Communicating net zero with Juliette Sanders (Director of Communications @ Energy UK)

Yeah. Always can we cut this data and information when we're talking to other people about this amazing industry?

It's things like rather than saying one turbine can power sixteen thousand European household. Instead of saying that is they want to spin from power at home for over two days, and people get that. You know, it's important to get to engage with the public so they can make informed decisions about how they're voting, about how they how they think about things. What what we do in practical terms to make that because there is clearly a lack of diversity, not just diversity.

However, you measure it. Right? But whichever metric you're looking at, we're not doing very well on it. What do we do?

Go. But then there's areas like disability and neurodiversity, socioeconomic, background, and things like that, where we that people just aren't even aware of that. It is it takes two generations to fit. It's just not good.

It's just not that's not good enough. Hello, everybody. Welcome back for another episode of Modo, the podcast. Today, Quentin is joined by Juliet Sanders.

Director of Strategic Communications at Energy UK. You may also know Juliet as killer jewels on YouTube. Over the course of the conversation, they discuss the importance of communications and how we can include everybody on the journey to net zero. If you're enjoying the podcast please give it a like and subscribe.

It really means the world to us. And with that, let's jump in.

Okay. So so which Juliet am I speaking to? Am I speaking to Juliet Sanders? Am I speaking to killer joo?

Right now, he's speaking to Juliet Sanders. A minute. I'll go put my turbine suit on, and then you'll know that you're speaking to killer jaws. Okay.

Alright. So one of those there's, like, my Martists have turned left and right with different clothes on. Right. So now, so Juliet, thanks very much for coming on the podcast.

We've done each other for a little while. We we saw you at the the Motorola party about a year ago. And we've been big fans of what you've been doing on YouTube for a long time. That's a killer jules, actually.

We're just talking about Juliet Sanders right now. If you wouldn't mind, can just give a brief overview of Juliet Sanders for our audience and what you guys what what what do you do at NG UK? Absolutely. And also big fans of you guys as well.

So thanks very much for giving me.

Yeah, so Judith Sanders, by day, My job is director of strategic communications at Energy UK. So we're the trade body that represents most of industry. So that's everything from retail suppliers to generators of all kinds and pretty much everything in between. So EV charging companies, heat pump companies, flexibility providers, all sorts of companies across the whole industry, but we don't represent upstream oil and gas, and we don't represent distribution network operators.

But apart from that, we pretty much have the whole sector. And what that means is that It's our purpose, by the way. So it's a the the Venn diagram, which is stuff you do represent and not oil and gas, and not coal, I think. And not upstream.

How do you define who can and can't join? Well, we do we have members that do have oil and gas operations, but it's just that we don't represent that side of the industry. So where we're doing our sort of lobbying and advocacy, it's only based on the other generation forms. It's not based on upstream extraction or anything like that.

And then the distribution network operators there represented by E and A, the Energy Networks Association, so they've got their whole trade body for that. But apart from that, yeah, we do pretty much the whole sector, and that means that basically when we're speaking to government and we're trying to advise on policy that we can take that whole sector view. And and our members can then feed into that as well. And how big is energy UK?

Tiny for what we do. I think we we punch well above our weight. I think there's only about fifty of there. So it's the main organization is split into policy and comms and then there's kind of services around that, but we do we do loads of events just brought in these new events this year, this year, lightning bolt talks, which are really cool kind of data led, like, in the pub basement. And you get five people giving five minute talk about how data's driving forward the energy industry.

We do big piece conference conferences. And then really what our members get out of us is a lot of insight in terms of political insight, regulatory insight. So the government or the regulator might come to us to get an industry view, and then we were able to project that back to them and work with them to get the right policy in place. And so members, how do you join, and this is in the sales conversation?

So, I'm a If he's a sales conversation, everyone listening should go to the website and join. Yeah. It's really easy now because we've just revamped our website last year. Yeah.

So if you just, yeah, head to the website, speak to our membership team, they'd be really happy to speak to you. But as it says, loads of benefits, it It's the analysis and insight and the the shaping of the policy, really. And then that we can then also help to raise the profile of that company. So we'll be using examples from our members when we're talking to the most senior politicians when we're talking to media because we don't have any assets ourselves, which I used to work for companies, big developers where you'd have the wind farms, and it'd be really exciting and you'd get to go out to them.

