Latest / The Electrical Show / Thomas Nagy and Paul Meenan look at sustainability & net zero

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Thomas Nagy and Paul Meenan look at sustainability & net zero · The Electrical Show

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The Electrical Show with Thomas Naji sponsored by Bosch Professional Powerful power Tools sort for
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measuring tools and experts accessories. Welcome to the Electrical Show here on Fix Radio
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with Bosch Professional. I'm your host as always, Thomas Naji and in the
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hot seat on the right hand side is Paul Meenan. Once again the wealth
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of knowledge. The man is George Clooney looked like on today's show back on
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track. We're talking about exploring green tech and how sustainable green technology actually is
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in reality. Fix Radio time to crack on. This is the Electrical Show.
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I'm Thomas Naji and in the hot seat here is Paul Medan and joining
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us now is ex BBC Environmental pioneer and now speaker, facilitator and advisor Roger
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Harrabin. Roger, firstly, thank you very much for taking the time to
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come on the show. We really appreciate it. And just to bring the
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listeners up to speed. What are your thoughts on sustainable and green technology that
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we're sort of we're currently adopting in the UK, Like, how sustainable and
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viable is the technology we've got in your opinion? Well, we have good
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targets set, but this government has been extremely good at setting targets, are
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not very good on delivering them, and we are behind in most areas of
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technology. And you know, this is greached critical position now because I think,
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you know a lot of people might have been saying our climate change,
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not sure how serious it's going to be. But this summer, I think
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has made people wake up to the fact that this is really serious. And
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one thing that most alarms me is that at the moment, we have increased
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the planet's temperature by about one point two degrees. Now it looks like on
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current trajectory, with us and the rest of the world's governments together in societies,
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we're going to push the temperature up to between two point five and maybe
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three degrees. Roger, I'm a big fan of reviewing, researching, and
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gathering evidence. When I am presented with anything that our wonderful government present to
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us, call me a cynical, call me an engineer. And what evidence
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did you see that our current approach to green technology is doing enough to make
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the world more sustainable? Well, I don't think it is doing enough at
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the moment. You know, we're going and the government has chosen the right
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target to start with cars it's a relatively easy thing to do, and very
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significantly the car manufacturers are not kicking up against it. So over the past
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few days you've had oil and gas companies saying, oh no, don't you
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know, don't squeeze down and there's let us explore for more oil and gas.
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And you have had the car companies where they went on the BBC yesterday,
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the Society of Motor manage backers and traders saying, don't don't change the
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targets. We're geared up Brita and we're financed up for it. So that's
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their message to the government. And you know, we are kind of doing
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okay in cars except the charging. I mean, as you know very well,
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the charging infrastructure is completely inadequate and there used to be a lot of
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range anxiety, but I sense that's moving off now because cars are getting better
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and getting more used to it. But the charging infrastructure, I mean,
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something serious has got to be done about that, trust otherwise we're going to
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bust all the targets. I don't disagree with that. I know the state
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of the electricity network and it's well exactly and you know then how difficult it
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will be to get electricity to a lot of the places where people will want
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to charge up. The office and National Statistics wonderful group of people that they
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are. In some of their published documents, they talk about net zero as
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an experimental statistic, which when you go down that rabbit hole is frightening.
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What's your thoughts on that? Oh? God, Well, net zero has
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several different definitions, and no single one has come to the flour because each
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suit of different people in different ways. My own view is that net zero
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is it is not a sensible answer. I think what we've seen from the
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climate, has it changed so fast, so fast, much faster than scientists
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anticipated it would. They've got the temperatures roughly right, but they absolutely did
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not get the consequences of that. So given this, you know, I
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think by twenty fifty we will need to be emitting nothing at all, not
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emitting net zero, which is kind of normal for almost nothing, and then
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soak up the rest with forests. I mean, what if you planted the
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forest now, what guarantee would there be that it hadn't shriveled and died in
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the heat wave in two years or burned down in five years? And so,
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you know, I think there's going to be far more demands to these
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carbon credits then there will be credits available. So I actually think we have
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to revise net zero. But given that we're nowhere near net zero, it
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makes it hard to makes it hard to move the bar higher if we've already
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tumbled over the lower bar. Indeed, if I can say the cynic in
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me, the engineering me, I see next era being used as an economic
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stimulus or a stick to beat people with, rather than the actual social and
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ethical benefits that it should be producing and the people should be contributing to.
