Costing The Earth vs Coastal Net Worth? How the World can Harness Home-Grown Energy!

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Everything Electric podcast. Now, before

we dive into this week's episode, I just want to reflect on a couple of things that I've

sort of been aware of. We've just finished our live event in Everything Electric West

in Cheltenham, and thank goodness, one, the weather was spectacularly good, which was

always a concern, and two, loads of people came and it was a really lovely event, really

sort of an uplifting event, just great stuff. It's smaller than some of the ones we've

done in the past, you know, the very big shows we've had in Sydney, in Vancouver, and in

Farnborough in the UK, you know, those are really big events in the past, but something has

changed, and that is that the sort of struggle in a way that launched this channel, the struggle

to argue the case for the electrification of ground transport, if you like, and the adoption

of renewable energy systems, in a way that argument has been one, it's still a long way

to go, absolutely no excuse for complacency, but you know, we've passed 2000000 electric

vehicles in the UK now, there's 2000000 electric cars on the road, that is a substantial

proportion of the total, and the most recent sales figures is that about over 30% of new

car sales are electric now. It used to be like 0.0001%, so that change is noticeable.

I've sat in a traffic jam, week four last, coming out of London, and it was just a set

of traffic lights, there was about 10 cars around me, and I just noticed, you know, there

was a Jaguar I-Pace, there was a Porsche Taycan there, there was a Nissan Leaf in front of

me, and then I went, oh, hang on a minute, and I looked around at all the cars that were

around me, all of them, all of them were electric cars, it was just a fluke event, it's not

very common, you know, normally there's a diesel transit van chugging away next to you,

while you're waiting for the lights to change, this was just electric cars, the percentage

of electric cars, particularly in the South of England, really, really high. So what is

the purpose of, you know, a show about electric cars now, is it to, it's basically now to

say, look, there is some new technology coming, for instance, what we've just seen, most

extraordinary breakthrough that BYD have just demonstrated, they're flash charging, from

sort of 10 to 80% in under five minutes, you know, talking about 250 to 300 miles range

added in under five minutes, that's kind of like a petrol pump, that already exists,

it's rolled out in China already, people are using it already, they have plans to roll

out something like 300 of those charge points in the UK in the next couple of years, and

they'll do it because they've got huge capacity and money and engineering expertise, you know,

and massive batteries, which is what that needs to operate properly. Anyway, so there

is a cut, all the kind of initial resistance towards electric vehicles are kind of falling

away, which is fantastic. That's what really good, but it does mean that we need to rethink

how we present the everything electric shows, the, you know, the live events, all those

sort of things, we're having a proper rethink inside the company, but I don't think it

does mean we'll stop, it just means we kind of need to shift our focus. The other thing

that's really changed, I'll do this as quickly as I can, but the other thing that's really

changed is when I started the fully charged show, I'm just trying to think of those anyone

else doing something similar. There were plenty of YouTube channels about cars before that,

that wasn't unusual, but to be focused on electric cars was unusual, now there are tens of thousands

of YouTube channels about electric cars, literally tens of thousands of them. Some of them really,

really good. Some of them just like, why do you even bother? You know, so they vary in their

quality and their the interest of their output and the regularity of their output. That's the

hardest thing to do is to keep it going. You know, anyone can make an episode about an electric

car. That's a doddle. Make, you know, 52 episodes in a year for 10 years. That's hard work. Speak

from experience. So, you know, there's that challenge as well, that we're definitely not the

only channel doing this. We have got enormous support and we've got enormous, you know,

we've got a reputation, we've got well over a million subscribers, all those things doesn't

necessarily translate into huge views or enormous income. That is absolutely certain. So it is a,

you know, it's an exhausting process, but it's still fun because because of things like flash

charging happening and the cost of batteries coming down and sodium batteries and now solid

state batteries are being developed very rapidly. You know, the environment is changing, the

technology is changing. And indeed, the offshore wind industry and offshore energy generation is

changing and developing at a rate that is very, very encouraging and exciting. I've just done a

link through to what this episode is about. So today's episode is really about offshore wind and

energy generation, not just wind, but we'll get into that in the podcast. So I was very lucky to

a few months ago to appear and do a kind of after dinner speech for an organization called IMRS,

the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology. Amazing people. So this covers

like everything from a little fishing boat in Cornwall to the biggest container ship on the

seas and everything in between. So including naval, so there's a lot of naval officers there who are

amazing. There's a guy who works on submarines in the British Navy. He was about seven foot tall.

I've been on a submarine. You kind of need to duck and crash down how he survives on there. I don't

know. Such a charming bloke though, really delightful. And the current president of the

IMRS is Deborah Greaves. And I sat next to her when we had dinner and she's just amazing. And

that's our guest today. And I'm so pleased I managed to get her to because she's kind of busy,

got a proper job. She is a statutory professor of civil engineering at the University of Oxford.