This kind of an organization where it's more lobbying. We don't own anything like that. So we need to speak to industry to understand and really bring those bits to life of what we're talking about, really. And before this, you've done lots of things in different energy companies.

Right? So big utilities. I've seen some photos of you on offshore wind turbines. You've been everywhere.

Have. Yeah. I've been really lucky in my career, I think. So I started off I studied engineering at uni, and then I went to do a grad scheme at EDF, And as part of that, I did six months in the media team.

I won't lie. It was partly because I was sponsoring the Olympics, and I thought it would be fun. So I did that. I thought I'll just do it for six months, and then and then I'll go back to an analytical role.

But I actually really miss the media side of things. I just love it because it's really fast paced and you get, like you say, you get to do all the fun stuff said I I've stood on top of a nuclear reactor. I've gone up to the top of a wind turbine with a film crew. It's you get a lot of opportunities from it, so I feel very fortunate that I've had those in my career.

Yeah. And so for energy UK and your members, what are the hot topics? What's the state of play at the moment? You guys speak with government a lot.

Yeah. What are the what's going on? What's going on? Where do I start? Well, I guess, personally, people first, right, all the time.

So we're coming up to winter. It's gonna be you know, another tough winter, I think, for very many people, and we're in a different place to where we were last year in terms of people will have dipped into a lot of savings, quite a lot of the government support has gone as well. So I think there's an immediate need to look at affordability for this winter. And second kind of part of it is around the investment landscape.

So we've seen projects offshore wind massive offshore wind projects pull out in the UK, you'll have just seen that allocation round five basically fell over. And absolutely no offshore wind in that fixed bottom or floating. And we've just done a series of analysis with with economics, which showed that out of the the largest eight economies in the world, the UK has is predicted to have the slowest growth for low carbon generation, and a lot of that being driven by this investment landscape, which is windfall tax on generators that's more punitive than oil and gas. So it's quite a crunchy time in the energy industry because right now is exactly the wrong time to be giving any investors any doubts of the UK is the best place to place your project because you've got increased competition from Ira in the US and all the stuff happening in Europe and China and India.

So, yeah, I think that's a big part of it. So the people, the investment. And then there's, like, the nuts and bolts, like, the how do you get it all to work together? And that's, like, the boring stuff, but it's also really important, like, planning reform and making sure that, like, institutes are well staffed enough so that they can handle all the planning applications that are gonna through in the next however many years.

If you think from now to twenty thirty, just looking at offshore wind, right, we've gotta build four times as much as we've got right now. And as I said, just had an auction where none of the projects, you know, no projects fit in. And every single year that we waste between now and twenty thirties, critical to meeting that energy security target and you can't Go ahead and just ask you about that. So so we've got four times as much offshore wind as we do have right now.

So that's about eight years to do that pretty much. If my maths is right. We need to get fifty gigawatts. We've got about twelve gigawatts now.

I in my head, that's about a few times.

And who set the fifty gigawatts? Well, initially, it was thirty gigawatts. So as part of the sector deal, which think it was twenty sixteen. Government and Industry had this strong partnership building on the reason that we were so good at offshore wind is because because of the CFTs.

Right? And because government industry works together to get this mechanism that works that gave investors and project development, project developers, the confidence of the price that they'd get back in the long term. So, yeah, initially, it was thirty gigawatts. And then it went up to forty gigawatts.

And then it went up to fifty gigawatts as part of the energy security strategy. So that's the government's target at one point. This is a problem. Government say this is come this isn't us saying we need This is government saying It's government saying we need it for energy security, but also industry has all along been like, we can deliver, we can deliver.

If the right framework is in place, but then if you are speaking of investors by taxing electricity generation companies or the right The right framework isn't there. Investors need long term certainty. That's the point. And so if you're not giving them that or as we saw in allocation round, five, where, like, the the strike price wasn't at the right level because it didn't take into account all the changes in supply chain and all the rises in inflation, things like that.

So If the right framework is there, then we can build it. But you can't backload it. This is the point. It's because there's only so many vessels.

There's only so many cable money is there's only so many people. So we can't just suddenly do it all in the last few years. It needs to be a really steady growth and we've just missed a year of that now. So, yeah, we'll see.

We're already behind.

