911爆料网

Welcome to Series 5 of our Generation One Podcast!

In this first episode, following the recent Labour party conferences, our hosts Professors Mark Maslin and Simon Chin-Yee discuss the UK government鈥檚 plan to create 鈥楪reat British energy鈥�.

The (not so?) ambitious programme aims to make Britain a clean energy superpower to bolster energy security and achieve its net zero carbon emissions target by 2050. But how impactful actually are these policies?

With UCL鈥檚 Professor of Energy Policy Jim Watson, Emma Fletcher from Octopus Energy, and Dave Powell from Climate Outreach, we assess whether this is a genuine step towards green energy or just political rhetoric. Our experts also look more broadly at green initiatives, and whether they really can lower your bills.

Views expressed by our guests are their own.

• Listen to this episode听on:听听/听听/听

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Transcript

Generation One 听0:02 听
We are the first generation to feel the impact of climate change, and the last generation that can do something about it.

Emma Fletcher 听0:10 听
We need to make solar panels and air source heat pumps like the B Day and the avocado bathroom suite or maybe the gold taps of the past.听

Dave Powell 0:21
We all need to change our behaviour. We are naughty, and we need to change our behaviour and spend money we might not have on something we're not sure about.

Jim Watson 听0:27 听
We are probably going to have to decommission our gas grid. People argue about when that is and at some point they're going to have to turn it off.

Mark Maslin 听0:37 听
This is Generation One from University College London, turning climate science and ideas into action.
Welcome back to UCL鈥檚 Generation One podcast and Season 5. I'm your host, Mark Maslin, Professor of Earth System Science here at 911爆料网. Which, of course, as you all now know, means I study climate change in the past, the present and the future.

Simon Chin-Yee 1:08
And I'm your fellow host, Simon Chin-Yee from UCL鈥檚 School of Public Policy. Working on United Nations negotiations, climate policy and the political economy of development.听

Mark Maslin 1:18
So Simon, what you been doing this summer, apart from the wonderful tan?

Simon Chin-Yee 听1:22 听
Yeah, no, the tan is the important part. But I guess what we say is academia, sometimes we go quiet in the summer, but the climate stops for nobody, right? So this summer has actually been crazy, Mark. It hasn't stopped at all. Ever since 2023鈥檚 greenhouse gas strategy was revised at the IMO, the International Maritime Organization, negotiations have been on Full Tilt. I actually just got back from Copenhagen on Friday, where over 30 countries were brought together to discuss green shipping and climate regulation ahead of the upcoming crucial climate negotiations.听

Mark Maslin 2:03
Brilliant summer. But again, it's just going to accelerate more because we're working our way up to COP29.

Simon Chin-Yee 2:10
COP29 and your summer, Mark.听

Mark Maslin 2:13
I've been filming a brilliant six-part documentary on how new technology is helping us revolutionise archaeology. I've also been working with a famous games company, PUBG Mobile, and what they're doing is trying to get climate change into their gaming. So they have this incredible world where they have 50 million daily users, and they've allowed me to destroy a bit of it with future climate change. And it's called the Ruins of Erangel, and it's all part of a green program so players can actually improve their own lives as well as the lives of the people in the game. That was my summer.

Mark Maslin 听3:00 听
We are so excited to be back, because we have heaps of new stuff in store for you, based on your feedback. For this new series, we're bringing you more action-based climate stories, and we will be releasing a new show every month, all year round. We're going to tackle some of the big themes. We're going to be talking about biodiversity and of course, the International Conference in Colombia, COP16. We're going to be looking at food security and health. And of course, COP29 in Azerbaijan. We're going to be looking at sustainable aviation, oceans and shipping. And how we decolonise climate change, how do we make climate change more inclusive. And, of course, tackle the key issue, which is, of course, climate justice and social justice.听

Simon 3:55
And of course, we want to hear back from you as well. So if you want to leave a comment or even suggest a speaker, please contact us on podcasts, with an s, @ucl.ac.uk or you can head to the UCL Generation One website.

Mark 4:10
We love to get feedback and suggestions about the podcast. And you can also use the hashtag Generation One on social media to leave a comment.听
So without further ado, let us get started. And today we're focusing on the UK energy system: supply, economics, technology, and the politics that underpins it. We have three brilliant guests who will be hopefully shedding light on the challenges and also some of the potential solutions.听

Simon 4:27
In a moment, we are going to hear from one of our UCL colleagues, Professor Jim Watson, who is Director of the school of Sustainable Resources. Jim is going to tell us about some of the political choices facing the new government. But before that, we are absolutely delighted to have with us in our UCL studio, Emma Fletcher, who is Low Carbon Homes Director for Octopus Energy and a champion of many, many green energy schemes.

Mark 听5:00 听
And also we're welcoming Dave Powell, who is at Climate Outreach, and he's a podcaster in his own right. So Dave, even if you don't have all the answers to the UK energy policy, at least you can keep us straight on how to make a podcast.

Dave 5:11 听
I'll do my best. You're doing very well so far, carry on.

