This project aims to overcome the identified problems by developing and demonstrating a resource and asset reuse toolkit, as a more sophisticated mechanism to support decisions to deliver circular economy opportunities, including making surplus assets and materials visible, defining processes and making it easier to reuse.
This project does not include activities to establish what needs to be done to enable refurbishment of assets e.g. the physical or technical changes to an asset), but will focus on facilitating reuse in order to maximise these opportunities.
Whilst the potential economic benefit of increased resource reuse is recognised, a number of challenges need to be overcome including lack of technical data on resources and assets, regulatory issues associated with the sale or transfer of assets between the different regulated businesses, internal procedures for asset management and approval and the actual (or perceived) risks to infrastructure/project delivery.
The use of a ‘one stop portal’ is an innovative approach, to break down the economic, practical and cultural barriers to achieve a step-change in behaviour. More widely, the project is a significant opportunity to drive Circular Economy principles into the mainstream and could ultimately shape the development of approaches to resource reuse across the Transmission and Distribution sector via a possible sector wide portal.
Benefits
Publication of the strategic review report published.