

About the DCU Centre for Decarbonisation, Sustainability and Innovation
Fewer issues are of greater concern than climate change, a highly complex challenge that is both impacted by, and impacts, all physical, chemical and biological systems on our planet. Engineering has tremendous potential to mitigate climate change and build a more sustainable future, for example, addressing the challenges of decarbonising our energy systems, embedding sustainability meaningfully and with objectivity, and applying innovative and creative holistic solutions.
The DCU Centre for Decarbonisation, Sustainability and Innovation (DESI) focuses on three critical research areas:
- Decarbonisation of built environment
- Decarbonisation of industrial and manufacturing processes
- Decarbonisation of energy and water networks (supply and demand).
Our core mission is to advance knowledge and innovation; foster interdisciplinary collaboration with stakeholders; enhance students and researchers' commitment to sustainable practices and research.

Co-Directors
Membership
Featured Research

NexSys is a Research Ireland & industry funded €12m all-island, multidisciplinary energy research programme, led by UCD.
Water Strand: The Purpose of this strand is to enable water utilities adapt to climate and energy targets in the following ways: provide key services in terms of enabling a more efficient energy sector; be more resilient in the context of climate-driven hazards and events; uptake new technology to enable efficient energy use in the water sector; provide for more efficient water management at building and industry scale; understand the social and political contexts that are needed to underpin these changes.
Energy Strand: Using life cycle analysis, whole life cycle costing, and energy system modelling, this project assesses the role of hydrogen in future energy system scenarios, as well as environmental impact and the cost of using hydrogen as an energy vector in Ireland towards 2050.
Transport Strand: Engaging with the heavy duty vehicle fleet across the island of Ireland, this project is developing archetypes that can define the challenges and opportunities to accelerate its decarbonisation, focusing on logistics, fuels, and zero-emission drivetrains.
Industry Focused project in conjunction with DAVY: To deliver an independent analysis of the challenges & opportunities that lie ahead for Offshore Wind Development and the need to develop Port infrastructure in Ireland towards 2030 to enable 2050 ambitions.
HyLIGHT is a 25-strong industry consortium through MaREI, the Research Ireland Centre for Energy, Climate and Marine, UCC, DCU and UG, developing an understanding on how to decarbonise Ireland's entire energy system across industry, electricity, heat & transport. A focus, using economic, social, and environmental analysis tools, is to understand the role that green hydrogen can play, from production to use, to enable full and fast decarbonisation while creating economic benefits to Ireland's citizens.
RESR is a Research Ireland funded project that has been down selected in a competitive process as a key solution to solving key environmental 2050 Challenges. RESR is developing solid state energy dense, safe energy storage technology for a range of hydrogen applications.