Talking energy and climate change | The University of Manchester

Talking energy and climate change: “We don’t have hundreds of years to sort this out”

Professor Alice Larkin, Dr Aneeqa Khan and Geography student Aidan Rhode discuss the solutions needed to address climate change and global energy challenges, now and in the future.

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Hello and welcome to Talk 200, a lecture and podcast series to celebrate The University of Manchester's bicentenary year. Our 200th anniversary is a time to celebrate 200 years of learning, innovation, and research; 200 years of our incredible people and community; 200 years of global influence. In this series you'll be hearing from some of the nation's foremost scientists, thinkers, and social commentators, plus many other voices from across our University community as we explore the big topics affecting us all.

Today, we're diving into one of, if not the most pressing challenges of today, climate change and the required energy transition. The evidence is undeniable. Without immediate action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we will face dire consequences for the planet, health and society. But how do we begin to address such a monumental global challenge? And how can we make change more rapidly without perpetuating the mistakes of our predecessors?

Yeah, so I'm Alice Larkin, I'm a Professor of Climate Science and Energy Policy. I've been working as a researcher in climate change and energy since 2003, here in The University of Manchester, and as part of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and, and right now I'm the energy lead for the University.

So yeah, I'm Dr Aneeqa Khan, I'm a Research Fellow in Nuclear Fusion based in the School of Engineering and the Dalton Nuclear Institute at The University of Manchester. My research is focused on materials and engineering, and I also co-lead Manchester activities related to the Fusion Centre of Doctoral Training, which is training up our next generation of skilled workers for the fusion industry.

Fantastic. Thank you. And we're joined via telepresence robot from Washington DC by our third guest.

Hello, I’m Aidan Rhodes, I’m a third year geography student, currently on my placement year working for the US Department of Energy in Washington DC, at the headquarters, which explains why sadly I can't be there in person, but I'm glad to be joining you. And as well, as you know, studying climate change as part of my degree and renewable energy solutions as part of my placement, I do a lot of filmmaking so you may have seen me popping up on various University of Manchester social channels, as well as for the student TV station, which I ran last year.

And Alice, I believe you have attended conferences in this very same way.

Yeah, I tested some technology. It was quite a long time ago now, where we've been trying to look at ways to cut travel emissions. And someone said, "well, why don't you, doing talks is one thing, but what about the social side of conferences, because you're gonna miss out if you don't actually go there". And so I did a presentation – it happened to be on transport and emissions. And then I had… they had an iPad that was attached to a robot and I was operating it from my desk, and I was allowed to go and socialise and network later on in the evening. And they all had wine, and I made the mistake of not having a nice glass of wine at my desk in the George Begg Building. And so it's like there. But, like, I operated it and it like rolled up to the tables. And I had a little badge pinned to my screen, apparently. And so people were taking selfies so that I could see what I looked like with the other people there, sort of thing. And yeah, so I then sort of rolled up to people’s tables and had a chit chat. And they had a drink, and I felt a bit, a bit daft. But yeah, we’re getting really, really... we started that and yeah, it's great to see it happening again. You haven't got a drink there, though. Have you?

Just good old-fashioned H2O.

Yeah.

And Aneeqa, I believe that robotics is used in some of the nuclear industry, nuclear decommissioning, etc?

Yeah, absolutely. So the guys who have provided the robot today are from the CRADLE Centre based at The University of Manchester. And they're doing loads of robotics work that feeds into fusion, what I work in, but also the fission industry and dealing with radioactive waste. And, in fact, as part of the Dalton Nuclear Institute, they actually gave a seminar last week on this very topic. So, a really hot topic at the moment.

Super. Well, thanks, everyone, for introducing yourselves. Let's introduce Manchester to our conversation. We've got quite a legacy in the city, sparking the Industrial Revolution, which I suppose set in motion, everything leading to today and the climate emergency we face. And we've also played a role in atomic science. I mean, can we kind of start by putting Manchester's historical significance in energy and climate science into this conversation, I suppose, do we have some kind of extra responsibility? Or is Manchester a significant place to just face the challenge? Alice?