Yes. So we've got some catching up to do. But it is an industry that has completely surpassed expectations before both on growth and on cost. Nobody foresaw how cheap they could get the price and how quickly they could grow by.

And that's down to investment in the supply chain innovation, like the bigger turbine. Every year, they're getting bigger and bigger so you can get more So it brings down the cost because you don't need as many to get the same amount of power. But then equally with that, it's gonna have to become a point where we it levels out because can't get the turbine manufacturers every year updating all their their kits so that you're building bigger and bigger stuff. So, yeah, I think As an industry, it's certainly one that's delivered and and gone above and beyond be before.

So I'm sure we can do it if we get the next option. Right? And you mentioned something else there that's clearly important to your the folks that you represent, which is about tax. And you compared tax on low carbon generation versus tax on fossil fuel extraction.

I think you said, or I can't remember if you're paraphrasing. What do you mean by that?

So there's the energy profits levy. I think it's called, which is what the government put in place on the fossil fuel extraction companies. And that that involves a lot of tax back so that for every kind of pound they invest in stuff, then they get a certain amount back. Then there was a windfall tax on low carbon generators, which was called the electricity profits levy. And at the minute, that's more punitive. Definitely not a windfall Not a it's it's an electricity profit survey, but that's more punitive.

At the minute than than what's on the oil and gas companies. So our argument is at least make it the same really should be incentivizing these kinds of technologies. And actually, if you look at what's happening in America, where you are, we've just done the Ira where it's hundreds of billions of pounds attracting companies, not just for the developers, but it's also in the supply chain as well and making sure that they're building up the local supply chain there. And we need a response to that where even if we can't compete on the subsidies, whether it's capital allowances or something like that, we need to make sure that that it's clear that the UK is is an attractive place to invest.

And that's also about long term certainty, about more than as much as it is about the money. It's just about having the clear policy framework where people know what they're gonna get, essentially. So we've talked a little bit about offshore wind. We've had it's been a tough few months for offshore wind.

We've had projects that we thought we're gonna get built, put on hold, mothballed, or even canceled.

And then the CFT news was pretty tough. What do we do to fix that? You guys are probably going to government with solutions.

Yep. So what are the solutions? I think in a, in offshore, in government to be fair, to them. They met with industry the week after that announcement and to talk about AR six and the changes that need to happen there.

I think it's about having A strike price that reflects the current market status absolutely has to reflect the increases in costs that developers are facing. Then it's about having the right round size, so the right sort of volume available within the auction. And then it's about this long term. So and T.

So getting clarity and getting all of that information out as soon as you can so that then developers can plan. So, yeah, I think it's Yeah. I I don't think it is fully falling down yet. I think if they make the right changes, and I think government is listening, I think the messages landed now.

We did a lot of work prior to AR five to say. This is what's gonna happen if you don't change it, and I remember that is what happened. So Yeah. Hopefully now, we're on a trajectory where we can work quite closely together.

And the the current UK government, it feels like there's been a bit of back and forth changing direction about whether they're pro wind or anti wind or pro solar or anti solar. I know some of that is a is a product of the amount of prime ministers we've had in a very short amount of time. Even more secretaries of state for energy. In a more sectors.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it's all one thing. Probably just have one one one direction on that stuff. But where are we at now?

It it it's the current government, and we're doing this Genis in September twenty twenty three. Government, are they pro wind or the anti wind or and of course, it's not black and white like that. Right? What are they what they worried about?

What's what's the base concerned about? And what is actually achievable, in convincing our current government to be more friendly to wind. I wouldn't say they're empty offshore wind. The main thing is they are committed to the next zero target, and they've reaffirmed that loads of time.

So that's good because there was a period a few months back when that series being funded around in the media. And in the run up to a general election, they're always gonna get these sort of sensationalist stories in the media, and it's really important and not to corrupt, especially not to get dragged into that and to actually look what is happening in Westminster, is that changing policy or not? So I'd say they are committed to net zero, but they also seem committed to oil and gas extraction. Onshore wind has effectively been banned in England for a while now.

And so they've committed to looking at it, I think, but not quite got there with the regulation and putting it in legislation yet. So at the minute, in England, one person can block in onshore wind firm proposal, which is crazy only to get literally just one person can block a whole project. And that's led to in the planning process. Yeah.