Prior to that, she was professor of ocean engineering and director of the Interdisciplinary

Research Centre for Decarbonization and the Coast Laboratory at the University of Plymouth

with previous appointments at the University of Oxford, University College London and the

University of Bath. And she's now the president of the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science

and Technology. So she kind of knows her stuff. And she is fascinating and enthusiastic and optimistic

about what we can achieve in terms of energy generation and longevity and recycling materials

and inclusion of different people in the industry that she works in. She was a real joy to meet

and a real joy to talk to on this podcast. So without more ado, I've waffled on enough.

Please welcome to the Everything Electric podcast, Professor Deborah Greaves.

Our three free YouTube channels on EVs and Clean Energy Tech are funded by our fun-packed

test drive tastic events in the UK and Australia. Next up, Everything Electric Greater London and

then Sydney. All events include a B2B EV day and commercial vehicles too. So Deborah, thank you

for a start for agreeing to do this and taking time off. I've got a feeling you've got quite a

busy schedule and you've got a lot going on. So I'm very grateful for you to take this time to

talk to us. But I've explained how we met in the introduction and I just think what you're doing

is there's a whole other world of things going on offshore in the marine environment that I think

most of our viewers and listeners will know nothing about because we're all very aware of

offshore wind. That's a big thing. But I know there's other things. But would you mind if we

start with your role with IMRS and what that is and what it does? Because that's where we met

and that's where I spoke at that event. I was fascinated by it because it was kind of a world

I knew existed but I didn't really know anything about. So any information about that would be

wonderful. Okay and it was really lovely to meet you there and it was great to have you

give the after dinner talk. So the IMRS is the Institute for Marine Engineering,

Science and Technology and it's a professional body in a learning society which kind of supports

people in their careers through all things marine really. Marine maritime naval and my

particular interest is in offshore renewable energy. So there's a lot of marine aspects to that of

course. And this year I'm very honoured to be the president for the IMRS. So that gives me the

opportunity to sort of get really involved and provide a sort of you know where promoting

the activities of the IMRS and also to try to support it in its work in supporting those areas.

So my particular sort of focus and themes for the presidency are around how we can really work

together to benefit from the really the unique thing about IMRS compared to other professional

bodies in that it brings together different disciplines. So it's marine engineering,

science and marine technology and we need to have people working across disciplines to tackle

some of these really tough challenges that we face with climate change. And in the oceans and

in the marine environment then we feel that both in terms of the sea level rise and the impact on

our coastal infrastructure but also the fact that we need to decarbonise, decarbonise our

marine transport which is a large proportion of our emissions. And also we're looking to

provide or supply a lot of our renewable energy offshore as well so those are the areas.

So my theme is about offshore renewable energy, it's about bringing together the disciplines

and it's also about increasing the diversity within the sector so that we can make sure that

we encourage people from all backgrounds and all voices to be heard and contribute into the sector.

Because it's such a I mean it is a very exciting area and I mean I think there are two things that

I'm going to say three things, there's three things that in the time I've been

obsessing about this topic are the sort of seem to be the cornerstones and the ones that we're

more familiar with because they're in the environment that we live in is solar and batteries.

And of course obviously there is onshore wind but that's less common in the UK than in other

countries but you know we've all seen a wind turbine you know particularly in the more northern areas

of the UK. But the one area that I think is you can hear about but you don't really know about

is offshore, is what's going on offshore because you don't see it you know unless you live on the

coast you don't see it and it's kind of a bit mysterious. But then if you look at the statistics

it's a huge contributor to our overall electricity generating capacity. I mean that's what I find

fascinating about it is and the scale of it I suppose. I mean could you give us some idea of

how that's grown because just say you're driving up the M1 and there's three wind turbines that

look quite big that you're driving past and the difference between those and like the largest

that are going offshore now that are being installed at the moment. Yeah it is really

phenomenal and I think the speed of the development of offshore wind has also been really impressive

and as you say it's you know unless you live somewhere overlooking an offshore wind farm

it's not something that you're necessarily that aware of. So I think our first offshore wind

turbine went in as a sort of demonstration in 2000 and that was a two megawatt turbine

and you know sort of rule of thumb that would have supplied with two megawatts about 2000

households and the diameter or the rotor diameter of the turbines about 66 meters.

