Speaker 1: Welcome to Zero. I am Kshatrati. This week the future
Speaker 1: of the grid. Today we have part two of the
Speaker 1: grid series for Zero and if you got last week's episode,
Speaker 1: you heard from Sunjeet Sanghera, a grid expert who used
Speaker 1: to work for Bloomberg NEF and recently moved to the
Speaker 1: National Grid.
Speaker 2: When I picture the grids, I picture driving on a
Speaker 2: long road trip in Canada. On the side of the highway,
Speaker 2: you'd see these power lines stringing across the countryside, and
Speaker 2: I remember thinking like, we can't possibly be connecting everything
Speaker 2: together with these wires. That is exactly what we're doing.
Speaker 1: The question of grid readiness is fundamental to the energy transition,
Speaker 1: Why we need to update it, how we update it,
Speaker 1: and who is leading the way. This week we talked
Speaker 1: to Keith Anderson, the CEO of Scottish Power, a utility
Speaker 1: here in the UK, facing these questions as the UK
Speaker 1: ushers in a new government, one which is pledged to
Speaker 1: create a new entity called gb Energy that's supposed to
Speaker 1: give the state a more hands on approach to the
Speaker 1: energy transition. Keith has a few ideas about how to
Speaker 1: get the UK back on track from meeting its climate goals. Keith,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Thank you. It's great pleasure to be here now.
Speaker 1: As the CEO of Scottish Power, you're responsible for supplying
Speaker 1: electricity to four point six million households around the UK.
Speaker 1: And one of the things we are going to get
Speaker 1: into is what you want to see from the UK government.
Speaker 1: But before we do that, I wanted to ask some
Speaker 1: broader questions around the grid, around utilities. If you look
Speaker 1: at someone in a role like yours, whether it's here
Speaker 1: in the UK, or in Indonesia, or in Mexico or
Speaker 1: in Croatia, there is something different about being a CEO
Speaker 1: of a utility company in twenty twenty four. This is
Speaker 1: a very different job from say ten or twenty years ago.
Speaker 1: How different is it?
Speaker 3: Well, A lot has changed over the last five ten
Speaker 3: years in particular, and I think one of the biggest
Speaker 3: things that's changed is people have kind of woken up
Speaker 3: to the importance of the grid, woken up to the
Speaker 3: importance of how is it we get power to people's homes,
Speaker 3: how is it we reconfigure, redesign the grid system for
Speaker 3: modern society, and how is it we reinvest in a
Speaker 3: grid that was built a long time ago to make
Speaker 3: it fit for the future. And I think one of
Speaker 3: the biggest things that has changed that debate is this
Speaker 3: march towards electrification. If you think about everything that's going
Speaker 3: on in modern society, whether it's eves, whether it's the
Speaker 3: electrication of heat, data centers, AI, digital technology, everything is
Speaker 3: about electrification. And that's why one of the constant phrases
Speaker 3: that we use when we're speaking to politicians to governments
Speaker 3: is now we're saying to everybody, electrification is unstoppable, because
Speaker 3: that's the way we're going. And so the more and
Speaker 3: more you realize that, the more and more you realize
Speaker 3: how important the grid system is. The other great analogy
Speaker 3: we use. It's wonderful having an iPhone, and no point
Speaker 3: in having an iPhone if you don't have a charger.
Speaker 3: It's the same with an EV it's the same with
Speaker 3: a wind farm. If you don't have that grid system,
Speaker 3: and you don't have the grid system ready and capable
Speaker 3: of dealing with all of that, then none of this works.
Speaker 1: But if we look at the grid, electricity has been
Speaker 1: the biggest form of energy being consumed in developed countries
Speaker 1: for more than thirty years now, so it's not like
Speaker 1: electricity or electrification is new. It's the rate of growth
Speaker 1: of electricity use that is new. So is it just that,
Speaker 1: you know, developed countries have kind of forgotten how to
Speaker 1: build a grid, and now that electrification is causing demand
Speaker 1: to grow much faster than it has over the past
Speaker 1: few decades, you're facing these new challenges.