So which when you think about the importance of renewables to to the national energy mix and energy security, it's a bit mad, but Yeah. There's a stat that Ukraine built more onshore wind than the UK, no, than England did in the last year, a hundred times more. Which when you think about that, there's no absolutely no reason for that. So they've committed to looking at that.

But then like I say, there's a lot that sounds like a very naughty statistic because if the answer is, like, we've got one turbine somewhere. It is a bit like that. Yeah. Yeah.

We've built one megawatt. Sorry.

We've built one megawatt. They've built a hundred and fourteen megawatts. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Okay. We've built one megawatt of the over two turbines, I think.

In England, not UK, Scotland has been building a way because it's different regulations there. Yeah. So I think They recognize there's a big mix. They've bet the government the current government as part of the energy security strategy is bet big on offshore in the nuclear, and that's why I think it was so shocking that they weren't listening with AR five because that's what we've put our money on, right, the offshore wind is gonna be the backbone of the UK's electricity system.

You know, and again, with floating, had a real opportunity with floating offshore wind. Really, it's the UK to lead the way, and there were no floating projects either. So it it does seem like a bit of a missed opportunity, but what we're gonna see in the next few months when we get to election time is everything's just gonna go out the window. So we're we're really trying to make sure that energy stays at the top of the agenda and doesn't sort of get waylaid, really.

Could you just give a a post mortem and what happened on AR five? Which is, for our listeners who aren't CFT experts, what how do these allocation rounds happen and surely if they were designed to get lots of offshore wind, why didn't we end up with lots of offshore wind? Well, so so contracts for different work by agreeing a strike price between the government and an offshore wind developer project And that means that it lowers the cost of capital overall for the project because then there's some certainty in the price that they'll get back for the electricity that they generate So it works both ways in the sense of when the electricity price is lower than what you've agreed, then there's a top up that's paid to the developer and when purchase prices higher as we saw last year when there was really high electricity prices in the UK, then actually those projects end up paying back to the system.

So it's a fair system, but because of that certainty, it's enabled the industry to bring down the costs massively.

What happened with AR five is that the administrative strike price So, like, the maximum that they're able to fit in with was not reflective of the overall market conditions at the minute because there's obviously been massive cost increases in things like supply chain. And therefore, no projects. They they couldn't make the business case in order to bid in. They have to be able to make money.

They they can't do this for three billions of pounds of CapEx to to invest in an in an offshore wind farm. And so the the strike prices weren't right. And therefore, no one no one bidding So the government or the low carbon contracts company or whoever it is, sets a cap on what you can bid in as your price and your pounds, megawatt hour, and the cap was too low for anyone to bid in at a level that made money. Is that what happened?

Yeah. But but the auctions always, they work in a way where the lowest price wins. So even if it was higher, it doesn't mean that it would have been at that price. It still could have come in lower, but it it just no one could make it work, essentially.

Well, hopefully, we're gonna fix that somehow. Alright. So we'd we'd talk quite a bit there about offshore wind, but, actually, we're here to talk about what you do, which is, well, tell us what you do at UK. Yeah.

Sure. So I'm director of comms. So in my team, we've got media, public affairs, events, membership, and digital. So between I like to think of us.

We're like the front of house of a restaurant. So we've got all the chefs cooking up all the policy positions in the back, and then we're getting them out and making sure that they're they're communicated well. So, yeah, that the common side of things can range from, I guess, on the public affairs side, it's about liaising with government, parliamentarians to make sure they've got the right information so that they're making informed policy decisions. On the media side, we represent industry, especially when there's big industry wide issues, or for example, with AR five and things like that responding to that side of things.

I think for us, we're quite a small team, and so sometimes you can have something on the retail side at the same time as something on the generation side, and it's just everything's happening at at once on the same day, which can be fun to deal with. Yeah. And then we also look after events. So we have, like, big conferences.

We've got our annual conference on the eighteenth October this year, twenty twenty three. We do a lot of work in the EDI space as well. So diversity for industry. So, yeah, we take industry's view and get it out there whether to politicians, media, or public.

Okay. And we are gonna get to killer jewels in a second, which is, of course, the most interesting bit.