Now we're now looking at so that's two megawatts about 25 years ago

and then we've had some sort of you know continuous increase in the size of the turbines

and this is partly because it's one way to really reduce the overall cost of the turbine and of the

wind farm. So the largest ones now are being designed for sort of 15 or 16 megawatts and the

rotor diameter could be up to 250 meters so each blade you know well over the length of an aircraft

wing and the height of these things is is perhaps up to 300 meters so the size of a building like

the shard for each individual structure so it really is phenomenal and as a result of that

we have seen over the 25 years we've seen really impressive sort of cost reduction in the sector

as well so we've seen the prices go down partly because of that scaling up. Yeah I mean that's

I mean I suppose that's the thing that you know you an engineer would understand that instantly

but if you've got 10 two megawatt wind turbines that's 10 big poles 10 connections 10 lots of

wires coming out the bottom that need connecting up 10 lots of rotors and you know you can replace

that with one or two if you can understand that that's sort of economic I can understand the

economics like that that's probably going to be cheaper. Yeah you can reduce the cost by

doing more of it of course and standardizing processes but also by making it bigger and

sharing some of the infrastructure. Right and then what about because I you know do look endlessly

and there's a few of my friends it's kind of sad like a almost train spotting but

we're constantly checking the generating capacity in the UK and who what's generating what you know

there's various apps you can use but recently wind wind and solar really I mean very I'm talking in

the last few days we had phenomenal levels of renewables so I don't know what what can we

generate from offshore wind I don't actually know any is there any way of knowing the figures of

the maximum we can produce. Well I think at the moment we have we have installed capacity of about

16 gigawatts around the UK in offshore wind and that's that's about 15 million homes if you like

and it's about 17 percent of the of the power grid right but as far as in terms of renewables as a

whole I think we don't celebrate the good the good success that we've had enough you know we have

since in terms of greenhouse gas emissions we've reduced by 50 percent more than 50 percent our

greenhouse gas emissions since 1990 levels and for renewables into the grid it's consistently

over 50 percent of the of the total power grid and we have had as you say that we have had some

days and some not full days but we've had some times when we've actually had a hundred percent

we have passed a hundred percent right we have had a hundred percent not for a full day yet so one

of the the ambition for this year 26 is to have full days of you know fully non-fossil fuel

power into the grid so that's really exciting and it's it's incredible progress but of course

on the other side we're also increasing our electrification so we're increasing the demand

that we need because electrification is part of our energy transition and decarbonisation

as well so so we do need more and for offshore wind there are there are big plans to to increase the

the amount of offshore wind at the moment we have targets for about so at the moment we've got 16

gigawatts right and we're in what are we 2026 yeah we've got targets to have about 43 to 50

gigawatts by 2030 so that's very ambitious and then beyond that we need we need to increase to

about 100 gigawatts by 2040 for us to be on track towards getting to net zero by 2050 wow and I run a

project or a hub project called the Supergen Offshore Renewable Energy Hub and this is a

program funded by the UKRI Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council within UKRI

and it brings together 10 universities in the core but we have a reach across over 72 universities

in the UK supporting people doing research in offshore renewable energy I'm based at the University

of Oxford now professor of civil engineering here but we have we have as I say a broad range of

research across disciplines around the sectors of offshore renewable energy so engineering but also

into environmental science and marine ecosystems to try and understand the whole the whole system

and to do that research and we work very closely with with industry and with policy

and try to make sure that you know our research is well aligned with that

so yeah we're very we're very engaged with this we're working on offshore wind but also we're

looking at tidal stream and wave energy or parts of the potential offshore renewable energy

and for offshore wind of course the the in order to get to those very high numbers that I said in

you know in terms of the targets we need to go into further further uh further offshore and

into deeper waters and that's that's a really fascinating design challenge because we need to

the the the fixed turbines that we have at the moment that like you say it's like a stick in the

ground or maybe a jacket structure which is fixed to the seabed as we go deeper and deeper then

that just because doesn't becomes unenviable becomes too expensive and not a sensible

engineering approach so we need to look at different ways to provide the foundation to

support the tower and the turbine and so we're looking at floating structures floating structures

that are then moored and then attached to the seabed with anchors and and also some other sort

of hybrid type devices where you have a a hinged fixed turbine which which is guide or has got a

hinge structure at the seabed so yeah really interesting new types of device and new types

of structure that we need to to design but I mean that is we are in a you know a very blessed

position I kind of understood this when I spent some time on on sort of the in the hybrid ease

and alchemy in that we have these phenomenal tides around the UK which I sort of assumed was the

case all the way around the world but it isn't I mean we have a huge rise and fall of

tides around us and enormously strong tides going between land masses I mean between an island and

the mainland you know when you when you actually witness it you stand by it you go oh my goodness

the sea is moving really fast all the time it's going one way then the other I mean that is amazing

so that the potential to capture that energy is must be enormous but I also understand enormously

challenging from an engineering point of view yeah so tidal stream energy is is really fascinating

and of course with tides we can extract the the the power in different ways so either using a tidal

stream which is where we have a turbine smaller than the very large ones we've been talking about

but with chunkier blades often and that will be operating underwater and then there's tidal range

where we can use a barrage type seat or a lagoon type system but we're we're particularly interested

in in the tidal stream solutions right and in fact a number of projects have recently

received contracts of difference from the government to develop projects

in tidal streams so we're beginning to see the first commercial tidal project tidal stream