Speaker 3: Well, I said, it's a good question and a good challenge.
Speaker 3: I think there's a couple of things going on. I
Speaker 3: think in a lot of developed countries, whether it was
Speaker 3: an established grid system built your forty fifty, sixty seventy
Speaker 3: years ago, there's been a little bit of a maintaining
Speaker 3: the assets, if you like, sweating the assets, getting the
Speaker 3: best value for money out of those assets, and continuing
Speaker 3: to use the assets. What what's then happened is the
Speaker 3: generation feeding into them has started to change quite dramatically.
Speaker 3: We were most of us reliant on systems where we
Speaker 3: had big centralized power stations, and we're moving to a
Speaker 3: system now of much more distributed generation. So that starts
Speaker 3: to create challenges on the grid and the way the
Speaker 3: grid system works. The other thing that has gone on
Speaker 3: is switching from carbon fuels fossil fuels to renewable energy.
Speaker 3: And again that changes the way the entire system works
Speaker 3: and the entire system functions because you have to start
Speaker 3: balancing in a different way. You need more interconnection, so
Speaker 3: you need to start developing your grid. And then the
Speaker 3: third bit of it is the electrification. You know, if
Speaker 3: you take a country like the UK, UK is quite
Speaker 3: often held out quite rightly as being a leader in decarbonization,
Speaker 3: but we are not a leader in electrification. With quite
Speaker 3: rightly and very importantly focused on decarbonizing the electricity system.
Speaker 3: But what we now need to focus on is electrifying
Speaker 3: the economy because all of these new technologies and new
Speaker 3: industries will look for electricity, data center investors, electrical connection.
Speaker 3: And at the same time you've got older industries, more
Speaker 3: established industries, and you've got things like the transport system
Speaker 3: moving from carbon to non carbon and electrification as well.
Speaker 1: But if we go back to the point you were making,
Speaker 1: which is that because of the distributed nature of electricity
Speaker 1: generation today and also the variable nature of electricity generation,
Speaker 1: the challenges are different. But you know, about a decade
Speaker 1: ago when renewables became cheap enough to start to replace
Speaker 1: for sol fuel power, either through subsidies or through natural
Speaker 1: cost declines. There was this fear that how are we
Speaker 1: going to handle thirty forty percent renewables on a grid
Speaker 1: that is variable? And now there are days when the
Speaker 1: grid is completely powered by renewables. So was that fear
Speaker 1: mongering overblown? Was the fear just not rightly placed?
Speaker 3: You always have a when you're moving for one system
Speaker 3: to another, you're about to have a bit of uncertainty
Speaker 3: and a bit of concern about how do you deal
Speaker 3: with that? How do you manage that? I mean, I
Speaker 3: can remember back to when people were getting worried about
Speaker 3: ten percent renewables in the system or fifteen percent renewables
Speaker 3: in the system. But grid technology moves on as well.
Speaker 3: The technology, the way you build the grid, the way
Speaker 3: you manage the grid, the way you utilize the grid,
Speaker 3: the way you design the grid is all changing at
Speaker 3: the same time. And also what you've seen lots of
Speaker 3: countries do is more and more interconnection, so making the
Speaker 3: grid system much much more flexible, allowing you to shift
Speaker 3: and move power about. You've also seen the rapid growth
Speaker 3: in some countries like the UK offshore wind which helps
Speaker 3: to balance off some of the intermittency of onshore when
Speaker 3: you've seen the growth of solar, which again helps to
Speaker 3: balance that off. So all of these technologies are coming through.