But on on diversity inclusion. It's bit of a hot topic at the moment because how do we met with what what we do in practical terms to make that better because whenever we go to an energy conference, there is clearly a lack of diversity, not just diversity, however you measure it, right, diver, and the resultant impact is diversity of thought. But whichever metric you're looking at, we're not doing very well on it. What do we do?

What's the state of play right now? How bad is it? And then what do we need to do to fix it? So I think gender we've got a lot better at.

We still ethnicity.

We're getting there, but still have a long way to go. But then there's areas like ability, neurodiversity, socioeconomic background, and things like that, where we that people just aren't even aware of that as a diverse form, and they're not thinking about it at all. And I used to get the same thing. Reiscope conferences, and especially diversity conferences, and everyone always say the same thing every single year.

Like, we've done a lot. We know we've got a lot more long way to go, but we've done more than last year. And, yeah, we've got a long way to go, essentially. And so we do an EDI conference every year.

And last year, because I was decided I don't wanna come back next year and say the same stuff and nothing happened in between. So we launched a task force. Call it task force. It's more of a group of volunteers, but it's it was basically, it's called tide tackling inclusion and diversity and energy.

And the idea was to bring together people from across the industry who are doing some really good work in this space because there is good work happening. So, for example, pride in energy, powerful women. We've got our young energy professionals, which is a really cool group of early careers. People like energy and utility skills who do a lot of data measure in that area.

So we've got all of those people and brought them together into a group to see if we could take a cross industry approach. So it's moving slowly, but we'd we'd doing some bits. We've been doing webinars for industry. We've we've building up an EDI hub where people can submit best practice case studies.

To help industry learn. We've launched a leader's commitment and a health index so that companies can check where they're at compared to other companies. So the the thing I always say when I talk about tide is it's not it's not about reinventing the wheel. Like, I really don't wanna be starting anything new when there's already stuff going on.

So it's more about signposting people to where there's the information because I've never written a NEDI strategy, but if you showed me three good ones, I could probably easily write one that's good for our business. So it's about trying to make it as easy as possible for companies in the energy industry to improve their diversity, essentially.

And so what what are the outcomes of? So if you guys have a an EDI conference every year, do you do you set a target is this something does this need to happen at a government level or is it the big, I mean, is it the big companies that need to change practices or small companies from personal experience? It's something that we've had we struggle with for all the obvious reasons, which is like you put a job up and you get, like, you don't have a diverse pool of candidates. Yeah.

And so we need to think long term about how we fix this. I don't think it's a short term thing, but, yeah, what do you think? I really agree. No.

And it's the same trick. It's the same in events Right? You're trying to get a diverse panel of speakers on events. Same with we're looking at our board governance at the minute.

Right? How do we get a diverse board?

Does that mean that actually we need to drop levels of seniority if we want to make sure that we've got that diversity around the table? So, yeah, it is I think it's a dual pronged approach. I think so we workshop what tides priority is where at the conference, the first conference, where we said that we were gonna do it. And it came back with kind of insight gathering sharing best practice and engaging with leaders, and that we can't set targets because we don't even have the data.

Like, that's how far behind we are. We don't even know again, with gender because powerful women do it, and because it's slightly easier because you've got the gender pay gap and things like that where there's ways that you can quite easily collect that data. But then when you start digging into it and you're relying on employees giving you data and they don't have to, then how do you collect that data? So we're doing a big piece of work on data at the minute.

Then there's the, like, quick wins, and that is about sharing best practice, which sounds like a really, like, lame answer to it. But actually, like I said, if if you can just see what someone else has done and they've done it really well, and then you can implement that yourself, then it's it does just make that whole journey easier. But then it is that down approach with leaders. And I think the analogy I always give is, like, if you work in an operational company, health and safety, it's everybody's responsibility.

Yeah. You've got health and safety team, but it's everyone's responsibility. And I've I've worked on projects offshore in projects where I've seen somebody stop a project four billion pound project because they weren't convinced that something was safe, and they knew they weren't gonna get into trouble for that, right, because health and safety is right the way through the company. And if you set that culture with EDI, where it's everybody's responsibility, where someone knows they're not gonna get into trouble, if they just go the extra mile to make sure that something's right, or done in the right way or and is inclusive, then I I think a lot of it is around culture and and what comes from the top and the leaders.