projects being developed developed which is very exciting and so here the the challenge is you

you have this turbine you need to place it in a very strong tidal stream and as you say that

tends to happen maybe around a peninsula or between land masses up in Auckland there's some

really impressive tidal races and so you could you could have it fixed to the seabed

and there are some other solutions where people have developed floating platforms and then suspended

the turbines from the floating platform and in that case you would need to tow the platform into

position and then and then roar it but but for the tidal stream area then some of the the very

difficult challenges are just as you say that the water flows one way and then it flows the other

way there's really not much slack tied between them but if you imagine trying to install a turbine

onto the seabed and maybe drill the anchors and so on yeah you don't have much time to do it and

if you need to go and do some maintenance and so on it's it's a very very challenging environment

to work in yeah I mean I suppose one of the massive advantages it has over wind or solar is

that it's in it is entirely predictable for sort of hundreds of years into the future we know when

the tide's going to be running when it stops when it turns or when it goes the other way

so you could you could easily build you know a system around that predictability obviously

yes it's highly predictable as you say forever I think other types of renewable sources of energy

depended on the weather typically yeah so you know we're quite good at forecasting that but

obviously it's variable and what we found in some of the research we've done looking at the different

sources of renewable energy so solar wind and then looking at tidal stream and

wave energy as well and seeing how they would contribute to the overall balancing of the system

and you can you can see that you know because they all occur at slightly different times they

tend to be out of phase with one another and then of course the demand has got a different phase

but taken together then they do provide a sort of balancing function and overall the total cost

of the energy system can be reduced if we do include tidal stream and wave energy as well

you can demonstrate that we'll reduce the amount of curtailment we might need reduce the amount

of over provision or we'd otherwise need to have and and reduce the cost of storage that we would

need so yeah I think a diverse a diverse set of renewable energy is really important yeah

and I mean that the one thing that I mean I was this is really going from a conversation I had at

the time when I was on Islay I think it's Islay isn't it though one of the in the Hebrides Island

I'd actually gone up there to look at a whiskey distillery that is completely renewably powered

so I wasn't there to but you know we then found out about the stuff but there was the

the challenge and I mean this is where I'm really fascinated by what you're doing but the challenge

of salt water and electronics and metal you know it's a kind of complicated mixture it's a challenging

mixture but presumably if you've got you know we've been we've got ships that are made of metal

and they've been on the sea for now hundreds of years and we've worked out how to do that

so I don't know how how big a challenge is it to mix you know effectively electronics and metal

and plastics with seawater yes well it it's it's an interesting area I mean there's various

different aspects to of course the types of materials the coatings that might you you might use

to to protect the materials there's the marine growth on the on the surfaces as well so if you

think of a ship then that will go and have its hull scraped cleaned off regularly and then as you

say there's the sort of electrical stuff if it's if it is under the water then that's harder to get

to and perhaps harder to protect as well of course all of these things are are possible

that's what engineering is all about but we also want to find solutions that are

are sustainable and use materials that are are going to as as well as provide the function

that designed for and be resilient also to have minimal impact on the environment yeah yeah so

you know we have we have a range of drivers that we need to do think about when

we're designing these new systems and perhaps you know we are when we're designing this new

technology then inevitably we're a bit harsher than we than we would have been when we were designing

things years ago because we know more about the challenges and we're really trying to to think

about you know design for end of life or you know how would you decommission how how would you

hopefully not decommission but somehow recover the material and the parts that are within these

structures and how can you reuse them in something else so yeah really trying to think about the

whole life cycle when we're right at the early stage of the design and also in terms of the

interaction with the marine environment and the marine ecosystem so that we really understand

you know what is the effect it impact on the production processes when within the environment

what does that mean for other species and impact on fishing marine biodiversity

but the site of EMEC that's the European Marine Energy Centre where you will have visited

that's in Auckland yeah that's amazing yeah excellent yes you went to visit that I think

yes yeah wonderful and that's where they can test these structures or bits of them or you know

materials or whatever in the sea over a period of time to understand how they would really perform

and they have some grid connections there so they can test wave energy devices

and tidal stream devices and connect them you know actually get them get them into the grid

and they also have some plans in the future to develop floating offshore wind testing there

and that sort of connects up with other other development parts of the development cycle so

we might within the research domain in universities we might use

experiments so we have some very large wave tanks the University of Plymouth for example and also

in Edinburgh where we can build a scale model of whatever this is wave energy converter tidal

stream or the floating offshore wind turbine and we can scale it down we can scale down the sea

states and the wind and the currents and the environment and then we can run experiments to

put these designs through their paces and try and understand how they perform so we do that in the

university and then we can take them out to somewhere like EMEC and test them in the sea

before going to the next step of commercial project development yeah but I mean that because

correct me if I'm wrong I think we may have mentioned this when we when we talked at the

event but there are functioning floating offshore turbines now are they not off the coast of