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Has become a money thing rather than a societal thing. But I've been asking
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more questions. Sorry, thank you. Stay with us, Roger, and
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we're going to talk more about evy and heat pumps. Next The Electrical Show
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with Thomas Naji on fixed radio, the Builders Station. I'm Thomas Naji with
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Paul Mean And on the Electrical Show. And still on the line is Roger
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Harribin, a journalist who is well versed in renewable tech and sustainability. Now,
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Roger, ev is a big thing, and it's growing at a rate
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of knots. How sustainable is the production of ev and in your opinion.
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The latest thing I read on this was that because of the sort of materials
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it uses and the manufacturing process, it will take two years from having bought
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an EV to catch up with what you would have had if you thought had
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an internal combustion engine, and then after then there are savings in CO two.
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That was the last thing that I've read, and it sounds kind of
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plausible to me, especially as you know, battery technology is improving really fast,
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and you know, the more people who are buying electric vehicles, the
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more effort will go into getting better and better batteries. So I suspect I
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certainly hope that batteries will reduce in size. But one thing I do think
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is really really stupid, and again an area where the government dare not tread
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is if you've got a petrol car, normal petrol car, and then you
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sell it and you buy a big suv with a skunking big battery that you
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try to drag around the country to increase its mileage, then you know you're
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you're maybe creating a benefit, but not certainly not much of a benefit.
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And I think we have to have a think. I mean, you know,
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if I were granted prime ministership at the moment then I was to say,
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we'd rather think about the size of vehicles we're driving and about the source
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of journeys that we're doing. So I support the government's idea that more than
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fifty percent of journeys in town should be on sort or by bike. We
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would be a downside fitter than we are at the moment, but the government
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has to sell that. And if I were in the government, I'd want
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to see something done about SUVs, you know, some incentive given to not
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use them, particularly in cities where they're clogging up all the roads and some
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people don't know how to drive them, and you know, it's a mess,
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and they could do something about it. Yeah, the Chelsea tractors,
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I know exactly what you're talking about, exactly. Just they always expect you
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to reverse. You know, there's one coming down the road and then view
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that has to reverse. Yeah, because they can't reverse them. I'm not
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going to say anything. Yeah, there seems to be if you don't mind
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me saying, it seems to be a weird irony in society. So for
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two years during COVID, we all lockdown, we all work from home.
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That will have contribute. Now people are being dragged back into the cities,
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which surely is increasing carbon emissions and carbon footprints in some form. I'd love
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to see somebody to do an objective gap analysis who doesn't work for an evy
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manufacturer or a government department. But then if you do that then the construction
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industry will complain not enough buildings are being built, although there's plenty of houses
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built. The people of vicious cycle. It's a vicious cycle and it almost
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becomes part where I remember when I was a kid, the government, we're
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encouraging us. You know, you're born in Tottenham, you lived there.
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Now you move out to the suburbs, but still work in London. So
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they were they were encouraging the poor behaviors that's led us to this increased journey
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times and increasing emissions. It's such outstandards. There has been research done on
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the benefit of staying at home and there isn't that carbon benefits that can be
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off threat in the winter if your house is not very well insulated, because
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if you go into a cozy office and you only have the space allocated for
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you to see it, then that's actually quite efficient to heat that room as
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opposed to heating your whole house, so it's not an easy equation. What
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are your thoughts on the viability of heat pumps and as an option to heat
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our homes in the future. Just moving on to a different topic here,
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we're up for a fight in you Well, you know, it just makes
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things up a bit. Okay, So I've been looking at heat pumps for
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quite a long time. I still feel a bit ambivalent, but I have
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been to Scandinavia and I've seen homes heated by heat pumps a really low temperatures
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outside. So you know, a lot of people's worry about a heat pump
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was that, well, how does it draw heat from the outside air when
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the outside air is so cold? The answer is, well, it does.