And really lucky in Energy UK. We actually have an all female Mexico, which you could argue is not diverse, actually. So it's it's just three of us. But Emma and Dara, the the CEO and the deputy CEO, they're really hot on this.

And we take a zero tolerance approach to any sort of behavior that isn't inclusive. We have strict rules on our panels, you know, all male panels and things like that. So it's Yeah. We're trying to do what we can both for our own organization, but then it's retired.

We're we're trying to nudge industry along as well. Wonder what I was just thinking if there's a another industry that's managed to pull this off. So it is a I wonder if there's anything out there that we can point to the over a period. I don't know what is a good amount time, right, say a decade that managed to to turn it around.

Because if we're if this takes two generations to fix, it's just not good. It's just not that's not good enough. Water, actually, it's probably better than the energy industry in that sense, actually, I think, think the rail industry's done quite a lot. I heard a stat and I don't wanna repeat it because it sounds awful, but I think it was something, like, the only industry that's worse than energy is, like, it's a blacker industry or something like that.

I can't remember what it was. It was something really bad. But yeah. And we do need to and I think energy, especially We've got people that are working offshore.

It's as much about the physical environment as it is about the office space, and there's no toilets on turbines. Which means that if you're a woman, it makes things a little bit harder if you need to go for a wee. It's those simple things about making it making the physical environment comfortable. That that might have changed, actually, you know, but there certainly wasn't a few years ago, but making the physical environment as much as then the office environment increases as well.

Well, without sounding like one of the people at the conference that, really wound you up, we do have lots of work to do, and I I bloody hope we do it. But now I wanna talk about kilojoules. So you might have to go and get changed and come back for your alternate gun. You've got the wind farm earrings on.

Absolutely. Yeah. So now about to the the other side of you kilojoules.

So what what is the idea behind killer jewels?

The idea was to engage the public in a creative way. With the wonderful world of energy. And I it's gone a bit wider than wind. Initially, it was wind, and most of my products are wind related.

But, yeah, so it started off in lockdown, and initially it was about taking music, like, tunes that people would know, mainly nineties tunes, although they've branched out a little bit and changing the words so that they were about energy. So, like, the review of the electricity market arrangements, Remer, So I did a Craig David version of that was, like, we eat, me, or, like, got Destiny's child or FreshPinterpreter. So that was about just how can we make it a bit more fun for people to learn about wind energy and energy in general. And then it expanded accidentally into an earring business because I I made some earrings Not these ones here.

I've got them right here. Little winter binerings. I went on a jewelry course and made these. And then, like, as a joke on LinkedIn, I was like, oh, does anyone wanna buy a pair?

And then I'd had, like, a hundred and fifty people get in touch. Then I was like, I'd better make those. So that was fun. And then I dressed up as a wind turbine at festivals and evenings and weekends just to spread the wonderful word about wind.

Yeah. And so, of course, we're gonna put the put links in the show notes to all of the YouTube videos but that some of these videos have really taken off. Right? You have a lot of genius on these.

So what are the big hitters?

The best one, the best solar control industry's favorite is all about the blades, which is to all about the base. All about the blades about the It's really funny. My friend was in a meeting, and he was messaging me, and he was like, Joel, they've literally just kicked off the meeting with your track.

And, like, they didn't know that we were mates, and it's Yeah. It's funny. Every once in a while, I'll be at an industry event, and we'll get chatting with someone. And somebody's like, woah, you're killer jewels.

It's not it's not a secret. But I love that kind of stuff. It's I think it's really important. And and my mates all love offshore wind, not because their mates with me, but because I talk about it in a really excited passionate way, and I can and you can get those facts across it.

Things like rather than saying one turbine can power sixteen thousand European households, which don't know what that means, but instead of saying that, you say one spin can power a home for over two days. And people get that and then they wanna know more and It sounds like I'm joking around, but the tearbine suit, actually, when you wear it. Like, people genuinely, they come up to you and they ask you questions, not only about wind, but then about the wider energy system. And I think it's, you know, it's important to gate to engage with the public both because so they can make informed decisions about how they're voting, about how they think about things, politicians care about how people feel about either onshore wind, offshore wind, all this sort of stuff.

So it's important to get the facts out there. And so that's an interesting point you made there about communicating that is this how many homes can you power for a year thing. It's just it's everywhere. The funniest thing is that it even turns up in press releases about battery energy storage, which of course is like a one hour or two hour duration thing.