Mark 5:14
Climate Outreach is right in the sweet spot for Generation One, because its core purpose is about public engagement and driving action on climate change, rather than just the endless debate.听

Simon 5:33
So welcome to you both. It's great to have you here. If Emma, perhaps I could start with you and just get your take on the new government's plan to launch Great British Energy. Is that significant, do you think, or is it a little bit more political hot hair?听

Emma 5:48
I think it's amazing. I mean, the fact that a newly elected parliament can come in quite so quickly and make such turnaround to the industry, I think shows real intent. I think also, together with the NPPF changes that they鈥檝e brought in the last few weeks in the proposed draft, I think this is going to be revolutionary for how people view their energy.听

Mark 6:11
Emma, can I ask you, you mentioned NPF? What's NPF?听

Emma
NPPF 鈥� it's the National Planning Policy Framework. And it's sort of the rules that control planning in the UK. But all the sort of discussion has been about, you know, releasing planning restrictions, allowing more onshore wind. But now there is a really, really proactive proposal that says that council should be considering energy projects in a positive light. And that could be solar, that could be any form of renewables, that could be onshore wind.听

Mark 6:47
Are you equally positive, Dave?听

Dave: 6:50
Yeah, more so if anything, I think it's actually quite discombobulating, don't you think? Like, after years and years and years and years and years of things happening鈥�but the things that were happening, you know, the last government did do a lot of stuff on the energy system. And not stuff people really noticed, and often not stuff they were happy to talk about. And now the new government with, as you were saying, I mean, like, incredible kind of zeal and vigour is talking about these missions for clean power and accelerating net zero and really setting to it.听
And that the phrase Great British Energy seems to have excited people. We, 80% of people I think nearly, said they like the idea before the election. I'm not sure people really know exactly what that means. But I think they like the idea of clean energy. We know that from our research at Climate Outreach, they like the idea of homegrown energy, so our stuff, and the whole idea of energy security. So it's an idea whose time has come. And as Emma was sort of alluding to there, you know, that to make it happen, there's an awful lot of things have to be tweaked. A lot of levers have to be pulled, some of which some people might not like. And I think where the rubber really hits the road is in that ongoing kind of story. And continuing to keep people involved and people seeing it working, you know, getting excited about it in practice.听

Mark 8:00
So Emma, I'm going to come back to you. Can you tell us how Octopus Energy is working with homeowners to try and switch to more green energy sources?听

Emma 8:12
Yes, certainly. I mean, one of the reasons for its success, I think, is that it genuinely really does care about its customers. So we have been taking them, as well as ourselves, on a journey 鈥� in terms of installing solar panels, in terms of installing air source heat pumps, in terms of things like we're obligated to do, like doing retrofit works on low income households through our Eco four obligations.听

Mark 8:32
I gather also, you've been working with property developers to try and actually shift their view as well.听

Emma 8:40
Yeah, probably not as easy as some of our customers, to be perfectly honest. But the development community is fundamentally quite cautious and treads carefully when it comes to new technology. It also takes a very long time to get a development site sort of out of the ground, so to speak. So therefore, transitioning into different systems of heating homes can be challenging. For example, going from gas to an all-electric system requires you to upgrade the grid potentially nearby, and that can cause cost delays and problems.听
However, for those enlightened developers who we've been working for 鈥� and thankfully and increasingly, there's more of them 鈥� we've developed technology that we've learned, having sort of flexibility and working with electric cars, is that actually we can remove bills from brand new homes. So it's not modern technology, it's a solar roof 鈥� effectively solar panels on both sides of the roof, doesn't matter which direction 鈥� an air source, heat pump, and battery. And then smart control by us through the Smart Meter. Because we can flexibly control the house it means we won't charge any energy bills to the occupier guaranteed for 10 years.听

Simon 9:38
Great. I mean, what great initiatives that you've already started. So Dave, if we can come back over to you now, do you think that the media and that industry 鈥� I know those are two different things 鈥� but if they're doing enough to inspire, inform households on positive changes in green energy?听

Dave 9:56
Media and industry are not the same thing. I mean, I recently moved to a flat that is supplied by Octopus, and I'm really impressed by the stuff-听

Emma 10.06
Other energy providers are available.

Dave 听10:05 听
I was previously with Ecotricity, another energy company, who also, you know. I think that when you've already signed up to an energy company that's telling a great story about renewable energy, which increasing numbers of them are, I think, you know, you're getting a good story about that, and you're getting, often a story about the benefits. So I think industry is doing a pretty decent job. I think the challenge is to get it beyond those people, from an industry point of view, who are kind of, if you like, the earlier doctors or doing it for environmental reasons, or who maybe are a bit less worried about the cost of living. And the challenge is to make it, you know, something that everybody thinks is the smart way to get their energy.听
The problem with the media is it's a bit of a complicated suit of messages that you get, depending where in the media you are. Right now, there's some parts of the press are going out of their way to talk about climate change and the transition as being expensive and as being a luxury we can't have. And I think what we need to see really much more leadership in government. And we're having it, and it's great, and a story about the benefits, I think, we need industry to do even more. Not just the companies who have set their entire stall around renewables, but all parts of industry leading and showing that it can be done. And frankly, you know, we all need, I think, to just feel a little bit more like this is normal, and every day we're getting there. We're really getting there, but I think we've got a way to go.听

Emma 11:12
I totally concur. We need to make solar panels and air source heat pumps like the B Day and the and the avocado bathroom suite, or maybe the gold taps of the past.听