Scotland somewhere there are some yes that's right there are two projects there's the the

wind and I'd heard of high wind yes yeah so there's two different projects where they have

installed five turbines and learned a lot about that so with floating offshore wind it's very

interesting because there are different ways that you can design the floating platform to support

your turbine your tower and turbine and these these ideas and the designs have typically come from

the oil and gas sector where we where we have absolutely enormous float large floating oil rig

yeah in hugely deep water and some of those are yeah floating and water the seabed

right so the the same sort of ideas have been used to think about how we can support the

the wind turbines offshore but of course the design of the wind turbine you know it's a

real challenge for in terms of floatation stability because you've got a very tall pole

with a very large turbine on the top creating a huge thrust and overturning moment which is you

going to be difficult to stabilize and then of course you've got wave action as well and the

wind and the wave is variable so so there are different designs types there are and the ones

that we've just mentioned those demonstrations have different ones so it's quite interesting the

high wind one is a so-called spa and that's a very deep cylinder structure so it's a bit like

the monopile but it doesn't go to the seabed and that might be you know 90 or 100 meters below the

sea level and that below the water surface and then that structure will be will be more to the seabed

with a with a cable and and and anchors the other type of structure which is used in the

kinkardine farm is a semi-submersible floating structure so that's a larger sort of cross-sectional

area it tends to have three or four large cylinders connected by pontoons and then the the

tower will be positioned on one of those or in some cases in the center and yeah and then that would

also be more to the seabed but there are also a couple of other types of designs so there's a barge

type of design which also uses the same sort of principles as the as the semi-sub but it's more

like a barge and then the the TLP or the torque and the torque-legged platform which is a

which is which is a slightly smaller lighter platform in itself but it's got torque moorings

to the seabed so it's using some of the buoyancy pulling the device into the water further to

create that buoyancy to stabilise it and yeah so that's the TLP type of platform and each of those

types of design might suit different water depths, different sea conditions, different tidal ranges

and also of course very importantly different ports and vessels and infrastructure for

actually building them and getting them out there into the water.

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But I mean it is interesting the the connection between the oil and gas industry you've just

mentioned and offshore wind. I mean it's a very obvious connection but it took me a while to kind

of understand that if you were an engineer that had that had helped create a you know an oil an

oil rig that's you know hundreds of miles offshore sometimes then you're probably quite good at

putting in a huge tower for a wind turbine. I mean there's a lot of similarities in the technology

even though the end result is very different. I mean is that where a majority of the engineering

skills for installing this equipment have come from? Yes I think a lot of the skills are transferable

from the offshore oil and gas sector and so tension led platforms, semi-subs

are the types of structures and spars are all types of structures used in oil and gas.

But the design challenge and the sort of installation challenge for an offshore wind

farm is is quite different. So the you know the offshore expertise and the offshore design

expertise is very transferable from oil and gas but with the the wind sector I think a lot of

a lot of the development of wind has come from onshore wind. So it's quite an interesting

sector in that you've got sort of confluence of you know what's come from the onshore development

to offshore and then the offshore oil and gas offshore engineering expertise and that really

comes together with offshore wind. The early offshore wind farms which have tended to be

you know which are fixed platforms in shallow water I think it's been you know a sort of progression

in terms of the the techniques from onshore but now we're going to deeper water then it really is

and floating platforms it really is going to draw on that expertise within the offshore

engineering and oil and gas sector. Right. Yeah but you know it is also a different it's a

different design in that you know for an offshore wind farm you might be building I don't know a farm

of 100 maybe more turbines of the same design and you're repeating that right whereas in oil and

gas you you know you probably spend a number of years of your career on a single design and

installation of a massive a massive chemical factory offshore essentially. Yes so that's what

it's the scale of it I think because there is a when we I drove up to to walk me one a couple of

times but one of the times we sort of followed the coastal road and we were going around lochs

where there were where it was a oil oil rig car park effectively I didn't know you know where

they'd pull them in from offshore and they were they're just huge you know when you're in fairly

mountainous environment anyway you've got a big home and then you see this thing I mean they are

I think you know unless you've been on one you just cannot quite understand the scale of that

the size of it is just vast and so that sort of scale of engineering I'd be terrified being

involved in installing a very tall wind turbine offshore but for someone who's built one of those

things or seen one or had anything to do with it it's like it's just a job you know yes yeah well

like I said yeah yeah but then one of the things we discussed and I know one of the things that I'm

rest are very involved in is all the things you've been talking about you know if I think about it

immediately I think that needs skilled people that have experience that have that knowledge that can

pass that knowledge on and younger people taking up that that job you know there's basically a lot

of jobs there's a lot of jobs involved in constructing all this and I mean from what I

remember you saying there is definitely a shortage of we have a shortage of engineers of that caliber

