Driving the Electric Revolution 2021 Annual Report launched

The Driving the Electric Revolution Challenge represents an investment of up to £80million over 4 years for business-led innovation projects that enable UK supply chain and manufacturing capability growth in the UK’s Power Electronics, Machines & Drives (PEMD) sector. In this article, we share this UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) report and also shed light on the support which Innovate UK KTN has contributed to the programme.

Programme Mission

The Driving the Electric Revolution Challenge will be the catalyst to building £5 billion more Power Electronics, Motors and Drives (PEMD) products in the UK by 2025. The programme aims to strategically leverage the UK’s world-leading industry research capabilities across all sectors to invest in and develop more advanced PEMD products, improve PEMD supply chains and work collaboratively to equip people with PEMD skills for the future.

Report Highlights

The recently launched Driving the Electric Revolution 2021 Annual Report reflects on the programme’s achievements over the last year. The key highlights of the report include:

• The continued growth in PEMD related sector engagement thanks to Innovate UK KTN hosting a weekly “Engage with…” webinar series. Throughout 2020 and 2021, 45 online events have taken place with 2,500 webinar attendees and over 125 new introductions being made between companies which have resulted in new partnerships and collaborative projects being established. These business opportunities are enabling organisations to develop clean technologies and progress towards a net-zero economy in the future.
• Promoting the Industrialisation Centres, which will play an important role in developing the next generation of PEMD products. The four national centres of excellence in PEMD received a £33 million investment to enable researchers to develop and scale new PEMD technologies and manufacturing processes.
• Sharing weekly Driving the Electric Revolution newsletters provides updates on sector funding opportunities, upcoming networking events and collaborative networking programmes to a community of 3,000 unique PEMD technology specialists which consists of academics, industry experts and those working within government. These newsletters promote funding opportunities within the £20 million collaborative research funding programme including the flagship ‘Supply Chains for Net Zero’ funding competition to help develop innovative new processes for the next generation of PEMD technologies which will benefit the UK economy. We also shared training and skills development opportunities including the “Building Talent for the Future” and “Skills Hub” competitions to help address the skills shortage in the UK PEMD sector.
• Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) within the PEMD technology industry is a top priority. Therefore we hosted a series of EDI PEMD webinars to raise awareness of the importance of EDI within the PEMD community.
• Hosting Engage with…LIVE! enabled leading PEMD related companies to network face-to-face and discuss PEMD supply chain, electrification and clean technology collaborative project partnership opportunities.

Download the Annual Report

The Driving the Electric Revolution 2021 Annual Report is available to read in full at the link below.