Mark 11:23
Can I challenge both of you, because this is fantastic, but it's all predicated on that the individual homeowner has money to invest in solar panels, heat pumps and hopefully insulation. But this is a national thing. If we were going to convert everybody to heat pumps by 2050, that's 3,000 that have to be installed every single day. Now, we don't ask people to give cash directly to build a coal fired power station. So why are we saying it's about the homeowner and it's their responsibility? Shouldn't it actually come back to say government, or to industry?听

Dave 12:04
Absolutely, right? And there's a bit of a problem with this idea of behaviour change and kind of consumer behaviour change, and you've just sort of alluded to it a bit there, Mark. I think for a long time, that has been the only way that the conversation about net zero has really been talked about, in that we all need to change our behaviour. We are naughty, and we need to change our behaviour and spend money we might not have on something we're not sure about right now, obviously that's not going to work. Now in a lot of ways, over the last 10 years, people have changed their behaviour. I'm doing air quotes here that listeners can't hear, but in things like recycling, or in things like, you know, small things around the edges, which are important, but that big stuff, there's still a huge way to go.听
Because, actually, you know, you can't PR your way out of the fact that if you want to get a heat pump right now, it is a hassle. It is expensive. You have to be able to do it. Like these things have to become cheaper. The business models that Octopus and others are doing are great. We need much more support for that sort of thing, much more grants. And not only that, but we need the story around it that makes people think that they're not just some sort of weirdos that are doing this, and actually it is normal and it's part of it. So I completely agree that the first part of any sort of public engagement and behaviour change is making it easy to do the thing, and affordable to do the thing, and having all the support that you need.听

Emma 13:26
Well, I mean, we totally concur that, you know, you actually do need to help people help themselves, and also help people access the money, in particular the grants. So you take the current boiler swap-out grant that's available of seven and a half 拢1,000 pounds. We've been spending a lot of time trying to bring the cost of installation down. So we liken it to a Formula One pit stop. Back in the day, it was 30 minutes to change a tire, and now it's almost three seconds, right? So I think also, and this is a big shout out, and it's a bit of a personal shout out, but community energy. I generally think that community scale-led encouragement really is going to be the way forward. This is a battle on every street, on every road corner, to get people to transition. And personally, having undertaken a district heat network in my village, you know, actually you've got to make it easy for people. But I'm honestly with Dave, we need more grants, especially towards the solar battery.听

Dave 14.21
We found in our research, we did some focus groups of Climate Outreach about over the last six months, talking about things like heat pumps, amongst other stuff. And overwhelmingly, it's people whose family or friends have got one that were saying to us, 鈥測ou know what? I wasn't sure about it, but my mom's got one, and it works absolutely fine鈥�. We're still at the point with a lot of this tech where I think people need to see it to believe it. So I am confident that the more people see it, they will believe it. But I do think there's attention needs to be put onto that, if you like, 鈥渟ocial norming鈥� piece; kind of helping people to see it as normal and experience it alongside, yeah, making it cheaper and easier to do.听

Simon 14:53
It is a personal journey, isn't it? My father, ever since he's installed solar panels on the roof, there's not a day goes by that I do not have a conversation about him counting the BTUs. And don't ask me what BTUs stand for. But it's almost like a game in a competition between him and my brother now, who can get the most, and if it snows because they live in Canada, it's a very sad day for the old BTU count.听

Emma 15:23
Yeah, it's like Tiktok for adults, right?听

Simon 15:26
Another great success story of climate action has been your role, Emma as chair of Swaffham Prior Community Land Trust, turning an entire village to green energy. How did you make that happen?听

Emma 15:38
Well, full disclosure, it's not an entire village, and it's not all green energy. But a vast proportion of the village have joined, or have the ability to join, a district heat network 鈥� allegedly the first, or one of the largest, rural district heat networks in the country. It's basically hot water piped around the streets in insulated pipes to people's homes. It's net zero in operation, we're an on-oil community, we don't have many options, right? We've got about a third of the village affordable housing, about a third of the village are listed properties, and we're an aging village as well, both in homes and people. So you know, we knew that maybe heat pumps were not going to work straight away on most of these homes. So we wanted to come up with a better solution that saw the whole village come off oil, because budgeting for oil is really difficult. Whoever you are, one minute, it can be 17p a litre. Next minute over a pound. So, yeah, it's a great project. I mean, you know something I'm incredibly proud of, and full disclosure, it's how I got the job at Octopus.听

Mark 16:38
And I have to say it's a very British thing. I mean, if you go into any place in Europe, you know, sort of district heating systems are everywhere, in major cities in small villages, everywhere. And this actually leads me back to sort of, Dave, with your work with Climate Outreach. How do we engage the public? How do you and your organisation try to actually make the British realise that we can be European, you know, we can have district heating networks like Emma's done in her wonderful village. But also we can have heat pumps, which they have in Scandinavia when it gets down to minus 25 in winter! You know, how do we move over those barriers of, 鈥渙h, it's new and it's strange and it's not British鈥�.听