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It simply does. And all the big heat pump countries in the UK
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are up in Scandinavia, so you know it clearly works. Having said that,
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their homes are downside better insulated than ours, and insulating your home is
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fiddly and messy and it's just the damn nuisance. So you know the heat
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pump will work better if your home is insulated. But the National Trust to
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put out something today actually showing a big old kind of stately home saying this
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is heated by a heat pump. It has no insulation in the walls,
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it has no double blazing, it has no demonstration in the floor, and
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it has no insulation in the roof. But it's still warm enough because presumably
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they put a stunking big heat pump in. They said it was their heat
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pump. So they're kind of making the point that your house doesn't have to
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be massively insulated to keep it warm. I presumbly've got huge radiators, but
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you know, there's so there's that the technical thing, which I think is
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overcomable. The cost is a cost is a problem. The costs and the
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hassle are problems. It makes a really good point as well. Different countries
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have different infrastructure. You go to parts of Europe, they'll be able to
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do builds where they've got the space to implement this technology. Well, I've
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always said for most of my career, time and time again, a lot
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of our instructure is Victorians. It was designed and built, you know,
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nearly a hundred years ago in parts. How much can you squeeze a square
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pig in around whole with this new technology? Some places it's just not feasible,
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but saying that Gray's station actually has a heat pump and first on our
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railway and that's completely uninsulated and it does a grand job heat in the station.
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Fixed radio allim Thomas Nagi with Paul Mean and here on the Electrical Show
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and joining us now to discuss sustainability and green tech is Stephen Robinson. Now
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he's a managing partner at Hyperion Executive Search. Now, Stephen, thank you
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firstly for coming onto the show. We do appreciate it gracing our humble little
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show. Why just to bring the listener up to speed, why do you
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think that people should join this eco sort of sustainable tech industry if they haven't
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already. Hi, Thomas, time for having me on the show. First
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of all, great, great question. It was something that I asked myself
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a little while ago. And for me personally, my motivation has always been
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my little boy. He's severely asthmatic. So if I could move into a
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role where, you know, genuinely was having an impact on making the world
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are cleaner and better place than that was enough for me. And I think
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with all the innovation and the noon exciting technologies that are coming to market,
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right now. Have been around it a little while, but just gaining more
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and more momentum. Why wouldn't you want to work in this space? You
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know, the clean technologies that we're seeing in the home, from heat humps
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to EV and for sculpture to solar and battery storage. We're only going to
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be heading in one direction, and that is the electrification. Whether that is
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the electrification and decarbonization as heating the home or the electrification of transportation, We're
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headed in one direction. We're talking about EV. What how do you think
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we're approaching the role out of EV and that side of it. Well,
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okay, a laugh tells me what we need to know. Okay, you
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know, the UK, the UK government as lags behind many of the other
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European countries. I mean Norway is that you know, that's the absolute example.
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They're the role the role model. But we've dragged our heels I think,
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you know, the whole British fault situation and that procrastination around you know,
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secure in the future of the UK battery and automotive manufacturing sector. Albeit
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with the good news recently with the announcements around Jagui, land Rover and Tata
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and the Summerseta factory. That's implan and that's great. I think we've just
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we've just dragged our heels and you know, the last couple of days we've
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seen you know, a lot of procrastination around that's twenty thirty band of petrol
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and diesel and rich she's saying, you know, he doesn't believe in bands.
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It's it's quite contradictory to the mandates that were we really need to implement.