and those skill sets yes that's right and this is where MRS comes in in terms of accrediting degree

courses encouraging people into the sector and then supporting people through their careers so

helping them to get their professional membership and then as a sort of learning society

running events and special interest groups and so on to to to help people gain the skills

and the knowledge that they need maybe to transition into offshore wind or offshore renewable energy

from other sectors I mean we've talked about oil and gas which is this sort of obvious one but

there are others as well potentially you know we need to have in order to connect these enormous

devices we need to have a lot of cables we need to have expertise in developing electrical cables

and the components and the systems we need to manufacture those we need to design those we

also need to design and manufacture the cables and so on but as well as all of the stuff that

needs to go out there there are the the vessels and the ports that need development in order to be

able to do it and then there's the the whole you know the lifetime servicing of these farms

inspection and monitoring and I and I don't think I've mentioned the environment I mentioned

the environment earlier but there's the environmental impact assessments and ongoing monitoring as well

so there's a lot of work for environmental consultants as well as the engineers

and designers and the builders and the services of these of these wind farms so yeah I think we

within Supergen we we we recently published a 2040 outlet report and there we reckon we need

for for offshore wind for example we need to have six times the capacity we have at the

moment by 2040 so going from 1916 gigawatts up to up to you know 40 to 60 and then we need to

sorry 100 gigawatts by 2040 and then we need to have lots more people so we've got there are about

40 000 people already working in offshore wind um so that's grown phenomenally two years ago I

probably would have said 30 000 right that's growing fast but we need more so we need probably

you know estimates around about 100 000 by 2040 so we need six times the number of people

that we had a couple of years ago and we need to have um we also need to have we need to do it

faster so we need to increase our understanding and try to speed up the process of project

development and all of these things need need need new ideas need new supply chain need new

research and innovation to be embedded and underpinning the the development of the sector

and making sure that we can yeah we can we can achieve the targets and get people

engaged and excited to be part of this and it's a really good example it's a really sort of concrete

example of the the benefits apart from the environmental benefits or the climate benefits

but the benefits of having an energy generating industry that is local to us means that we're

not sending any you know for every megawatt produced every megawatt hour produced we are I'm

guessing sending slightly less money overseas to pay for imported gas or oil and and also we're

employing people that will spend money in within our economy I mean it's you know it's a it's a

there is a bit of win-win I'm just trying to be I'm trying to do some political spin I'm not very

good at it but you know that makes a lot of sense you know on many many levels yeah so energy

security which is highly on the agenda now um but but also you know we we have this all around us

we have we're an island we have all of this fantastic resource so we and we have a you know a great

naval history and expertise so we should be using that so yeah energy security but the other thing

as you say is the growth the economic growth and the potential opportunities for for people for young

people to get involved in this is a really exciting and long-term career because this is going to be

happening for for years to come so there are huge opportunities and as I say it's it's really not

just about the engineering it's it it is about the engineering and all flavors of engineering

need to be involved in this so offshore ocean engineering civil engineering mechanical

electrical uh chemical engineering um naval architecture all of these things

skills but also um the environmental side environmental science oceanography um marine

biology and and then social science so also you know none of what one of the things that can as

we know in this country with offshore onshore wind um if the uh if the local community aren't

sort of brought in to really understand the benefits and get on board with the project

they can very likely um scupper it so you know you need to think about how um you can make sure that

you know there's there's no getting away from the fact that the presence of that construction and

that um that infrastructure will have will uh you know affect people who live in the community

yeah therefore um bringing them in this an early stage and giving them opportunities and encouraging

the developers of those projects to sort of share and investing within communities

to make sure that there are opportunities for school kids and um you know that there are

some real sort of social and economic benefits that can be gained in the region from those

developments and I think there's a you know at the moment we've got um we've talked a bit about

Scotland and about the the floating projects there and there are a number of uh lease sites for

offshore wind in Scotland um which are being developed and and as you say you know that there's

there's there's a large um offshore oil and gas sector there in Aberdeen and around Scotland

that is um being encouraged to sort of and is transitioning you know into um supporting and

and getting involved with the offshore wind sector in Scotland but there's some other parts of the

UK where you don't have that um existing set of supply chains and and activity going on um and

one example is the Celtic Sea so which is the area between North Devon and Cornwall

and and Wales right and that bit of sea and then going out um uh out to the western approach

that is um that has now been leased for uh development of offshore wind floating because

there's and is there not there's no installations like that there at the moment I mean I've not

seen them and I know that area but vaguely right okay so this is and that's an example of somewhere

where you know we don't have a existing offshore you know fixed offshore wind we don't have uh an

oil and gas sector there um we don't have those that supply chain and that sort of

workforce going on so it's it's a bit like um a greenfield site or a you know a virgin basin

some people describe it as and so the challenge is to develop the the the skills and the infrastructure

in the area in order to develop the uh these ambitions for offshore wind right but also to