Speaker 3: We're seeing a huge growth and battery technology again helping
Speaker 3: to balance and manage fluctuations in the system and voltage
Speaker 3: control issues in the system. So all those technologies, all
Speaker 3: the variability of the technology, all of that investment interconnections
Speaker 3: just making it more and more possible and easier and
Speaker 3: easier to up the level of renewables in the system
Speaker 3: and manage a system in that way. So now you
Speaker 3: rarely hear people talk about the concern of what will
Speaker 3: happen if the wind doesn't blow one day because the
Speaker 3: system is run in such a different way. And that's
Speaker 3: been part of the big, big investment program that's going on,
Speaker 3: and part of the big investment program that still needs
Speaker 3: to come on the grid.
Speaker 1: Now let's come to Great British Energy. This is a
Speaker 1: pledge that the Labor Party has made about what it
Speaker 1: wants to do in energy. Now, the Labor Party has
Speaker 1: been quite veig about what exactly GB energy is going
Speaker 1: to be. But from what you know, is this a
Speaker 1: welcome development.
Speaker 3: The concept of Great British Energy is fine. I have
Speaker 3: absolutely no issue with it at all. In fact, it's
Speaker 3: great to have anything being set up or created that
Speaker 3: brings a bigger focus on the future of energy and
Speaker 3: what energy can do to drive the future of economic
Speaker 3: growth in the country. Is a really positive good thing.
Speaker 3: So that's brilliant.
Speaker 1: I'm very much focused on electricity, not all that.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and that's the critical thing. Again, it goes back
Speaker 3: to the conversation about electrification. Electrification is unstoppable, okay, So
Speaker 3: that's great and brilliant. It's now just about where does
Speaker 3: it add greatest value and in which processes, And that's
Speaker 3: the debate we need to have and get into the
Speaker 3: detail of okay. And that's where the expression comes about.
Speaker 3: And I'm not suggesting this is what it is. But
Speaker 3: if all it ended up becoming was a bank, then
Speaker 3: I'm kind of sitting here, Well, you know what, there's
Speaker 3: a hundred banks out there already. I don't need another bank.
Speaker 3: If it's involved in looking at policy, if it's involved
Speaker 3: in looking at how do we set up the mechanisms
Speaker 3: to deliver the hydrogen economy, How do we set up
Speaker 3: and encourage the transfer from gas boilers to heat pumps,
Speaker 3: How do we make sure there's a better effective rollout
Speaker 3: of ev charging and changing ev charging. How do we
Speaker 3: use existing schemes like the energy efficiency scheme to direct
Speaker 3: the money more to heat pump conversion, etc. Then those
Speaker 3: things start to add a huge amount of value. They
Speaker 3: start to unlock a huge amount of investment. Right now,
Speaker 3: if what the program did was buy shares and offshore
Speaker 3: wind farms or take stakes and offshore wind farms, fine,
Speaker 3: that's not going to build them any faster. It's not
Speaker 3: going to deliver them any faster. So it's really about
Speaker 3: where you add best value and the kind of amounts
Speaker 3: of money that are being talked about being made available
Speaker 3: to bridge energy. Then it's about how do you focus
Speaker 3: that And I think innovation and research and development policy
Speaker 3: creating the correct mechanisms, creating the right incentives right now,
Speaker 3: I think that is where any government coming into power
Speaker 3: could add a huge amount of weight and a huge
Speaker 3: amount of speed to what we want.
Speaker 1: Well, that doesn't sound like gb Energy Corporation's job. That
Speaker 1: just sounds like the government's job. Now, Labor has promised
Speaker 1: to decarbonize the grid by twenty thirty.
Speaker 3: Is that realistic targets get set all the time? Okay,
Speaker 3: and different governments. Different parties bring along different targets. The
Speaker 3: government and the run up to the election had targets.
Speaker 3: It changed targets, It made some targets more ambitious, it
Speaker 3: chopped others. I generally don't get overly excited about targets
Speaker 3: and dates. Having ambitious targets is good. If somebody sets
Speaker 3: a target of decarbonizing the grid by twenty thirty or
Speaker 3: somebody says there's a target of having fifty gigawats of
Speaker 3: offshow win by twenty thirty five, if we end up
Speaker 3: with forty eight gigawatts, is that a disaster.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 3: If we end up decarbonizing the system by ninety five
Speaker 3: percent instead of one hundred percent, is that a disaster.