Dave 17:19
I don't know what we would do is say, well, foreigners have got it, and we can have it too. But I do think there's something definitely in this. I'd love to ask Emma in a minute, actually. I presume once you see this stuff happening locally, suddenly it becomes absolutely fine and normal. There's something in that. But there's also something a bit more subtle about people feeling almost that it was their idea in the first place. And so there's that big broadcast stuff, we work with politicians and businesses at Climate Outreach to help them tell that big story. There's kind of challenge-by-challenge communication strategies like heat pumps, how do you get more of them, electric vehicles, where you know you're working as much with the trusted messengers as you are with government, finding the people who can actually talk well about these things. But also every possible opportunity, where things are still up for grabs and things can and should be shaped locally, help people to do that locally. And it might mean your scheme works differently. It might mean it takes a little bit longer, but if people buy in and feel they've been listened to, it can make a massive difference.听

Mark 18:14
So Emma, one of the questions that always comes up, and particularly in a certain part of the press, is the idea that all this is expensive. You know, it's all this new kit, all the solar panels, heat pumps. Do we actually have the evidence that moving to these sort of energy sources is cheaper?听

Emma 听18:35 听
Define what is 鈥渃heaper鈥�? Because there's quite different ways of answering that question. Certainly, the costs have come down dramatically for kit, considered green kit, we've seen solar panels fall by half over the last year. Just after I bought ours for our house! Domestic batteries are also due to probably half this year as well. So the cost of the kit is coming down. But I think in terms of, then, you've just got to make sure you've got the right tariffs to be running it as well. Because you can install the right kit. But if you haven't got the right tariff and you're not running it correctly, indirectly, you may cause yourself more problems on bills as well. So we're very much advocates for the right kit, for the right property, for the right occupier, combined with the right tariff to ensure that you are correct in actually getting the right price for what you've gone and installed.听

Mark 19:32
So Emma, we're very inspired by what you did in your own village. So can I ask, why isn't every village doing the same?听

Emma 19:43
Oh my, I鈥檇 love if every village was doing the same. And so fundamentally, we were lucky. We had county farmland around us, and the county council has been one of our partners. The county council were also our route to the money. And it's always good to be talking about the money. So this project is probably about 拢12million in terms of, it's expensive. And we fully disclose that it's expensive. But we also know that the next project would probably be about a third less, because it's effectively an R and D project, right? We've spent money on lawyers getting over hurdles with highways, we've spent money on planning. We've gone over and above because it hasn't been done before. We've spent a lot more time on public consultation, on website design, on brochures. Things that any other project coming forward, because we had nothing to go and look at, and kick the tyres. Every other community that's been to see us can come and kick the tyres.听
But it is really challenging. But all I can say is that there are community groups, hundreds of community groups we've discussed out there, that want to do the same. And if the government really is serious about community energy at grassroots, I think it's time to get serious and provide some longer-term grants to enable these projects to come forward. And that could be on a street-by-street community island project or hamlet or town or city, but I generally think there's a massive swathe of enthusiasm out there to take some of these projects forward.听

Mark 21:05
I know you've got grants and support, but how did you get the buy-in from the people in the village?听

Emma 21:14
We had these principles. We had to keep coming up with what we thought the residents would object to through planning and what would be a positive. And a real positive also is no green bling on the houses, you know, literally pipes buried in the driveway up to the home. You can't see anything. There's no smelly oil boilers you know, that are polluting into the village as well. So it's really trying to think, well, what would stop people joining.听
Now, lots of people have not joined up straight away. There have been a lot of sceptical people as well. But for a lot of people, it's change, will it work? But fundamentally, us working on the project, taking the point raised earlier. This is available in so many European countries. This is not new technology. We're just very slow at introducing what, quite frankly, is old technology into our towns, villages, etc. So we felt confident it would work. It was just a matter of showing people that it was going to work in their homes, but it wasn't going to cost them anything to join, and that really was the key to unlocking it.听

Simon 22:14
And if we could actually move on to you, Dave, just for one second there. On the back of that, you talked a lot about the different types of impacts that can happen. How do you go into these communities? How do you target the audience, to make them 鈥� to not make them, no one makes anybody do anything. But like, to help them understand what is the best solution for them, in terms of these energy sources.听

Dave 22:36
You have to understand who you're talking to. You have to do your research. There's a lot of people out there who care about climate in a kind of general sense. Like it's there, we're noticing it. More and more people care about climate change, want to do something, but I'm not going to sit here and say it's top of loads of people's priority list, because it isn't. Those people just need to think that it's a good idea, that it鈥檚 normal, that people like them are doing it. That's what most of us kind of need to feel. So communications aimed at most people isn't really about any of this conversation we've been having here, about the technicals and about, you know, even about the intricacies of energy saving. We don't all go out and get smartphones or air fryers or things like this because we've sat down and done a cost benefit analysis.听

Emma 23:15
Yeah it鈥檚 because we've gone to Lidl.听

Dave 23:16
Exactly, exactly, or because you know, we turn on the telly and we see this stuff, or our mates are talking to us about it. And so these things, like a lot of the public engagement job, which is, you know, what does that mean? A lot of it's about just making it seem like something you want to do. And that's about who you trust much more than what you're saying. So there's a really important job to understand your audiences, but it's also really important to find the people who can talk to the person you're trying to engage in a way that they'll go, yeah, that's someone I would listen to, and I would trust them.听

Mark 23:48
Can I challenge both of you? Is this too small, too little, and not quick enough? And I take the example: in the 1950s the UK Government decided that, for economic reasons, we were going to move from coal gas to natural gas. And they literally went street by street, and you knew exactly which day you were going to be converted. Is this something we need to do because we have to get to net zero by 2050 and housing stock is so important in that journey? Do you think, that this is great working with industry, but is there a point where we just go 鈥渞ight. We do it, and we're going to do your street on Wednesday next week鈥�?