try and do it in a way that really creates benefit um for the region yeah so um for

the Welsh and and Cornwall and Devon um and yeah so so that that's one real opportunity that the

the way it's being developed is that there are five tests and demonstration projects smaller

projects that have been um leased and some of those have got their consents and now there are

of three commercial projects of larger scale 1.5 gigawatts each right and those have been um those

have been uh leased as well and there will you know as they it takes about 11 10 10 11 12 years

to develop a project so they will um be getting to the position of applying for their consents

and then applying for a contract um and and developing those projects but yeah we we also

in order to make that happen we need to make sure that we have got the grid to connect into them

and um ideally that we have um we have invested in the ports in such a way that we can manufacture

and assemble and um do a lot of the uh the installation work locally right we really

don't want to be we don't want to be um you know towing these in from elsewhere we'd like to see

the the the benefit be secured into the UK and and ideally locally to the projects yeah

now that is very interesting and i mean i'm so my knowledge of the seabed in the Celtic sea is

very minimal i mean because i'm sort of aware of the you know the the seven estuary and i can you

know because i live quite near the river seven so i know that that goes up and down quite dramatically

at times um but as it is once you get further out to sea that isn't like

doggabank is it is it quite deep yeah that's right so so we you know doggabank

we're gonna run out of space on doggabank on those uh and those shallow shallow water sites and

that's why we need you know that's why that the the crown estate which is the the body that owns

the seabed yeah and they they run these leasing rounds so they've leased the Celtic sea areas

and this these uh commercial sites these four and a half gigawatts which you know should be

developed over the next five to ten years um will will be the starting point so there will be more

to come further offshore as well in the Celtic sea but now they're working on sites in the northeast

so the northeast of the UK again they're deeper water sites and likely to be not your standard

fixed solution uh floating and uh as I say there's also a sort of hybrid between fixed and floating

where um some developers are uh or some um um foundation developers are looking at um how we

can you know sort of intermediate types of solutions they're not fully floating but they

are using some buoyancy and they are not totally fixed so they have some kind of um mooring or guy

um so yeah as we as you go beyond I don't know 60 meters deep ish then um the the traditional

fixed solutions don't work so well so then you need to find something else and within the Celtic

sea um then you know it's it's going into sort of 70 to 100 meters depth in those sites

but the tidal range is huge it's enormous and is one of the big challenges in particular for the

the installation phase and the um you know working with the port right um where you know

that that tidal range is a challenge and yeah and what about the yeah well I was going to get

sick I'm going to I mustn't take up too much of your time but the one thing I'd love to

understand more and you did mention it early on was you know and it was a thing I remember

being discussed I went to a couple of sort of energy conferences and there were photo you know

maps of that part of the UK with the tidal barrier built across you know the river seven

because the the tides are so huge and with all this the sort of statistics of how much that

could generate and how many and then there was one person there who said that does require us to dig

up quite a lot of Devon to build the barrier you know just a sheer tonnage of rock that you would

need forget the turbines bit you know the amount of material you'd need to build a barrier like

that I mean is that still being discussed as a plausible solution or is that or is it because

that was I'm guessing a really big idea to put a barrier across the sea like this yeah yeah well

there was a couple of years ago I think it was now there were there was a commission

to look at the seven estuary again right I think it was commissioned by the institution of civil

engineers and or the infrastructure committee I'm not sure but anyway Andrew Garrett led that and

that was yeah that that really tried to have a another look at the the seven estuary to see

what the what the solution really should be the the barrage idea I think you know as you say it's

very expensive in terms of material it's also got a you know a very difficult to justify

impact on the environment yes and yeah so I I don't think that's going to be

well it hasn't been recommended the other solutions are these tidal lagoons so it's a

very similar idea that you're holding the water back as the tide comes in and then running it

through turbines right on the way in or can be on on the way in and the way out actually but

but rather than blocking off the whole of the estuary which is obviously you know

you can you can create a lagoon and just have a kind of enclosed area which isn't

totally blocking off the estuary so that sort of solution is still being looked at right and

I know there are there are people who are who are very keen to see that happen so yeah

so it's another potential area and the you know the potential resource there is is huge I mean

it's a massive civil engineering project and it has various impacts on other activities

but yeah it would would be a large you know it could be a very large power production

large production of the career and again very very predictable so yes we'll see what happens

yeah and can we just finally discuss shipping because obviously that is such a massive

area of you know of who knows what I mean the one thing that I always always you want to have

harped on about is about 40% of global shipping is moving fossil fuel so you know if we can reduce

the amount of fossil fuel we're consuming then we that's one lump of shipping that might be reduced

but generally speaking I would always argue that shipping is a really good thing that moving stuff

around is has been generally beneficial to the human race except for the machines that make us

that make it possible I mean what developments are there in you know for a huge container ship or

even just a sort of mineral shifting ship or whatever it's I mean are there any plausible

alternatives to gargatuan diesel engines emerging well I mean there are and I think if you