Yeah, I mean, I'm a Mancunian myself, and it's something that I've thought about quite a lot. Because of the areas that I work in, not just looking at the kind of, scientific and engineering solutions to climate change, but looking at the wider social aspects of it. And you get to talk about responsibility quite a lot. And then you think, well, what are the things that we know now that we know we shouldn't necessarily be doing because they're adding to the problem? And what is it that we knew when this all sort of started. And of course, people didn't know that there was like the creation of rising greenhouse gases was happening right at the very beginning of the Industrial Revolution. But Manchester was such an important part of that, we like to think that we were leading the world. And, of course, there are other cities, but Manchester was there at the forefront. But of course, all this, the consumption of fossil fuels was, was starting this rise in greenhouse gas concentrations, that was ultimately going to be creating a lot of problems for us in the future. And it was actually quite a long time ago, that we worked out the scientific relationship between burning of fossil fuels, and rising CO2 concentration.

But it does feel that even if we didn't necessarily know that we were creating the problem at the start, Manchester was the birthplace of the engineering discipline, it was the Institute of Mechanics, that was the the date, it's on our logo.... So, if we had the entrepreneurs and the innovators, we were doing really exciting things. But it does feel like we need to stop and think, right, well, if we started this, let's now come up with the ways in which we can kind of mitigate some of the unintended consequences of what was basically innovation to try to improve people's lives. It was trying to make that difference, and trying to make energy more accessible, and cleaner, and the world cleaner, and better, and so on, and so forth. But ultimately, it's created quite a challenge now that we're busy researching, trying to fix.

And Rutherford splitting the atom, a lot of people will know that as a headline, but I mean, can we put some detail into that? What was done in Manchester that has led us to where we are today?

Yeah. So you've mentioned Rutherford. And we've also got John Dalton, who the Dalton Nuclear Institute is named after. And I think without any of those pioneers, we wouldn't have the nuclear technology in the nuclear industry that we have today. And I think we need... we're kind of having a bit of a resurgence right now. Manchester has got so much expertise and knowledge in this area, and leading on from what Alice has said that, you know, we've created a big problem. And I think nuclear can be one of those solutions to that problem. And we're kind of seeing a resurgence in that. And the realisation that it's going to have to play a part in getting to net zero, which I think is really important, and what a lot of people are working on here at Manchester.

So, Aidan, you know, you, not too long ago, were a new student in Manchester. And how do young people engage, do you think, with the city and the University's history? How do they engage with the work that's going on here?

I mean, there's a very rich history at Manchester of very notable alumni that you see on the blue plaques around campus. And you're like, wow, Ernest Rutherford was... studied here, split the atom here. Or James Lovelock, who... I think there's a plaque for him... He was the guy who first noticed the trace gases, the CFCs, in the 1970s, that were contributing to the hole in the ozone layer. He did his undergrad at Manchester. And that's a huge climate... Some things we can learn regarding climate change from that, because there was a real unprecedented global consensus on the need to remove the CFCs from the atmosphere that's causing this big ozone hole. And like two years later, they were gone. So a lot of parallels that can be drawn there, from his work. And, yeah, as an undergrad first coming in at 18, there's... it's the biggest University in the UK. So there's so many opportunities to get involved with, you know, what the Students' Union is putting on and linking back to the history of the University, and also the city itself, getting out and about, and seeing what it has to offer. Yeah, I could talk for hours about that.

Before we move on to the work that's being done in Manchester and asking you all about that. I'd like to just turn to Aneeqa to ask for some definitions really around nuclear fusion, as opposed to maybe what people recognise now and which I believe is nuclear fission.

Yep.

So, can you explain the difference?

Yeah, yeah sure. So nuclear fission is what is happening in conventional nuclear power plants that are up and running at the moment. That's splitting atoms, much like Ernest Rutherford’s experiment that we've been discussing. And nuclear fusion is the opposite. It literally puts them them together. It's the process that happens in the centre of the Sun. It's quite challenging to try and recreate the Sun on Earth. So in order to fuse these nuclei together, we need very high temperatures. We actually need temperatures ten times hotter than the centre of the Sun, around 100 million degrees. We need the particles to be kind of confined for a long enough time. And we need enough of them in there. So, high enough density of them for the fusion reaction to take place. But when those nuclei combine, they release a huge amount of energy. And that's what we're hoping to harness in the future. And that's what nuclear fusion is.

Thank you. I mean, we'll come on to some of the challenges in more detail a little bit later. But, just, could you explain what needs to... What are the breakthroughs that need to happen? I know you could talk for probably days...