Speaker 3: It's great to have big ambition. It's great to show
Speaker 3: the industry, to show the supply chain, to show investors
Speaker 3: we are absolutely serious about this and we will put
Speaker 3: in place the policies and the mechanisms to allow you
Speaker 3: to invest to deliver it. We will focus on speeding
Speaker 3: up the planning system and the clarity of the planning
Speaker 3: system to allow your projects to come through, to allow
Speaker 3: you to push harder and go faster. That's what we
Speaker 3: want that's what we like to see. Whether the targets
Speaker 3: twenty thirty or twenty thirty three doesn't make much difference
Speaker 3: to me as long as I have that ambition, that clarity,
Speaker 3: and the policies to back it up.
Speaker 1: Now, there are things that are just called natural monopolies
Speaker 1: because of the way in which a particular asset operates.
Speaker 1: Typically utilities which are building cables or utilities that are
Speaker 1: building pipes, so water or electricity tend to be natural
Speaker 1: monopolies that it is all only worth having one set
Speaker 1: of pipes and one set of cables to do the job.
Speaker 1: But natural monopolies should not exist in a proper capitalist
Speaker 1: market where there is competition and that drives prices down
Speaker 1: and helps the consumer as well as helps innovation. So
Speaker 1: one way around the whole existence of natural monopolies is
Speaker 1: to regulate them, and regulate them well. In this country,
Speaker 1: poor regulation of water utilities has meant they're now dumping
Speaker 1: sewage at scale and have been doing that for years
Speaker 1: into rivers into sea utility regulation has been running okay
Speaker 1: so far, But what do you think the governments could
Speaker 1: do better in regulating your business that would enable the
Speaker 1: transition to go faster?
Speaker 3: I think one of the things when we look at
Speaker 3: the UK economy and the balance of competition and regulated
Speaker 3: our sets, you need to think very very carefully about
Speaker 3: which model works best for what kind of investment. I
Speaker 3: think the regulated model for grid investment, the way it's
Speaker 3: working now with the real system, the five year cycle
Speaker 3: of investment is actually encouraging all of the right level
Speaker 3: of investment to come through. The system are also built
Speaker 3: into that mechanism. There's actually a huge amount of competition, okay,
Speaker 3: because if you look at the way all of the
Speaker 3: work is procured and the tendering process, there's a massive
Speaker 3: amount of competition, and tendering goes on feeding through to
Speaker 3: make sure the price that's being paid is market driven
Speaker 3: and incredibly efficient and effective, and that feeds into that system.
Speaker 3: If you look at the regulator's job, they're managing that
Speaker 3: balance between creating the incentive for companies to come forward
Speaker 3: invest but managing the scale of that investment and the
Speaker 3: impact and the end customer and the fact that we've
Speaker 3: got a model that then stretches that out over forty years.
Speaker 3: So when you hear people talking about the billions of
Speaker 3: pounds we need to invest in the grid that sounds
Speaker 3: quite scary to the public about what's that going to
Speaker 3: cost me? Well, you start spreading that out over forty years,
Speaker 3: you minimize that impact on individuals, and again that's a
Speaker 3: great model. And then what you also need to do
Speaker 3: with other parts of the market is look at would
Speaker 3: competition be a better answer or the correct answer? In
Speaker 3: some cases yes and in other cases no. If I
Speaker 3: give you a couple of examples, you look at smart
Speaker 3: metering or meeting and a decision was made several years
Speaker 3: ago in the UK to do that as a competitive process.