I think within the the the carbon budgets that the climate change committee produces and they

they they make projections around you know where where it's likely that we'll see the decarbonisation

happening I think you know we we as you say it's a very large emitter it's a very important part

of what we do we're not going to stop shipping things so we need to we do need to decarbonise

the other difficult area of course is is the aircraft air travel yeah and both of those

both of these are entirely global so you know there's no point in um decarbonising your fleet

here and then when they go to the other country they can't they can't get the fuel or whatever

they don't have the infrastructure so I think that that makes it even more of a challenging

problem you know we can we can do things with our domestic cars and our charger chargers

within the UK and it doesn't matter so much if we're doing things at a different pace from

other countries yeah but when it comes to global shipping and aviation then yeah this becomes a

political you know a bigger process in terms of how we might do it I think probably we will see

different solutions for different sizes of vessel so there are some electric solutions

which are very exciting for the smaller vessels then maybe ammonia or synthetic

methanol might be used for for larger shipping there's also nuclear of course and yeah so I think

a range of things but there was talk of hydrogen being potentially used as a fuel I

think there's less talk about that now although hydrogen is also very important in in being

feedstock for other types of synthetic fuel and for industry but also in in the offshore renewable

energy sector then it's you know it could potentially be a very important part of the

energy system as providing some long-term storage right yes yeah now I mean that's I think that

you know what it feels like and this is you know kind of layperson's observation is that

you know we we definitely can produce a huge proportion I mean a properly game-changing

proportion of the electricity we need to run the country that's like I think that's I think

we can say that's possible we haven't done it I'm not saying we've done it but we're on track

we're on track for doing it where and then the the big ones are you know shipping and

aviation I think are you know the big big ones I mean even recently you know the

amount of companies I now know about that have are in the process of already have converting

their fleet of heavy long-haul trucks to electric but purely economically it's got nothing to do

with anything else they can they it work they work you know and everyone said that'll never work you

will never have a battery powered truck well there's thousands of them on the road or all across

Europe now and and more and in America as well you know that is a plausible alternative but a battery

ship that can go across an ocean I think we're still a long way off that you know yes but

maybe I mean you know if we were talking to maybe even just two years ago we probably wouldn't

have thought that hgvs would be you know plausible yeah possibly electrified so you know that's why

I think it's it is so important to keep potential diverse sources and technologies

alive because we want to you know we don't really know what the answers are going to be

so you know tidal stream maybe tidal range well yes tidal range probably and and wave energy

which is you know it's sort of further down the development pathway and is is still

not being looked at you know very seriously in terms of commercialization for the UK

but I think we should be I think we should keep it on the list because you know two years ago

batteries in hgvs were weren't considered to be sensible

and in two years time maybe wave energy really finds its place

so you know keeping these the the know-how and the opportunity the potential to sort of really

develop these new technologies is really important. Deborah it's been fantastic talking to you

it was when I met you and I knew I was very keen to get you on the podcast because it's

your knowledge is so you know fascinating for our audience I know that and I mean I'm really

hope we can we can do this again you know when there'll be another development you know because

I'm fascinated by what's coming down the down the line and the one thing I've sort of obsessed

and kept an eye on is the just the scale you know and I remember I remember being at a conference

I think it was in Manchester 10 years ago and they had a outline of the biggest wind turbine

blade on the wall and it was huge I don't know what it was like 80 meters and I spoke to numerous

people there they're going we've kind of reached peak blade that's as big as it can be and then

that what's the longest blade now is about 110 meters you know they're yeah and the fact that that

is the engineering behind that is possible is job smacking you know just so fascinating job you've

got yeah we haven't finally decided how how big it is if it is as big as all right you think they

can get bigger still well thanks for you talk to yes but it's been an absolute joy talking to you

thank you so much for your time today it's been really really good thank you so thank you very

much for the invitation I really enjoyed it very good well I really hope you enjoyed that I mean

what a joy it is to talk to someone who knows that much about it and what a you know the

opportunities to explore that more I'm very excited about doing more stuff about offshore wind

because we were this country the United Kingdom really is at the forefront of that that particular

industry it's amazing and we have this incredible skill base partly from the oil and gas industry as

as you heard but also you know a lot of engineers coming through the system now who have an amazing

you know career ahead of them in this in this field I'm really hoping we see some proper tidal

generation and some proper tidal lagoons that that make use of the enormous tides we have around

the UK as well as the offshore wind but anyway that's all I please do tell your friends about this

channel and do tell them to watch it because you know we quite often have some fairly interesting

people particularly on the podcast and we cover all kinds of topics on everything electric tech

not just cars but on everything electric cars which kind of just cars or transportation devices

in the biggest terms and please do subscribe yourself if you haven't already and as always

if you have been thank you for watching

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