Yeah.

The technical details...

Yep.

But in laypersons terms, could we try and summarise it?

Yeah, so I think that the big one is having an engineering net gain. So having more energy out, then we put in. There was a lab in the States, the Lawrence Livermore National Lab, which, I think the year before last, demonstrated that they could get more energy out of the reaction than they put in. But that's just the reaction. It wasn't taking into account all the lasers they used to do so. So in fact, if you're wanting to use it as a commercial energy source, we're still a way off that in terms of net energy gain, in engineering terms, and then I think more generally, the engineering and materials challenges. So, I mentioned we need temperatures ten times hotter than the centre of the Sun. Confining that, it's not that easy. And in fact, at the moment, we use kind of superconducting magnets which are cooled to almost absolute zero, and then you've got the centre of your reactor, in the centre of the plasma, which is the really hot gas of the soup of nuclei, if you can imagine, just kind of floating around. The temperature in the middle of that plasma is around 100 million degrees, the temperature where the magnets are is around just over absolute zero. So, you've got a gradient, going from a hundred million degrees to almost absolute zero in the space of a few metres. And there's nowhere else in the Universe that has such an extreme temperature gradient. So yeah, really extreme in terms of temperatures. And then also you've got high energy neutrons being produced. So, the materials and engineering challenges are really, really tough. And then, like any industry, people. And that's why I work in a university, we need to be training enough people who have the skills in order to deal with those challenges. And I think that's really, really key if we want to make fusion a reality.

So, maybe Alice, if I can turn to you about the, the breadth, and maybe the depth, of research at Manchester University, the Tyndall Centre, but also in other areas, in other disciplines. You know, renewables, carbon capture, sustainable development... There's a lot going on. How'd you want to start talking about them? In an interdisciplinary way, perhaps? Or is it easier to...

Yeah, well, I mean, I think, if you think about the problems and how people think about problems when it comes to energy and climate change, we use energy in every aspect of our lives, in our homes, in our workplaces, in industry, all our transport systems, so on and so forth. And so, when you're approaching a problem, like, well, how do you..., how do you stop the energy that we're using, actually creating, a damaging warming effect on the climate? Which is essentially, the problem that we've got. You don't just look for, for a silver bullet solution. You have to have a portfolio of things that are going to make a contribution. And one of the reasons for that is the... There's the challenge that we're up against, which is time... We don't have hundreds of years to sort this out. In fact, we only have a couple of well, next ten years, we need to make massive progress. Really short timeframes.

Aidan, you're over there in Washington DC, you're working with US government. A lot of listeners to this podcast will be aware that the American government is going down a generally, sort of, green economy route. Would you, kind of, summarise how you, how you see, you know, the US government policy? As it is one of the largest nations emitting carbon.

Yeah, it's certainly got one of the highest emissions per capita and the lifestyles here certainly compared to Manchester are drastic. A lot of people in the US just drive everywhere, buy loads of food, waste loads of food. Like it's, it's... Everything is just significantly larger than in the UK. And me walking around or cycling around is sort of like, “what are you, crazy!?” So, there's very much an entrenched lifestyle difference in the US that is part of those figures. Policy-wise, yes, the current administration is doing as much as it can, that could be pushed out, that gets shut down in the House of Representatives at the moment, because that is Republican controlled, and they try to shut down anything that they see as too climate change related. So, they're doing as much as they can. They pushed out the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law over the last two years, which has unlocked hundreds of billions of dollars, in appropriated funding for the clean revolution, basically. The Department of Energy receives quite a lot of that, which is great. And allows the teams that I work with to put tonnes of money into, like loan programmes, like looking at startups that are doing great work in reducing the cost of solar, or hydrogen, or geothermal, and, and getting them rocking. And there's, they've built new offices that are looking at how AI can help us, like simulate nuclear reactors, and advanced modular reactors that are doing that, trying to see if we can use existing nuclear fuel to power new small modular reactors, which I'm sure Aneeqa can talk more about. And there's just lots of new ideas getting thrown around, and we have the money to invest in them. And so fingers crossed that that continues for four more years, from November.

What lessons, if any, can we learn them from, from what's happening in the US? Is this a model that UK should go down?

