Prof David Flynn and Dr Si Chen from the University of Newcastle’s National Research Hub for Decarbonised, Adaptable, and Resilient Transport Infrastructures (DARe Hub) explain the importance of the collaboration between the transport and energy sectors.
The convergence of transport and energy networks is integral to both UK and global decarbonisation and resilience pathways.
The two sectors are essential to both daily activity and economic growth, and key sources of GHG emissions. With the development of transport electrification, the energy and transport sectors are becoming increasingly interconnected and interdependent. If we can architect an effective integration of these two sectors, we have the potential to unlock an accelerated pathway to inclusive, lowest cost, and timely decarbonised transport. In addition, another area of critical importance is that through intelligent design, we can safeguard the security and resilience of these critical networks, leveraging their coupled attributes to mitigate against climate threats like storms, floods, and heatwaves, or physical failure within a critical asset.
In the UK, transport represents the largest end use demand sector, and has done since 1998. Today this equates to around 51% of total final energy demand in the UK. So, what has happened since 1998? The brief answer in terms of decarbonisation and resilience, is too little, as demonstrated by the significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions (transport produces 26% of the UK’s total GHG emissions) and disruptive events like the closure of Heathrow Airport in March, caused by a fire at an electricity substation, or the power fault distribution across London underground services in May. The understanding and ownership of resilience and how to unlock value at the nexus of transport and energy remains open, both in terms of understanding and responsibility.
In terms of decarbonisation, we need to accelerate the co-design of the interface between energy and transport networks. The convergence of transport demand (charging) predominately onto the electrical network, will create new demand patterns, in terms of peaks, distribution, and duration. However, if we can define the intelligent coordination, or points of coupling, between these networks, we can deliver timely, lowest cost decarbonisation, which underpins both individual social mobility and national economic prosperity.
In terms of resilience, certain events can be regarded as unprecedented or rare, such as the risk of fire in substations, but it has provided a lens towards the clear and emergent threat of more frequent and extreme events, as per climate change forecasts. Whilst the UK accelerates the coupling of transport and energy networks, it also highlights the significant failure to understand the risk and resilience of our interdependent energy and transport hubs.
As we build more direct links between transport modes and energy, we are creating critical points of failure if we do not fully consider risk and resilience of these coupled networks. What is the ‘Plan B’ when our main power sources are lost? In 2024 both Storm Bert and Storm Darragh saw significant power outages affect homes, businesses, and infrastructure, as adverse weather conditions delayed repairs and hindered efforts to restore supply quickly. In 2025, Storm Éowyn caused
over a million power outages as 100mph winds damaged overhead lines and infrastructure, exposing vulnerabilities in transport and emergency responsiveness.
Besides expected winter storms, Storm Floris illustrated that severe weather could strike even in typically calm summer months, leading to both significant energy and transport disruption. These incidents underscore the pressing need for integrated resilience modelling that links climate impacts, transport behaviour, and critical energy infrastructure response – the era of incremental change has run out of road.
If the issue is so clearly addressable, why has it not been fixed yet? There are many factors behind this; firstly, the transport sector is a very open, free market (predominately) in terms of private sector investment and light-touch regulation. In the UK energy sector, the regulator Ofgem has been constantly evolving the energy market towards decarbonisation, providing clear carrot and stick incentives.
Meanwhile, in the private sector logistics market, decarbonised business models are at best fledgling in nature and need to compete with business-as-usual rewards and competition. In addition, there is an inertia in the private sector wherein value from existing assets and fleets must deliver returns, prior to major shifts towards sustainability.
Now, in bringing these two networks and services together, after decades of siloed investments and regulation, we need to understand the differences in the infrastructure, markets, and their regulation. For example, in the energy sector one route to decarbonisation for decades has been to explore demand side reduction.
Such a prospect cannot be considered in transport, with mobility and freight growth to be encouraged – for economic growth as well as individual quality of life. The uncertainty of change is just as dangerous as the carbon emissions from transport.
Uncertainty induces paralysis and this costs time we don’t have, and due to inflation, requires further investment and finance we don’t have, with future costs greatly exceeding the costs of early intervention.
In terms of the physical network, the power grid within our energy infrastructure (which predominately consists of gas and electricity networks) operates to millisecond tolerances with respect to energy demand and its availability. Therefore, we need to harmonise what is highly diverse and dynamic transport demand, to the
availability and functionality of the grid.
Given these complexities, DARe (The National Research Hub for Decarbonised, Adaptable, and Resilient Transport Infrastructures) is dedicated to exploring pathways for transitioning to net zero, exploring the coupled phases of adoption, adaption and climate resilience of sustainable transport infrastructure and systems.
Part of DARe’s work includes developing an integrated virtual transport-energy network that is responsive to the social, technical, economic, and decarbonisation priorities of sustainability, with enhanced resilience attributes to help mitigate against climate events, asset failures, extreme demand, and cyber-attacks. We must be mindful, for example, that whilst transportation electrification advances – across rail and road in particular – it does so whilst competing with other strategies, like UK heat decarbonisation e.g., heat pumps, and Data Centres.
In DARe, we can see critical and shared objectives across the transport and energy nexus – we can see rewards. For example, can we unlock the £1.5billion that will be spent on energy curtailment this year (energy not used) to facilitate new transport demand? Can we enhance resilience through cooperation between transport-energy networks, for example during a climate event like flooding which compromises a sub-station or road network?
The future of UK transport infrastructure is that of a Cyber Physical Transport Network, which couples the attributes of the transport modes, at the interface of our future Virtual Energy System, which is being led by the new UK National Energy System Operator (NESO).
Without doubt, the climate emergence is here, and not something that should be considered only as a future threat. This is a period of unprecedented change, equally challenging and rewarding, and thanks to investments such as DARe, we can work with a network of experts across academia, industry, government, and society, to help safeguard our future transport networks and deliver first mover advantage in the emergent global market of sustainable transport solutions.
Key points
Importance:
- The energy and transportation sectors are key sources of GHG emissions.
- These two sectors are essential for daily activities and economic growth.
- With the development of transportation electrification, the energy and transport systems are becoming increasingly connected.
- Accelerating transport decarbonisation enhances economic efficiency, e.g. in freight and mobility.
Challenges:
- The relationship between transport and energy demand remains unclear.
- Urban and rural areas have different dependencies on transport and energy systems.
- Energy and transportation loads are highly variable and challenging to predict.
- Managing uncertainties in power grids and transport demand is critical.
Rewards and benefits:
- Combines the strength of both sectors to respond to climate change collaboratively.
- Provides an implementation plan to make the system more resilient.
- Offers a foundation and theoretical support for more intelligent and energy-efficient urban planning.
- Aims to unlock grid balancing costs to support affordable decarbonisation.
Through comprehensive modelling, real-world data analysis, and collaboration with stakeholders, DARe aims to support the development of a transport-energy nexus that is decarbonised, adaptive, and resilient to future challenges.
If you would like to know more about the DARe Hub and our work, please get in touch here: darehub@newcastle.ac.uk.