Emma 听24:30
I mean, that's kind of what I've been trying to do in the village, full disclosure, if I'm honest with you. But it's not quite as easy as that, because back in the 50s, people were running out to the coal shed and getting coal and shovelling it into something, or maybe they were going to cut peat and they had to go outside. So what was on offer was better, right, than what they've got. Now, actually, when you're on something that's kind of working, it's kind of hard to convince people to go and swap to something else that might be as good, might not, but you're taking a bit of a risk.听
The psychology behind this is really difficult, because it's a bit like a tsunami for people being told they've got to sort the house out. Where do you start? Because you know, even just on loft insulation, you've probably got all your Christmas decorations up there, every iron you've ever bought, sort of cardboard box, just in case you had to take it back. You know this, it's a big hassle. The problem is that we can't literally just do it street by street, by street, home by home, by home. It's much more challenging. People aren't at home. It is more difficult than possibly back in the 50s, would be my take on it.听

Dave 25:32
I would say that you need all of the things that Emma was talking about. You need to make it harder to sell your home if you haven't insulated it, or you haven't got a heat pump in it. You need to make it much easier to do it, much more affordable. You need the business models, you need the loans, you need all of this stuff. And you need someone, if not street by street 鈥� I鈥檓 not an expert in how you do that 鈥� but you need someone who is really going out and selling this stuff. And you know, that might be the energy companies, it might be councils, it might be community energy, bringing all of those together. There's going to be a place-by-place thing. You can't force someone to insulate their home. Don't work like that. I remember a scheme in Kirklees in Yorkshire, about 10, 15, years ago. They literally went door to door and offered people free insulation, and 10% of people turned it down because they didn't want to sort the stuff out in their loft. Right? So you can't make people-

Emma 26:19
It's a problem!听

Dave 26:21
It's a problem, but what you can do is you can make all of the stuff around it point really heavily in that direction. And you get the story right from people that you trust, telling you this is a great idea, and seeing your neighbours have done it and create that sense of 鈥淚 want it鈥�.听

Emma 26:35
I mean, certainly for us, having sorted out the hot water and the heating. The fundamentally, the big scary thing. What we've seen in the village is then people in their own time have started thinking about the loft insulation when it's the right time. They've started thinking about windows, doors, solar panels, batteries. I genuinely think that actually dealing with the heating and hot water first, particularly in this country, psychologically does make it so much easier to do other things.听

Mark 27:00
Because if you think about it, in our home, all we want to be is warm and cozy and have a hot shower when we want.听

Simon 27:08
Yeah, we don't want to have to think about what all of this stuff, actually, is at the end of the day. So if you can give people, though, the agency, like my dad with the BTUs, to want to understand and to do it, then I guess that will maybe remove some of the barriers that you're both facing in implementing this.

Generation One 听27:23 听
You're listening to UCL Generation One, turning science and ideas into climate action.

Mark 听27:45听
It is so useful to hear directly from the energy companies on what they are doing on the ground to address the net zero challenge. And also to hear from Dave about Climate Outreach, whose core purpose is to drive meaningful action. So that's some of the things that are happening on the ground. Now let's turn our attention to policy.

Simon 28:06
Professor Jim Watson heads the school of Sustainable Resources within the Bartlett school here at 911爆料网, and we started by asking him to explain his work.听

Jim 28:14
So I'm Professor of Energy Policy, that's my title. And I lead something called the Institute for Sustainable Resources, which is in the Bartlett faculty. The institute is about 40 odd people, plus PhDs. We work in a whole range of resource issues. I think the basic thing that gets most people in my institute out of bed in the morning is making an impact. Making an impact on policy, making an impact on business, making an impact on civil society.听

Mark 28:34
So we know that 911爆料网 is powered by 100% renewable electricity. How do we actually decarbonise the rest of the UK? Because that's what your centre and what you look at, how do we do it? What are the steps to go there?听

Jim 28:49
Yeah, I mean, there's pretty well-known sort of road map strategies. But I guess that's where a lot of our research comes in, is understanding what you need to do to actually make that happen. Now, sometimes that's about persuading individuals to do things in their own lives, but a lot of the time it's actually governments and regulators setting the right frameworks, the right price incentives, so people have the right, if you like, reason, to invest in the low carbon option rather than the high carbon option. And of course, there are things we need to do to demonstrate and deploy technologies which aren't quite ready for that process yet. So there are some still quite speculative options out there that we need to do a lot more work on. But most of the solutions are known. It's getting them done in practice, and that's where we come in.听

Mark 29:31
So can I ask what are the major roadblocks to getting the new technologies and the existing technologies into the energy mix? Because on paper, when I read your stuff, it looks so straightforward, but it doesn't seem to translate directly into policy straight away.听