Well, I mean, investment in the energy transition, if I can put it like that, to transition away from fossil fuels, is needed. And this is large, large amounts of investments. I'd probably say that even the amounts of money that sometimes we're hearing going in and Aidan was talking about there it needs to be, I mean, it's so everywhere, it's all-encompassing, so it's, they're going to be much larger sums of money that are going to be needed. But it's, it's also about not just focusing on some of the technological side of it. We're often focused on the technology, and on this sort of, might be electric vehicles..., it might be carbon dioxide removal..., it might be... the sort of the big technologies that are on the energy supply side. So where we get our energy from. It's also about what, what is it we're using, how we're using it. What does that mean for our lifestyles... Aidan, you mentioned the high per capita emissions in the United States, I mean, and the lifestyle aspects of that, those things are kind of... We need to face up to those things that are politically difficult things to face up to. That people are living in a lifestyle that the resources on the planet couldn't sustain everybody doing that. And that's why there’s massive inequalities in the world at the moment. And it's like climate change, and the change to kind of transition away from fossil fuels gives us an opportunity to kind of look at the planet, look at the people and look at the inequalities there. And actually, we're gonna have to make massive changes, we can't just let things keep rumbling on the way they have been, and all look to the places that have the most, if you like, and think, oh, let's all go in that direction, because the planet can't sustain it. So, it comes back to can we have more... I guess, cross-cutting conversations about some of the more politically difficult challenges around lifestyles, what we use energy for, how we use it. And we need our scientists and our engineers, and we need people across our social sciences as well, to make sure that we really get this problem... from a human point of view, not just from a technical point of view. If that makes sense.

So I think for me, I like to break things down into short term and long term thinking. But also small scale and big scale. I think those are the kinds of the things that I look at. So, when we're talking about the case of the individual, or the case of the government, who has that responsibility? If you have no other choice but to heat your home, or cook with gas, or with coal or whatever, it's not fair to say, "no, you mustn't do that, that's really bad for the environment". Because if the option is someone having a warm house, or having food or not, obviously, you're gonna go with that, aren't you? So I think it... yes, the individual has responsibilities, but we need to acknowledge that not everyone has, is in the position where they can change what they’re doing. And that's where the role of the governments and large scale policies does come in, in order to make those other technologies, or the other, like, cleaner energies available to people so that it's, it's economically viable for them to be able to make those choices. And how Alice talks about bringing people along with you. That's how you do that by looking at it from those two perspectives. And then, on the short term, we need to be using existing solutions that are already available and ready to go. Because to be honest, anything we do now it's already too late. As Alice has talked about, climate change is not something that's going to happen.... There’s been so many, like, floods and droughts and all of these huge, big events that are happening at an increasingly alarming rate all over the world, often in countries that haven't really contributed to the climate emergency and they're the ones who are facing the brunt of it. I think we have an even larger responsibility to address that when countries like the UK or the US are the ones that have contributed to that as well. So, I think we need to use existing technologies that are ready now, whether that's renewables, whether that's nuclear in the short term, but then having that big picture long term strategies for other things that we can use in the future, whether that's fusion, or another technology that we don't know about yet. But keeping that kind of going in parallel, because in reality, we need to be throwing everything we have available. It doesn't matter if this one thing is not going to work, or this one thing will work. We need to try everything because it's... I don't think people I mean, we're here talking about it, but I really don't think there's enough urgency from our leaders, what a huge catastrophe this is.

And how do you think government should communicate that to people? It seems to be the politicians don't either want to alarm people, or be the politician that says, “You've got to wear a hair shirt and you've got to make sacrifices”.

Yeah. But I think that there is there's a lot of opportunity within what might you call co-benefits. So if somebody is not needing to heat their home, and they've got, because it's been designed in such a way that they don't need to spend money on fossil fuel-based energy to heat the home. And they're not having to then worry about the fact that they, that was going to cost them more and they're stressed, because do they have to choose between food and fuel. I mean, this is essentially what we've been talking about, in that, with a cost-of-living crisis in the UK, you know that the climate change agenda offers that opportunity to ask some of those difficult questions about how can we do this better. Such that we don't have the negative health outcomes and inequalities that we see all over, what, the UK is supposed to be a wealthy country, it feels like a poor country with some wealthy people in it. It doesn't feel like a country where the infrastructure is set up to support a really nice public transport system, for example, which would significantly reduce energy consumption, allow people to, kind of like, travel around and move around more easily, and more cheaply, for the people who can't afford to have other options. Because, as Aneeqa was saying, some people don't have options. And it's like we sort of treat the climate change problem over here, and an air pollution problem over there. And the issue of energy poverty over there. And it's like, this is one, this is one problem, where the inequality of either the country, or... And then we were talking about the per capita emissions in the States and so on, this plays out all over the place. But you have to face that, face up to that because of the very short timeframes with which climate change needs addressing. Because there just isn't enough time to, to think, okay, well, let's, let's design this away. Actually, one of the big elephants in the room, if you like, is that some people are using an awful lot of energy, and they're missing an awful lot, and other people are really, they're just suffering the impacts of climate change. I mean, that's one of the challenges we've got.

