovators across the public and private sectors in addressing societal challenges.

The specific sustainability challenges that were featured at the event are the result of successful collaborations between challenge holders, the Challenge Fund team and innovative solution providers.

The process of connecting challenge holders with potential innovators was facilitated by working with the Innovate UK innovation exchange who opened up the challenges to a much wider range of innovators than would have otherwise been possible. Partnership and collaboration have been crucial to the delivery of the Challenge Fund.

Alongside this, a willingness to engage, share ideas and learn is at the heart of the challenges that were presented and the speakers were able to share their experiences of the challenge approach and the outcomes that it has produced.

In each case, the presenters were also able to air ideas for future activity and were of the view that each of these challenges may be able to deliver more and more widely if adopted across the CCR.

The first challenge is seeking to accelerate the decarbonisation of buses, the most polluting public transport fleet, and through this the creation of longer-term economic benefits through alternative approaches to powering buses. The challenge involves the Welsh Automotive Forum, EVEnergi and Drive44. The three partners conducted a feasibility study to evaluate the potential economic opportunity for repowering buses and coaches across Wales.

The study found that a sustainable and scalable model can be delivered using repowering bus technologies which has potential longer term commercial opportunities for Wales and its supply chain.

These would be complemented by engines and other parts going into the circular economy for refurbishment and re-use, also potentially generating income. Such an initiative would also deliver opportunities for re-skilling.

The positive findings of the study provide the basis from which the team are a seeking to establish a consolidated, structured and collaborative approach with buy-in from Welsh Government to ensure there is a pan-Wales vision for a national transport strategy to set the direction for bus repowering In tackling this major sustainability issue of the existing public fleet. At the event there was considerable interest in seeing this challenge move to the next level.

The second challenge that was presented involves Monmouthshire County Borough Council and Vantastec. Their goal was to enhance the energy capacity of zero emissions vehicles used by the council’s community Meals project which delivers hot meals to vulnerable local residents.

The auxiliary equipment of the vehicles, that is the microwave ovens that heat the food, has high energy requirements which limits the vehicle’s range. In creating a solution to this challenge, Vantastec have developed a ground-breaking vehicle prototype with 100% green ancillary equipment powered by hydrogen fuel cells, the first of its kind in the UK.

In looking towards the potential for further scaling, the technology could be fitted onto any type of vehicle operating ancillary equipment and constitutes a major commercial opportunity. In addition, further conversations are being held around the possibility of extending the work of Monmouthshire in delivering high-quality, locally-sourced meals to its citizens through a future food challenge.

Next the audience heard from Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council and Evolt Charging. They have partnered to optimise electric vehicle fleet charging using renewable energy at council depots. Evolt has delivered a smart charging management system that provides energy from renewable sources through a network of connected chargers.

The goal is to ensure that all available energy is put to full use, and each charger only supplies the energy needed for the vehicle over the time needed for charging. This challenge solution is set to be scaled as Merthyr CBC has secured funding from Welsh Government to install the system at additional sites.

The final presentation was from Caerphilly County Borough Council and Optrak Distribution Software Ltd. The two organisations have collaborated to identify solutions to help the council make the right decisions regarding electric fleet vehicles and charging infrastructure procurement.

A consortium led by Optrak is developing a tailored software product, initially focused on housing services. It will enable the council to plan the optimal number and size of vehicles required to deliver services, the exact location and size of each charge point and to model their usage pattern based on shift and route information of each vehicle.

Work to date suggests that this will reduce the number of journeys, vehicles and emissions, with anticipated annual savings of £2m and of 3,000 tonnes of carbon. Looking towards the future, the lessons from this project can be used to help other organisations who want to improve their efficiency and reduce emissions.

It is to be hoped that other local authorities are able to take advantage of the innovative solutions and practical insights in application that have been accrued from the four challenges to date.

There were a number of issues from the four presentations that are worthy of further reflection. First, in recognising the experimental nature of the Challenge Fund itself and the lack of a tried-and-tested blueprint for how to conduct challenges, the story of both these challenges and of the fund itself is one of patience, resilience and learning from what has not worked as well as what has.

The four challenges all represent examples of effective project management on the part of the challenge holders and a partnership approach between themselves and the innovators. In addition, while each had a focused challenge to which it was dedicated, the project teams have shown a willingness to take on a ‘bigger picture’ approach and look for further opportunities. We heard about a number of very ambitious future steps that teams were looking to take.

In seeking to achieve these, a final and more fundamental point was made: the desirability of a united and aligned effort in tackling the challenges of sustainability across Wales.

This will need the key actors to work together and the climate crisis presents a compelling case for collaborating in new ways in order to address sustainability issues. It is to be hoped that the examples presented last week will inspire further creative collaboration in addressing societal challenges.

To this end, the CCR and Cardiff University team are continuing to work together to encourage the possibility of greater scaling, both of the impact that might be achieved by the specific challenges through their wider adoption and of the challenge-led approach to innovation in the region.

• Prof Delbridge is co-convenor at Cardiff University’s Centre for Innovation Policy Research.