Jim 29:51
No, I mean, there's quite a lot of roadblocks, to be honest. So it's not just a case 鈥� for example, when we talk about electricity and making that low carbon, we talk a lot about the technologies that generate the power. You know, solar and wind, which are probably the cheapest options available at the moment, offshore wind and all the others. But actually some of the big challenges are not to do with those technologies. It's actually investing in the networks to connect them to users like you and me and to industries. It's the planning process, which in the UK and in some other countries, is very, very slow. And actually, we've got to make that faster, so those technologies can be deployed quicker.听
So there's a national sense of what we want to achieve, rather than having a sense that every local area can have their own particular plan and can object to every single project if they want to. I mean, a lot of people don't object, to be honest, but you know, a small number of objectors can really slow this down. So that's a key area of priority for the new government, for example. So there's things like that. And then often it is on the finance available. It's actually making available the finance. And often that requires policy drivers to do it so that businesses and householders can invest in the right thing. So there's a lot of barriers, but they're not really about the generating technologies themselves.听

Mark 31:00
Everybody's been feeling the pinch. You know, we've had the cost-of-living crisis. We've had people having to make those decisions, do they feed their kids or do they heat their homes. How do we move towards this renewable revolution, but not cause people that fear, anxiety, that their costs are just going to go through the roof?听

Jim 31:21
Yeah, I think that's incredibly important. I think sometimes we talk in very aggregate terms about, you know, the benefits of the low carbon revolution that outweigh the costs. And to, frankly, to most households, that means nothing. Because what they're feeling is bills. They're seeing costs for, say, putting a heat pump in or buying an electric car, which are beyond their reach. So what government, I think, has got to do, and probably businesses, too, is to translate that overall benefit into something that makes sense to people. But we really, really have to get this justice dimension right, because if we don't, the risk is the whole thing gets derailed by what are sometimes quite difficult politics around these big changes.听

Simon 32:12
How much direct contact does your department, or do you, have with government itself to ensure that we don't just create policy, but that policy actually can be implemented that has that impact?听

Jim 32:26
Yeah. I mean, the short answer is quite a lot. We have everything ranging from, you know, bilateral relations we鈥檝e developed over time, with teams within the development for energy security and net zero, so that has the lead on all of these issues in government. Sometimes secondment. So we've got a colleague at the moment who's working with one of the teams on industrial decarbonisation within DESNZ. We also work with the parliamentary system quite a lot. So for example, I've advised a number of select committees in the House of Commons and House of Lords. So that's not really direct influence, in a sense, but it's providing your expertise to help these generalist politicians understand what the issues are, what they should be asking of the industry, what they should be asking of ministers to hold their feet to the fire when things aren't going as well as they should.听
So you know, we do a lot of policy engagement. But I think we've recognized, perhaps more recently, that engaging with industry is also important 鈥� not just in terms of the research we do, but in terms of training our people. So we've got a very recent Master's program on Business and Sustainability, which is the most popular one in our department, in terms of applications. And it shows us a real thirst for people to come into this area, understand the role of business, and then hopefully go off into those businesses and really make an impact.听

Mark 33:33
Can you give us maybe some concrete examples of impacts that you think research has had on specific items?听

Jim 33:42
Yeah, I can talk about a recent area where we're getting involved. And we've just launched Centre for Net Zero markets, which is focusing, actually on electricity markets, and I think it illustrates the sort of research we do. So it's thinking about those market structures for electricity. So the UK and actually most of Europe and further afield still have market designs which were sort of designed in the time when fossil fuels were dominant in electricity systems. So the way the markets operate are tailored for that. They are not tailored for a world where you have close to 100% renewable electricity, or renewable and nuclear mixed together, if that's your taste. Basically, we need to get away from the time, at the moment, where gas, which is the thing that's caused all our problems in the last two years, its price, is not setting. At the moment, it does set the electricity price most of the time. And we want to get to a world where that doesn't happen, and that requires a rewiring of the way the market works.听

Mark 34:36
Given all your expertise and all the links you have in industry and into parliament, what's your analysis of the government's mission to make Britain the clean energy superpower and net zero by 2050, how realistic is that?

Jim 听34:55 听
Yeah, so firstly, the target of net zero has now been around for quite a while, quite a few years, and it's a cross-party agreement. So it's not just this government. The last government was heavily committed to it. So I think the really important push it's making which is new 鈥� although, again, it builds on the last government 鈥� is focusing on the nearer term, the next five years to 2030.听
The new government's made a good start. It's announced a few new things. It's announced a few changes. So the de facto ban in onshore wind has gone. It's reorganised things within the main department to bring a more strategic planning kind of framework into place for the 2030 target. And the reason auction results for renewables, which is being used to attract an investment, was much more successful than the last round. So there's things sort of happening which is moving in the right direction, but there's a long way to go. We have to keep ramping up even further the rate of change and the rate of progress.听

Simon 35:52
Could you give us a little more insight into the new technologies that are out there and what? What, how they can be used, or if they should be used?听

Jim 36:00
Sure, I mean, we talk most about renewables when we're talking about decarbonising electricity, because they are the cheapest way of doing it, and they're the easiest way of making progress quickly. But you know, this government, just like the last government, has stated, and it's something they agree completely on, that they're committed to both carbon capture and nuclear as other options. Not just for electricity, but for other applications as well as where in the economy. I mean, carbon capture is not necessarily new. It's been around for a long time as an idea, but the real struggle, and nuclear shares this is, it's very capital intensive. You have to spend a lot of money up front on the plant in order to, you know, get it into operation.听
So carbon capture is it's sort of like an end of pipe technology we sometimes call it. Which is that it takes emissions from a process, whether it be an industrial process, or a coal fired power station or a gas station, and then captures those two emissions, compresses them, and then sends them to an underground storage reservoir where they will stay, if you choose your reservoir right, for a long, long time. But it is that upfront cost. So the UK's had quite a long saga with carbon capture. We've had multiple competitions for industry to bid for public money to build it. It's never resulted in a real plant.听

Simon 37:12
And you mentioned nuclear and that the UK still has it as potentially part of their plan moving forward. Where do you see nuclear being in, existing within this realm of new energy systems that we will potentially need 鈥� or do need, let's face facts 鈥� if we're going to decarbonise the different systems?