And do we think that developing countries should be held to a different standard of carbon reduction than the wealthy countries?

Yeah, well, I mean, that does happen in those negotiations, there isn't an expectation that every country reduces its emissions by the same amount. But unfortunately, there's a lot of inequality within that, that kind of global negotiation. Whereby some of the, some of the modelling tools, actually some of the models that we use to try to kind of say, well, if all of the country's energy systems, you bring them together, and you calculate the emissions, and so on, and if the United States, and countries in Europe and Australia, whatever, do this, then that leaves this much emission for other parts of the world... It's actually, well hang on a minute, some of these parts of the world need to improve health outcomes and development needs, and Sustainable Development Goals. You're not going to do that with no increase in emissions. So, it's even skewed at that level, where there isn't enough allowance for countries that are in that stage of, those stages of development where you need to kind of invest in how food, heating, cooling, whatever it might be, for people to actually live a decent life. And so, that's some of the work that we've been doing. One of our PhD researchers at the moment is looking at the just transition for coal miners in India. So like, what do you do if you move all the coal mining away? Because you want to reduce emissions significantly? Well, what does that mean for jobs? What does that mean for people's livelihoods? How can you actually do that in a way that doesn't actually compound the problem?

I think a lot of countries look to the US or the UK, or the other big economies for guidance on what to do with their policy. And if they can see that a country like the US is putting a lot of money into renewable energy, then they're likely to follow suit, because they can see that that's where the motion of the ocean is going. And I think the US is doing a fairly good job of that right now, they announced that they're going to put solar panels on the roof of the Pentagon, which is the Defence Headquarters for the US, and that sends a big signal out. And it's like, well, "if they're doing that to the Pentagon, and the Department of Energy Building, like, I should have solar panels on my roof", sort of thing. And then, on an international stage, setting that example is important. And there was a Senator in a hearing recently, who was talking about how much he loves his Prius, and how he drives it around, and he never has to fill it up... And so, just getting that message out there, and having these, these figures break it down, why these are good ideas... And there's also... the US has been plagued in the past by lobbying by fossil fuel companies paying scientists to discredit climate change, because they don't want to hurt their profits. And so, I think a lot of, a lot of it comes down to educating people on critical thinking, which The University of Manchester does very well. And telling people like, this is, look at this speech, look at this argument, and this is this, look at who's funding it, this is why there's holes in this argument... And just don't treat everything that you see with complete trust from the very beginning, because you never know who's behind it.

Do we think that there’s enough literacy among the general public, in this country, around this crisis, and the adaptation that needs to happen, that needs to take place?

So I would say, I think the general public are much better educated than our policymakers, maybe controversial Aidan, and I know you're working as well with a lot of the policymakers. But I think they understand at a real level what's, what's going on, what the issues are. And you can see the fundamental impact of everything, right, with increases, the cost of living and things like that. That's all related to the climate. It's all interdisciplinary. It's not all done in isolation. So I do think the general public is a lot smarter, and a lot more literate in these areas than our policymakers. I think our policymakers... I think lobbying is still a big problem. Whether that's it... I know, it's a different system in America compared to other countries, but I think they have a lot to answer for about who our politicians are working for. Are they working for us? Are they serving us? Or are they serving the interests of other people who don't have the best interests..., or maybe just care about their own financial interests themselves? I think that's really important. And then if you look to countries like China, how many people they've bought out of poverty over the last few years, how much public transport infrastructure they've built at a rapid speed. So I'd say that they're showing much more leadership in this area than then America is because America, you don't have public transport in the majority of, of places, or healthcare. Nope. And it's pretty, it's pretty ridiculous. So I don't think we need to be looking, no offence Aidan, to America for leadership. I think there’s other countries that are doing a much better job and just getting on with it and not arguing with other people. And I think in general, there just needs to be more collaboration, we're seeing the rise of policymakers with these very, like, extremist views, or very kind of more far, far right, like, leaning views. And I think it's not, we're not working together. And just if the UK finishes its carbon emissions, or whatever, which I don't think it's possible, because we end up exporting it to other countries, that that's not going to help everyone. And ultimately, even if you're selfish, it's not going to help even the people living here. So I think we need to be much more collaborative. And I think we need to hold our leaders to account a lot better than we are currently.