Speaker 3: I think most people now would look at that and go,
Speaker 3: you know what, we made a mistake in the UK. Actually,
Speaker 3: if ever there was an asset investment program and a
Speaker 3: rollout program that was suited to regulated market, it was
Speaker 3: that and would have been far more successful and far
Speaker 3: faster at doing it. Where we started the build out
Speaker 3: of offshore wind the regulator looked at creating the off
Speaker 3: or the offshore transmission market and putting that those assets
Speaker 3: out to a competitive process. It's not been bad. It works,
Speaker 3: but the question is what benefit has it brought. It's
Speaker 3: a lot more complicated, it's a lot more difficult to
Speaker 3: do into marriage and I'm not too sure that there's
Speaker 3: been a massive upside or a massive benefit. So yeah,
Speaker 3: what I always say in conversations with the regulators, don't
Speaker 3: do competition for the sake of competition. There has to
Speaker 3: be a clear, identifiable benefit in terms right now, when
Speaker 3: I look at the future of the grid and what
Speaker 3: we're going through in the grid, and if I look
Speaker 3: at the future of offshore wind and what we need
Speaker 3: to do on offshore wind, the other thing you need
Speaker 3: to take into account is we need such a huge
Speaker 3: uplift and investment. We're mapping out massive projects both in
Speaker 3: the grid and an offshore. Is that a good time
Speaker 3: to fundamentally change the model you're using. I would suggest no.
Speaker 3: What you need more than anything else right now for
Speaker 3: investors and for that kind of pace of growth is stability,
Speaker 3: transparency and sensible management of the costs and the returns.
Speaker 3: And that I think is more critical right now than
Speaker 3: worrying about whether it's regulated or whether it's competitive.
Speaker 1: After the break, it's not just about the grid, it's
Speaker 1: also about the people who work on it. Keith explains
Speaker 1: why the UK needs more engineers and by the way,
Speaker 1: if you like this episode, please take a moment to
Speaker 1: rate and review the show on Apple and Spotify. It
Speaker 1: will help others find the show. Now. You recently said
Speaker 1: that when it comes to the UK making strides and
Speaker 1: clean energy, there are easy answers which don't cost money,
Speaker 1: and that it frustrates you when those avenues are now
Speaker 1: being used. What were you referring to.
Speaker 3: That's it in the context of a conversation about how
Speaker 3: much money does the government need to put into this
Speaker 3: and into the future? Okay, And you know what I
Speaker 3: would say is, you know, if you look at the
Speaker 3: UK specifically, what is quite clear is that fiscally there
Speaker 3: are constraints in terms of where our economy sits and
Speaker 3: therefore how much money the government can put forward into
Speaker 3: the economy. Okay, in terms of what's called Great British Energy.
Speaker 3: I don't need or want another bank, so I'm not
Speaker 3: chasing this government looking for money. Okay. There are good
Speaker 3: regulatory mechanisms in the UK that encourage and allow investment
Speaker 3: to flow through the grid. There are some great market
Speaker 3: mechanisms like the CFD that encourage and allow money to
Speaker 3: flow through to allow the buildout of onshore wind, offshore
Speaker 3: wind and solar. So those mechanisms are great. What is
Speaker 3: it we need now is we need to look at
Speaker 3: what other blockages are in the system. If I look
Speaker 3: at this from the perspective of my company of Scottish Power,
Speaker 3: we're part of the a Bodrolla Group. Right now I
Speaker 3: can attract twenty to twenty five percent of the air
Speaker 3: Bodrolla Group's capital into the UK to invest in the
Speaker 3: UK system. I should be able to attract even more
Speaker 3: of that. What's the constraint speed? What the speed come
Speaker 3: down to? More often than not, it comes down to
Speaker 3: things like the planning system. So let's invest in modernizing
Speaker 3: the planning system. We've talked about modernization of the grid,
Speaker 3: We've talked about modernization of the generation system. What's not
Speaker 3: being modernized as the planning system. We're still operating the
Speaker 3: same system of all was operated. We need to get
Speaker 3: faster at getting things through that planning system. Now. Part
Speaker 3: of that is more resource in the planning system. Part
Speaker 3: of it's the coordination of the planning system with other
Speaker 3: bodies and other stakeholders. Part of it's not running it
Speaker 3: as a serial process, run it as a parallel process.