Jim 37:31
Yeah, so I think nuclear is going to be part of the picture. It already is. It's a reducing amount of our power mix at the moment because older stations are retiring, those that were built in the 60s and the 70s. But there's one new plant under construction, which is way over budget and very, very late, just like its sister plants in France and Finland of the same design. And then there are other potential projects on the table.听
The thing about nuclear, it's very, very hard to finance. And for that reason, the industry is now pivoted to smaller versions of reactors, small modular reactors, as they're called, which, in theory, could be built mass-produced in a factory. So you could build many of them around cities and towns all over the UK. But as you might have thought already, that might not be entirely uncontroversial. You know, the idea of a nuclear power station down the road from where you live, people are going to take a lot of convincing.

Simon 38:22
And then the ministers themselves. What do they need to be pushing this forward?听

Jim 38:31
I mean, they're going to have to find some money. I mean, that's the challenge at the moment. You know, the UK famously, you know, we already are in a difficult economic situation. And Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, keeps talking about 拢22 billion additional black hole in the public finances. So that is an important bit of context for what we can do on climate change. So anything you can do that looks like it's not going to cost the public purse a lot of money, like renewables, is good.听

Mark 39:01
Jim, one of the successes of offshore wind was listening to the industry and providing a guaranteed price for electricity, and therefore a guaranteed profit. Not a huge profit, but a guaranteed profit. Do we need to think about housing in a completely different way? Are we going to expect the individual homeowner or the renter to pay for that transition? Or do we need to start thinking in different ways? I.e. renting the material, renting the facility. I mean, how do we just change the status quo?听

Jim 39:37
Yeah. I mean, there are some companies that have experimented with some of this, you know, doing deals, because they don't make much money out of selling as electricity and gas. The margins are very, very small, which is why some companies went bust during the energy crisis, because they just didn't have enough reserves to cover that. So they've been thinking the companies for a long time about other ways of engaging consumers, which obviously make them more money, but actually have some more durable benefits. They can differentiate themselves from their competitors.听
Another related idea I've heard about because one of my students over the summer has been looking into this, is that as we move through the transition from now to 2050 we are probably going to have to decommission our gas grid. We're going to have to, you know, stop using it at some point. People argue about when that is, and at some point they're going to have to turn it off bit by bit. There might be some bits of it still used for very specialist reasons. So why not have the gas companies that own those grids incentivized, not only to decommission the grid and end up with a massive cost somebody's got to pay for, but actually involved in the management of how the houses connected to that grid can be switched from gas to electricity using heat pumps.听
So it's a variant of what you've put there in your question. But again, it's a more managed approach to how you shift people from one to the other, rather than at the moment, where we're relying on market signals, a few grants here and there. And I guess it's, you know, everybody's choice. Which is fine for some, but certainly for others, it doesn't make sense for financial or other reasons.听

Mark 40:57
So we started the conversation, Jim, talking about Great British Energy. And as a political scientist as well, I want to know your opinion on understanding whether this is truly a leap forward on green energy or is it just political rhetoric.

Jim 听41:14
So it's neither of those, because it's actually quite modest, is GB Energy in terms of the amount of money that's being allocated to it. At least initially, if you compare it to the scale of investment we need to get to low carbon electricity to, you know, as close to zero emissions as we can across the economy. So it's quite small, but it's significant. I think it's important that we have a public investment vehicle there. I think for me, the test of its success will be whether it crowds in private sector investment by the things that it does, rather than somehow just displacing something a private company would have invested in anyway. Now that's a tough thing. Some of my colleagues work on economic evaluation and ask such hard questions all the time, but I think that will be the test.听
But one of the intriguing things it might make a difference in, because this is where we've made quite slow progress in the UK, is what's called Community Energy. So it's energy that is quite local, that is sometimes owned through shares by local people, you know, through things like cooperatives. And can GB Energy through, you know, taking stakes or enabling things by getting seed funding into particular projects, actually get that burgeoning community energy sector to be a bit bigger. There's a lot of it around, but actually, when you add it all up, it doesn't really make a dent in what we need in terms of generation. But it's a really important way of engaging people.听

Simon 42:33
Wow, imagine having local communities having ownership over their own energy systems. That's a revolution.听

Mark 42:39
So Jim, we've seen recently that the government, because it clearly came in with a large mandate, it has a large majority, they have been happy to push things through that may not please everybody. Do you think this is going to be advantageous when we're looking at some of the stuff we've been talking about? You know, the big changes we're going to have to make in energy generation, delivery, infrastructure and how individuals actually use energy?听

