Newly appointed as Professor of Industrial Decarbonisation at the University of Bath, Jenny Baker steps into her role with a clear and ambitious vision. By fostering interdisciplinary collaboration within the Institute of Sustainability and Climate Change (ISCC), she seeks to integrate social science and policy expertise into her work. Her goal is to combine engineering solutions with broader social and economic perspectives, which are crucial for addressing the global challenges of decarbonisation.

Previously a Senior Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering and EPSRC ECR ¹ Fellow at Swansea University, Professor Baker joins Bath’s Department of Mechanical Engineering and as a member of the ISCC. While at Swansea, she led the electrical energy storage research at SPECIFIC IKC ², where she worked on innovative solutions for non-mobile energy storage.

A chartered engineer with extensive experience in aerospace, manufacturing, and renewable energy – particularly in solar and battery technologies – Professor Baker seeks to expand the impact of the technical advances she has made and explore how social and policy dimensions can accelerate the transition to low-carbon industries.

Collaborating with social scientists and policymakers

Professor Baker's commitment to engaging diverse voices in sustainability, gender equality, and public outreach – including projects like Welshwomenwiki and Soapbox Science – reflects her belief that addressing complex global challenges like decarbonisation requires not only technical solutions but also collaboration across disciplines and sectors.

We ask Professor Baker about her vision and how she plans to leverage collaboration with social scientists and policymakers to advance the field of industrial decarbonisation.

What are your objectives as Professor of Industrial Decarbonisation?

Industrial decarbonisation is vital if we are to meet our climate targets but it must be undertaken sustainably. For example, the scope of decarbonisation should be global to avoid merely shifting emissions from one region to another, whether geographically or through changes in consumption patterns.

My research area spans sustainable manufacturing, particularly focusing on novel fabrication techniques for functional ceramics, materials recovery and recycling, and life cycle impact assessments of industrial processes. I collaborated with the University of Bath’s Faculty of Engineering & Design and Faculty of Science in my previous role at Swansea, and was attracted to this position at Bath because of its world leading research and strong industrial networks.

As a member of the ISCC, I want to collaborate with social scientists and policy experts to ensure that the research being undertaken has a positive impact on society.

How does your experience in the aerospace industry influence your research?

Whilst the aerospace industry contributes to significant emissions, there is also a lot to be learned from their manufacturing methods. For example, all critical components are tracked through the manufacturing process, and this continues throughout the lifetime of the part. This allows engineers to maximise the lifetime of the components without compromising on safety, as well as retain information on the composition of each part, which is critical for end-of-life recycling.

The battery industry will need to introduce a similar tracking process to optimise safe battery use. The challenges, however, are not just technical but also commercial. For example, how do you protect the manufacturers' intellectual property; how do customers respond to their vehicle usage being tracked? This introduces a social and policy dimension to the research I plan to collaborate on through the ISCC.

What emerging technologies or advancements in your field are you most excited about?

Circularity within the battery supply chain. Batteries from electric vehicles typically have a lifetime of 15 years and over. Eventually, however, we will have to deal with these batteries at end of life, and industry is preparing for that. There is some great research going on across the UK in this field, both in technological developments and in understanding use and lifetime scenarios for batteries in first and second life.

Tell us about your experience leading SPECIFIC’s first online conference in 2020, pre-Covid.

It was well timed! A lot of people came to me in March 2020 asking for advice on how to run online conferencing. A member of my team did a study which concluded that one UK-India conference avoided 45 tonnes of CO2 emissions (roughly the annual emission of 45 people living in rural India, the area the research was trying to support).

Despite this, many academics have queried the impact of emissions produced from the internet connection required for an online conference. My counter argument to that is that most people are connected online anyway, whether at an in-person or online conference, and the calculated emissions from the internet are minimal compared with flying and hotel accommodation.

This reaction brought home to me that if people do not like the conclusions of your research, even if they are highly trained scientists, they will often discount the evidence. This is in part why I am attracted to the research ethos of engineers and social scientists at the ISCC, who are working together to present our research conclusions in a manner accepted by policy makers and the general public.

The University of Bath is undertaking some interesting research into reducing the impacts of flying, but at present there is no accepted decarbonisation route. Therefore, it is important that we use all the tools available to minimise our environmental impact. Online conferencing and seminars are an important part of that. The other role of online meetings is to extend participation to those who cannot travel due to cost, visa, health or personal reasons. By widening participation, we can support increased impact on a global scale.

What are your proudest achievements to date?

A mentor of mine told me that it is important to take time to acknowledge what we achieve. This is something I try and do regularly, and give the same advice to others. Here are my top five:

• Building a diverse team at Swansea and having three of the team members choose to relocate to Bath with me. Whilst I am sure the reputation of the University of Bath was part of their decision, I like to think that they enjoy being in my team, too.
• Being awarded an EPSRC Fellowship to undertake research in manufacturing solid state electrolytes for batteries.
• Seeing students and post docs that I have mentored achieve.
• Every paper I publish! It is never easy, and each one represents hard work and innovation between a group of co-authors.
• Learning to kitesurf upwind (downwind is significantly easier!). It is a good reminder to me that learning a skill requires significantly more effort than practising a skill you already have.

Finally, who do you most admire and why?

The list of people I admire is very long, from sporting heroes such as Dame Kelly Holmes, to the ‘Queen of Carbon Science’ Professor Mildred Dresselhaus, to friends and family who have battled adversity but still come out smiling and supporting others.

If I must select one person, however, it would be Dr Youmna Mouhamad who has too many awards for her entrepreneurship to list, including being recognised by the Women’s Engineering Society as one of the top 50 female engineers in 2021.

I collaborated with her whilst we were both at Swansea University and she is passionate about scientific communication and widening participation. During her PhD, she had a eureka idea for a product, using her engineering experience to develop her idea into a prototype. After gaining a Royal Academy of Engineering Industrial Fellowship, she started up a company and is now launching her product. This is the critical journey that we all hope our research innovations will make, but to see it through is an immense task – the idea is the easy bit!