Speaker 3: There are a whole load of things like that that
Speaker 3: can be massively improved. That will allow decisions to be
Speaker 3: much clearer, decisions to be made much faster, and allow
Speaker 3: projects to get up and be running much much quicker.
Speaker 3: So those things you do not need hundreds of millions
Speaker 3: of pounds to resolve those kinds of issues. Okay, they're
Speaker 3: also things like new technologies coming into the market, and
Speaker 3: that's where governments can really help is how do you
Speaker 3: create the right policy framework and policy environment. How do
Speaker 3: you create the right incentives to start allowing things like
Speaker 3: the rollout of ev charging. How do you do the
Speaker 3: same thing for the rollout of heat pumps to shift
Speaker 3: away from gas boilers to the electrification of heating. How
Speaker 3: do you look at and encourage the growth and the
Speaker 3: development of the hydrogen sector. Again, from that perspective, we're
Speaker 3: not looking for huge amounts of money. A lot of
Speaker 3: that is about policy frameworks, market incentives, obligations to start
Speaker 3: invigorating those markets and encouraging investment in those markets.
Speaker 1: Another missing piece that you've pointed out is skills. Now,
Speaker 1: skills can mean lots of different things, and getting those
Speaker 1: skills can also mean lots of different things. It could
Speaker 1: be universities, it could be companies taking on reskilling programs,
Speaker 1: but specifically, what skills are missing from the workforce right
Speaker 1: now and who are the actors that can help bridge
Speaker 1: that gap.
Speaker 3: Yeah, people, skills, jobs is a massive part of this
Speaker 3: conundrum and of the challenge and the opportunity. So what
Speaker 3: do we mean by that? This is about getting people engineers.
Speaker 3: That covers a multitude of sins or opportunities. But that
Speaker 3: is from people who will be outfitting smart meters. It
Speaker 3: will be people jointing cables. It will be people stringing gridlines.
Speaker 3: It will be people designing and building wind turbines. It
Speaker 3: will be people designing and building foundations. It will be
Speaker 3: people designing and building converter stations. In HVD we see
Speaker 3: subse cables, Okay. It covers a massive range of skills
Speaker 3: what we see when we look at the growth even
Speaker 3: if you just take the grid Okay. National Grid have
Speaker 3: announced a sixty billion pound investment program. We've announced out
Speaker 3: to twenty twenty six, a twelve to fifteen billion pound
Speaker 3: investment program. There are massive programs of investment out there,
Speaker 3: and one of the main parts we need the physical material.
Speaker 3: The other bit is the people to do the work.
Speaker 3: And there aren't enough of them right now, and there
Speaker 3: aren't enough of them at the trainee level, and there
Speaker 3: aren't enough of them at the fully skilled experienced level. Okay,
Speaker 3: so what do we need to do? We as an
Speaker 3: individual company, we have a big role to play in that.
Speaker 3: So we run an apprenticeship scheme, we're on graduate training schemes,
Speaker 3: we go out and do employment schemes, we do gray training,
Speaker 3: and every company can look at doing that, but on
Speaker 3: its own that's not going to be enough. So we
Speaker 3: need a coordinated approach with the government. Local colleges. Colleges
Speaker 3: play a massive part of this. You know, this isn't
Speaker 3: just about universities, schools and universities, and we need to
Speaker 3: look at the concept of setting up training academies, shared
Speaker 3: training academies. Okay, because right now I'm looking to employ
Speaker 3: another thousand engineers. My counterparts at SSEE are looking to
Speaker 3: employ on other thousand engineers, and my counterparts on National
Speaker 3: Grid are looking to employ another thousand engineers. In fact,
Speaker 3: I think right now in and around central Scotland we're
Speaker 3: all looking for about two and a half thousand engineers.