Jim 43:12
Yeah, I think, in principle, it is. And I think the government, partly, although I think is a little too early to tell, is following the kind of maxim that many commentators and others would say was, when you're early in a term with this sort of majority, you need to get some of the difficult stuff done in that early period. But the big question, I think, that they want, they should move early on, is the planning reform. You know, Keir Starmer was very, very public about wanting to be pro-planning, in terms of pro-building things, not pro-planning preventing things from being built, before the election. It's still unclear as to how fast and how hard is going to really follow through on that, but in some areas, such as building transmission lines, I think some battles will have to be fought in order to meet these broader societal objectives.听

Mark 44:01
I mean, because our listeners may not realise that in this country, it can take decades from a need being observed, the infrastructure being planned, and then it can take up to 20 years for it to be built. And the problem is that climate change isn't going to wait for us. It's not going to go 鈥淚t's okay, yeah, you get the planning that's okay. You do that鈥�, and then you can build, you know. So I'm with you. The planning system has to change, and no, not everybody will be happy, but we have to move forward on a much quicker stage.听

Jim 44:31
I think we do. But I think alongside that, and by the way, this isn't something that's unique to the UK. I think if, you know, I go to Brussels quite a lot, and if I participate in European conversations with my counterparts, they all share this issue. It's an issue of kind of mature democracies to some extent, and the way in particular countries organise themselves. But I think consent is important. I mean, one thing I did through the pandemic was I was advisor to Climate Assembly UK, the national citizens assembly on climate change. And at the time, I mean, it was an amazing process. But what I was left with at the end of that was that that shouldn't be the only time we sit with a representative sample of people, either at national or local level, and really get them to talk about the choices we face and what we should do. I think that sort of process is required alongside, rather than, Okay, we're doing planning reform, we've got the numbers to vote it through Parliament, and we'll just literally, metaphorically, steamroller over everybody that's in the way. Some sense of a process, you know, maybe at the local levels, where some of these controversial infrastructures are being put in to say, Okay, well, here's a say, but it's time limited, and once the decision's made, then we can get on with it.听

Mark 45:36
And I think this is the important thing about this podcast, and also UCL, is it's about impact. How can we actually get rid of those log jams, how can we help policymakers do the things they want to do? So I'm going to say thanks, Jim. It's been absolutely brilliant hearing from you.听

Jim 45:55
Thank you.

Mark 听46:01 听
And we're back with Emma Fletcher from Octopus Energy and Dave Powell from Climate Outreach. And they were listening to Jim, and it would be great to get the final thoughts from you about what you see as the priorities.听

Dave 45:16
I think that for so long, the conversation about this thing called net zero has been very technical, and there's a huge amount of technical stuff, and Jim has talked about a lot of it. And there are a load of policy related things that need to happen. Where I think we're at now with the next five years is unless people feel this is a great news and people are on board and switched on and excited and inspired and think that they're here along for the ride. Unless that happens, this is all going to happen slowly or not at all. We at Climate Outreach have been making the case for a while, and I think that moment is now, that we have to take the public engagement, conversation, communication, involvement bit, every bit as seriously as all of the stuff Jim was talking about.听
Take something like planning, which is really a conversation about what people get in their areas, what happens to where people live and the places that they love. And yet we need to change the rules to make it easier to build stuff. But you can't do that at the expense of bad politics or of annoying people, or people even more in our sort of slightly fractured democracy thinking stuff is being done to them. So as I would say, as well as all the policy stuff, I don't want to have to pick. But now is the time for so much more attention than has been the case up until now, on a story that inspires people, and a way of bringing everyone into that conversation that makes it feel like this is all right, and they're part of it.

Mark 听47:36 听
So Emma, you're at the front line. You're the pragmatist, you're the person who gets things done. What do you think of Jim's priorities?听

Emma 47:45
Well, at the higher level, I totally concur with Jim. We do need more flexibility in the system. You know, we're heavily investing in solar farms and wind turbines, both onshore and offshore, so we need to get those green electrons really flowing down the pipes. But then at the literally, at the domestic scale, we need to be helping people transition faster. We need to look at planning rules with air source heat pumps not being allowed within a meter of the neighbours鈥� property.听
We are pushing out much more widely our own air source heat pump, which is a higher temperature heat pump, so that it works with more homes, so we can get people transitioning faster. And I think we need to really be looking to the new homes market to make sure that the homes we're building now are already 2035-ready. People should not be buying homes now that need to be retrofitted for air source heat pumps. So you know, on the big scale, yes, more flexibility on the retrofit market. Yes, let's help people really encourage people to transition. But also with developers, let's make sure we're building the right stuff that people really want to buy and that the banks are willing to lend against.听

Simon 48:51
That's great. Lots of positivity this episode. That's always good to see. Emma, Dave, thanks for joining UCL Generation One.听

Dave 49:00
Thank you.听

Emma 49:02听
Thanks very much.

Unknown Speaker 听49:09

So that's it for this episode of Generation One from UCL, turning climate science and ideas into action. But stay tuned for the rest of the series, or listen on catch up to all of our episodes on your favourite podcast platform. If you'd like to ask a question or suggest a guest that you'd like to hear on Generation One, you can email us on podcasts@ucl.ac.uk. Otherwise, for more information about 911爆料网鈥檚 work in the climate space, and what our staff and students, as well as our researchers, are doing to make a more sustainable future, head to the UCL Generation One website. Or follow us on all social media #UCLGenerationOne.