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And you know the fact that he's talking about new oil and gas licenses
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and it's a little bit messy, but you know, I think there's a
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lot to look forward to. I think it's it's been a case we've dragged
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our heels, but certainly we're headed in the right direction. So we can
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only improve from here on. So just on a side note, what if
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any changes would you like to see on how heavy is being rolled out at
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the moment. I think that the next thing that we're seeing is kind of
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you know, on the public infrastructure side, where a lot of people,
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you know, don't have the luxury that I have with it with with a
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garage in a private driveway. You know, they they live in an apartment
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block, or they live on the street, you know, so they rely
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on on street residential charge and I think in general, you know, there's
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many local authorities that don't have a dedicated EV or sustainability officer, and you
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know, some of the you know, the public sector procurement processors can take
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months and months and months to actually get a decision made and get infrastructured in
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the ground. So I think if we really focus on funding some of the
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local authorities better, if we focus on how can we connect to the grid
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better, so you know, with the dnos, how can we get more
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charge points in the ground sooner. I think they're the biggest things for me
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that are essentially stolen the rollout. To be fair, though, as I
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mentioned before, you know that there's there's lots of positives. I mean,
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when I first joined the sort of DV transition, you know, there was
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a clunkiness to the infrastructure. Contactless payment was very very rare. But with
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the new regulations coming in, you know for seven killer one above charges,
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contactless payments are going to be mandatory. We're going to see open data,
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and we're going to see greater slas regards both time and reliability. So things
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again can only get better. I think what we really need to then do
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the biggest issue to not stall the rollouts is to really to really promote it.
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You know, we've seen a lot of new news outlets and media outlets
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with the Rowan Atkinson issue and some of the other things recently just really bashing
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Eavy and thoughting about the negatives some of the panoramas and the BBC documentaries.
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What we really need to do is is here from people like myself and people
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who have been driving Electrical a lot longer than I have, about just how
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seamless and how easy it is, and how how good the network is now
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and how better the user experiences are. Because if we keep putting people off,
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we're not going to accelerate the transition. Yeah. I see what you're
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saying, and you do have validity here and what you're saying. But look,
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we have to wrap it up there because we've literally just we're running out
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of time here. But thank you very much for your time today, Stephen.
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We really appreciate you coming on the show. It's a glad Yes,
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thank you for radio the Builder Station, the Electrical Show on fixed radio.
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Well, our train is pulling into the train station That is the end of
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today's electrical show where we have spoken with Stephen Robinson and Roger Harrabin about the
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rollouts of green tech here in the UK. Now, just to summarize,
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yeah, I think green technology is in the eye beholder the sustainability aspect of
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it, because there are moral issues to it. There are civil you know,
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the benefit of society issues. There are technological maturity issues of it.
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Who's willing to pay for the mistakes of manufacturers and development of this technology.
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There are corporate so you get the hydrogens and the heat source pumps. There
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are pushes from manufacturers to make their solution the only solution. There's government pressures
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to achieve targets and re baseline targets, and also people just being able to
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pay their way through life with the cost of living. All of it clashes.
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I've got a feeling hydrogen is going to take off a little bit though,
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because it could blow up. Well, yeah, in Colindale there's a
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there's a petrol station, it's a hydrogen filling station and that that has now
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opened up, so you'll see more and more of it everywhere, no doubt.
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Yeah, So obviously someone somewhere thinks that that is also a technology that's
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going to that's going to increase. It's rapidly growing. There's a lot of
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backing behind it, and once people put their money in the pot, it
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happens because in theory that is like ultra clean. I mean that's like yes,
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super super clean. Yes. So I'm really keen to look to see
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how because there are London buses, there are hydrogen London busses now, so
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they are out and about. Yes, it'd be good to speak to someone
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who's from my hydrogen producing manufacturer texting Yeah, definitely. You can hear the
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show again from ten pm with more great music, and you can download it
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