Speaker 3: There are not two and a half thousand unemployed engineers
Speaker 3: in Central Scotland. So if we don't do anything differently,
Speaker 3: we'll just run around stealing staff from each other. You
Speaker 3: put on top of that all of the supply chain
Speaker 3: companies we use, so the cable manufacturers, the civil engineering businesses,
Speaker 3: the environmental consultancy businesses we use, and all of this
Speaker 3: subcontractors we use. They're also all out looking for staff
Speaker 3: as this workload roads grows. So this concept of creating
Speaker 3: joint training academies where we put hundreds of people into them,
Speaker 3: train them up, and then we can deploy them and
Speaker 3: share the resource through the supply chain, share the resource
Speaker 3: through the utility companies.
Speaker 1: But if it's a shared resource for training, that could
Speaker 1: just be done between companies, why do you need the
Speaker 1: government involved.
Speaker 3: I just think, you know, it's important to get the
Speaker 3: government involved, just from the point of view, because you
Speaker 3: need to then get all of the colleges involved. You
Speaker 3: need to get the schools involved in feeding people into
Speaker 3: that program as well. So that involves making sure that
Speaker 3: the school program is set up and designed to feed
Speaker 3: people into it, that the college programs set up and
Speaker 3: designed to help train and run some of the training,
Speaker 3: and that you aren't creating another initiative on top of
Speaker 3: fifteen initiatives that are already be run by other bodies.
Speaker 3: It needs a huge amount of coordination to deliver it.
Speaker 1: I know you're not an education policy expert, but I
Speaker 1: wonder what kind of specific interventions in schools, colleges, universities
Speaker 1: you think need to be made to help reduce the
Speaker 1: struggle that your company has to hire the right people.
Speaker 3: A couple of things on that. I think will's talk
Speaker 3: about stem about the sciences, about maths, about physics, and
Speaker 3: it's a great thing to focus on. And the more
Speaker 3: the more we can encourage children to be studying or
Speaker 3: getting involved in those subjects is hugely beneficial to the
Speaker 3: future of our economy, not just from the energy sector
Speaker 3: or the electricity sector, right across the whole of the economy.
Speaker 3: Those skills are fundamental in so many areas. What is
Speaker 3: as important, I think, though, is getting into primary schools,
Speaker 3: and I think you need to start this at primary
Speaker 3: schools and also educating the teachers and educating parents about
Speaker 3: what's happening and what opportunities there are in the future.
Speaker 3: I think right now, if you wander around primary schools
Speaker 3: or go and speak to parents and talk about Oh
Speaker 3: have you thought about engineering? I think you would end
Speaker 3: up if you asked ten parents or ten teachers what
Speaker 3: they thought about the future of engineering, you would get
Speaker 3: a very wide and weird array of answers from is
Speaker 3: that something to do with getting your hands dirty fixing
Speaker 3: the underneath of a car? In this country culturally, I
Speaker 3: wouldn't fully appreciate and don't hold the engineering profession up
Speaker 3: to the same level as the accountancy profession, the medical profession,
Speaker 3: or the legal profession. It's almost at a level below it,
Speaker 3: I would argue, and I'm not an engineer, I would
Speaker 3: argue today that engineering profession should be above all of
Speaker 3: those other professions because of its criticality to the future
Speaker 3: of this country. Whether you're looking at it from things,
Speaker 3: whether you're looking at from infrastructure, whether you're looking at
Speaker 3: it from digital technology. We need more people learning those
Speaker 3: skill sets, understanding those skill sets, and delivering the future
Speaker 3: of the country.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Keithan, thank you, thank you for listening to zero.
Speaker 1: And next week, on the last installment of our grid series,
Speaker 1: we'll hear from the founder and CEO of DS Conductor,
Speaker 1: Jason Holan.
Speaker 4: Fundamentally, progress in conductor is dependent on material science programs.
Speaker 4: But when you have better conductors, you also have to
Speaker 4: check the box for the utility in terms of their
Speaker 4: concern on practicality, safety, reliability, longevity, easy to work with.
Speaker 4: Value is not easy.
Speaker 1: He explains why breakthrough technology is just step one when
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Speaker 1: am Akshatrati back So