Do we now also need to collaborate with big business, in terms of the investment into something like nuclear fusion, because these are not inexpensive projects are they...

Yeah, yeah.

...to bring that about?

So, fusion has had a lot of investments from, from private industry in the last few years. I can't remember the exact numbers, but it's significantly increased, I think we're talking billions of investments. But I work in fusion, but... I'm not a fusion sceptic, but I think that's a long term solution, and I think they need to be investing in things that can work now. And also, that brings in these areas of greenwashing as well, which I know Alice has done work on too, and that's really important that we don't just say we're doing something, or tried to show people what we're doing..., we need to make concrete, like, active changes in areas and also recognise that, that things aren't simple. We can't just say "Oh, we're gonna use electric cars and that's going to fix everything" because we need to think about how we’re mining the materials that are required, which requires carbon. Or, who are the people who are impacted by those processes as well. So I think we need to be a lot more nuanced in our discussions in general in the public, I think that's really important.

And can we talk, all of us, about work being done at the University, that looking forward is going to help support the transition?

I think one of the things is an expansion of interdisciplinary type working. You know, we've seen that increase over the last decade. I mean, when the Tyndall was, when the Tyndall Centre was first set up, that was in the year 2000. And it was quite unusual to have a centre that was fundamentally interdisciplinary. And we've had colleagues on social sciences, and one of my colleagues has got a history degree, and engineers, and physicists, and chemists, and we've all sat in, we've evolved over the years – it was Mechanical Engineering, and then it became Mechanical, Aerospace Civil Engineering, now the School of Engineering. But that, but we're not all engineers. And we've been focusing on those difficult problems, because they are, they are multidisciplinary, and you need those kinds of, those perspectives. And I think in the future, and actually looking at problems, we see calls that come out for researchers to kind of address problems, having much less of that very narrow, disciplinary kind of question behind them, and actually asking much bigger questions about how do we do it? How do we realise the energy transition? And what are the societal implications of...? You know that kind of thing. And these bigger questions are going to require more people to be thinking across disciplines, to be willing to, to actually be able to say, "I actually don't know what you're talking about, can you explain it a bit more?" There's something that we routinely do in the Tyndall Centre, because we don't know each other's disciplines. And so, you have to ask, but sometimes that's seen as a kind of a, sort of a very negative thing to do how, don't show your ignorance, that you don't actually know that thing, you couldn't possibly ask that question! Well, actually, I think that's the future, is more of us just working more, more across the different areas, learning from each other, learning what we don't know. Because sometimes these breakthroughs, they don't just come from one person sitting there and kind of like deeply thinking and working in the lab. They come from someone walking in, saying, "haven't you tried that?" And like, "well, no, we don't do that in our discipline". You know, what I mean? I know, it sounds a bit daft, but that for me is, it's just opening our minds a bit more.

So, I'll hit UCIL first. UCIL is the University College for Interdisciplinary Learning, and there's a lot of really great teaching on, and modules on offer by UCIL. So I encourage students to take up those free choice modules. I don't particularly have a policy background, but I did a project last year for the University Living Lab, which was part of a UCIL course. And this is a really interesting topic for me. So, I yeah, I applied for an internship and, and I have a US passport, so that helps. I can add to that with the University Living Lab as well, which is UCIL-esque, but it's a separate entity. It's sort of the brainchild of Jennifer O'Brien, a shout out to her, and her team, and the Geography Department. And that is getting, not even just students, but like the general public can do this too, is they get organisations, city councils, NGOs, to come to them with requests for research. Just like we need to know about this topic. And we would like to utilise the collective brains of The University of Manchester and the people that are in that system to summarise the best way out of this. So, it, a lot of it is climate related. There's a lot of like social justice issues there... there's an organisation that does work with vaccinations in rural Zambia that was looking for JS work to be done on improving the efficacy of their rollout. So, there's a huge amount of stuff on there. And it's, and the research, if it's of a high enough quality, when it gets marked, it gets sent to the organisations and they use it in real life. So, rather than, that's why it was attractive to me, because to echo what Jen says, a lot of the really amazing work and the assessed work that goes on in the University ends up sitting on Blackboard, collecting electronic dust, whereas this is... It's part of the degree but you end up, you send the research to the organisation. And it could get a really great chance to... for me, to do this, this carbon removal research for Manchester City Council, because they have these big carbon goals, net zero by 2050, net zero by 2038... and so they were like, "what are the most feasible options for us"?

