Monday, 22 September 2025
Experts have launched the first structured framework for embedding Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) principles into the Circular Carbon Economy (CCE) – the economic system that prevents carbon loss, keeps resources in circulation, and supports a Net Zero future.
The IDEALL roadmap, launched September 2025, and led jointly by the University of Nottingham with collaborators from the University of Surrey, aims to raise awareness of the need for a just and inclusive transition to net-zero within the chemical and wider manufacturing sectors.
The chemical industry is one of the largest UK industries, with 96 per cent of products made in the UK containing synthetic chemicals, and plays a pivotal role in our economy, producing essential products from fuels to pharmaceuticals.
However, the traditional linear carbon economic model – where raw materials are extracted, transformed into products, consumed and then discarded as waste – drives environmental degradation, and reinforces structural inequalities. This disproportionately impacts marginalised communities through pollution exposure, limited economic opportunity, and systemic exclusion from decision-making.
The IDEALL roadmap – funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) – offers a preliminary exploration of how to ensure a fair and exclusive CCE transition from a linear carbon economy to a circular carbon economy.
Principal Investigator of the IDEALL project Dr Oliver Fisher, Assistant Professor in Chemical and Environmental Engineering at the University of Nottingham, said
The Circular Carbon Economy is central to delivering net zero and clean growth in 2025 and beyond. The IDEALL Roadmap sets out how we can achieve this in a way that removes financial barriers to a just transition, challenges exclusionary decision-making, empowers local communities, and ensures diverse voices are heard at every level. By embedding these principles, we can bring communities with us so everyone can participate in and benefit from the opportunities ahead.”
The roadmap focuses on four strategic priorities which emerged to guide decision makers:
- Removing financial barriers – addressing cost inequities in access to clean products and technologies and ensuring vulnerable communities are not left to bear the financial burden of transition.
- Dismantling elitism – Challenging exclusionary systems of decision-making and amplifying the knowledge and agency of under-represented communities.
- Empowering communities – embedding place-based decision-making that respects local values, cultures, and needs, fostering ownership and resilience.
- Diversifying voices – ensuring diversity of voices across all levels, from governance and research to implementation, to reflect the lived realities of all who are impacted by the transition.
Co-author Dr Tom Roberts, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Sociology at the University of Surrey, said: “Delivering net zero offers a unique opportunity to not only reduce the environmental impact of industrial processes but also remodel many of the existing social and economic structures which have had a negative impact on the people and communities at the heart of production. The IDEAL roadmap identifies how a just transition to low carbon society can benefit both the environment and society.”
The shift away from fossil-based carbon sources towards renewable, recycled and captured carbon offers not only a change to cut emissions but also an unprecedented opportunity to reshape the chemical industry and its broader economic systems in ways that are more equitable, resilient, and inclusive.
Without deliberate action, existing inequalities, whether global, regional, or institutional, will persist or even worsen. The IDEALL roadmap is only a beginning, laying a foundation for future research, policy design and industrial innovation that places equality at the heart of the CCE transition.
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More information is available from Dr Oliver Fisher, in the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, via oliver.fisher@nottingham.ac.uk
Notes to editors:
About the University of Nottingham
Ranked 97 in the world and 17th in the UK by the QS World University Rankings, the University of Nottingham is a founding member of Russell Group of research-intensive universities. Studying at the University of Nottingham is a life-changing experience, and we pride ourselves on unlocking the potential of our students. We have a pioneering spirit, expressed in the vision of our founder Sir Jesse Boot, which has seen us lead the way in establishing campuses in China and Malaysia - part of a globally connected network of education, research and industrial engagement.
Nottingham was crowned Sports University of the Year by The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2024 – the third time it has been given the honour since 2018 – and by the Daily Mail University Guide 2024.
The university is among the best universities in the UK for the strength of our research, positioned seventh for research power in the UK according to REF 2021. The birthplace of discoveries such as MRI and ibuprofen, our innovations transform lives and tackle global problems such as sustainable food supplies, ending modern slavery, developing greener transport, and reducing reliance on fossil fuels.
The university is a major employer and industry partner - locally and globally - and our graduates are the third most targeted by the UK's top employers, according to The Graduate Market in 2024 report by High Fliers Research.
We lead the Universities for Nottingham initiative, in partnership with Nottingham Trent University, a pioneering collaboration between the city’s two world-class institutions to improve levels of prosperity, opportunity, sustainability, health and wellbeing for residents in the city and region we are proud to call home.
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