You know, you were talking Aidan before about UCIL having those perspectives just seems to me like such a fantastic thing to be able to do for students to be able to learn outside of their disciplines right from the start, so that they are then willing to, kind of, work and engage in that way because they just don't think we can solve these problems without doing that.

And so, looking forward, everybody, what kind of advances can we see, hope to see? In nuclear fusion first, if you, Aneeqa... and, you know, the third century of The University of Manchester? Let's future gaze, please...

Yeah, so I hope midway through the future century, hopefully, we could have nuclear fusion, so maybe post-2050. I think it's possible. But I'd like to say that, of course, I want that to happen. But all the kinds of advances that are happening along the way, are having so much impact, whether it's like, the things like robotics, that we've seen here today, or advances in superconductors or other advanced materials, they're having an impact, even before we get to that stage, which I think is really important for any technologies. And I think we've talked about interdisciplinary work, and I think the Dalton Nuclear Institute is really good at that, we have people from all sorts of backgrounds, and we do the technical work but then we write policy papers, which influence our policymakers as well, which I think is going to be really important going forward as we tried to build new nuclear or the AMRs, that Aidan mentioned earlier today (advanced modular reactors), as well. So, that kind of knowledge, and skill pieces, is really important. And then we've talked a lot about the technologies and the work we're doing. But I think our biggest asset, and the biggest contribution the University is going to have, is the people. The students, people like Aidan, who, who are, you know, coming here. We've got people from all over the world, they're meeting each other, they're working with each other, that they're learning from each other. And they're gonna go back into their own disciplines and have a real impact on the world. And I think that's what we have to look forward to in the third century.

Thank you. Alice, we've put the challenge out there, it's a very stark one, isn't it? And when you look at the figures, the science... So, can we afford to be at all optimistic, or not?

I mean, I'd find it difficult to continue in academia if I wasn't optimistic that we, that it's worth trying. And it's also about damage limitation. There's not like, everything stops at the point where you reach a certain temperature rise. The more we do, the more we can mitigate. The more we can change ways in which we use energy, while developing the new solutions that are going to provide clean energy, and using..., talking to each other, using it in different, using these systems in different ways, being mindful of the unintended consequences of the things we're inventing now, thinking ahead. Then, collectively, I think that we can make a massive dent in our carbon emissions, reduce the amount of damage that's going to be created for people. And it's already happening. And actually, minimise those impacts and... But, if we don't really put our minds to doing some of the things that we like..., as Aneeqa said, we've got some of the technologies, we've got some of the systems, we just need to use them in a different way and use them now. And that's hopefully, during this next century if we're being smarter about use, then we will, can also then eventually use the smarter technologies. And that will hopefully get us in the place that we want to be by the end of the next century.

Aidan, from your perspective, what advances and what future progress do you think we can make?

I think something that's come up frequently in my experience here in the States, but, you know, applies universally, is that it's really important to have an informed population that are aware of what's going on, critical of things that look a little too good to be true or slamming something without any evidence. And then, getting people out and voting because that's really where the big changes take place. And without an informed population that isn't going out and hitting the polling stations when it's polling time, you're not going to have a representation of what the public actually wants in government. So the biggest changes that people can make, just by getting up on their feet and, and being informed. So, that's what I would say in the next, in the future, the next 100 years of the University and everything, is just keep on educating people.

Thank you, Aidan, Alice and Aneeqa, for joining me for this Talk 200 podcast. Thank you very much.

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Talking energy and climate change: “We don’t have hundreds of years to sort this out”

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