If it is there is so much artistic license in these press releases. So what have you got any other top tips about communicating these kind of things? So that that's what that's a good one. Right?

How many spit and how many houses from one spin? Yeah. Otherwise, can we cut this data on information when we're talking to other people about this amazing industry?

Well, number one tip of anything, just make it really simple and don't use an language that people don't understand, you know, like, just think about talking to your mates. We use so many acronyms in energy that it's just impossible. So, yeah, it is really simple language, but then in terms of the comparisons, we used to have loads of fun on, like, the size of them, So comparing that to buildings, and I think we did BBC breakfast once. Is that really tall guy, Ben?

I can't remember his surname? Is it is a really, really tall guy percent of previously breakfast and he came down and we were like, worked out how many of him tall the turbines were and things like that. Or the area that they cover Like, I want to see one covers an area bigger than greater London. Right?

That's massive. But you just if you say that in kilometers squared, I don't know what that is, but if you say it in terms of how it compares, I think we used to say bigger than Malta, and then everyone was like, how big is Malta?

Also. It was like a bit of a, like, shot shots fired and Malta a little bit. No. None at all.

But, yeah, so I think, yeah, comparisons, I guess, are good. And then I used to do it yet, like, an American journalist coming over. And then instead of using how many big Ben store it was, you'd compare it to structure of liberty or something or blade is nine and a half buses long. Like, people can get that and they can understand Wow.

A hundred and seven meters. You know, you could fit an elephant in the root of a turbine blade, not that you would ever watch. You should have done this as a quick fire. It's like it's like a will all of your comparisons.

This is what I'm genuinely like in the pub. Like, my mates just sat. Yeah. You can fit an elephant inside a wind turbine blade.

Blade. In the rear of the blade. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Yeah.

Wow. That's the one. Challenge on. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. That should be an episode of something.

A month. That's funny. Any more tidbits? What about yeah. Try to make it. What's a try to make it?

Engaging. And, frankly, the the social media at Orstead, and that was really fun because it was a bit it had a bit more license with the tone of voice to be funny about things. So we do stupid stuff, like, at National Emoji Day, and we'd spell out a sentence, Justin Emojis, about wind farms. So you did, like, horn, sea, or, like, when I was at Equinor, you do, like, dog go bank, like, to have a dog, and then an, and then a bank, which it sounds stupid, but if you can get people in with that, and then you've hit them with the fact then it's, yeah, then you get them.

And so to finish up, and one last question, before we get on to the two special ones, what do we need to convince? So you you specialize in communicating around energy stuff, right, communicating complex stuff and make it interesting and easy to understand. If we really need to send a message, to the general public or government. What what are the big trends that we need to make sure that they're here loud and clear about our industry and maybe some things that they that they that we just need to provide some clarity around.

I think decarbonizing homes and bringing sort of people along with us in the journey to next area is really important. And so there's a lot of myths out there about smart meters, about heat pumps, and also it's you know, aside from the conversation, it's actually quite difficult sometimes for people to know where to go to, to get the right information and to navigate that system to install a heat pump or anything like that. So I think there's something there around bringing people with this and making sure that they have access to the right information, making sure that with supporting vulnerable people along in that journey and that it's as easy as possible for them to do that because if we're gonna decarbonize, we could energy affects everyone.

It's gonna be every single person's home that has to get up to that net zero standard. And I think at the minute, around fifty percent of our homes are lower than EPC stand EPC, which is the sort of minimum rating. So there's something there around engaging with people and making sure that they have access to the right information. And then the other big bit for government is, like I said, it's not losing the leading position that we had in in the investment in no carbon technology because the difference between This piece of work that we've just done with Oxford Economics.

It looked at four different scenarios to net zero. So one is the current trajectory.

One was a delayed scenario.

One was just meeting that zero and one was if we really get a move on and accelerate that. And the difference between the accelerated chant scenario and the one that we're currently in, the difference in GBA to the UK is the entire manufacturing sector. Right now as it is, two hundred forty billion. And that's just the difference.

Right? So that's It's the difference in what? Sorry. What's the Gross value added. So the difference in, basically, how much it boosts the economy of those two scenarios is equivalent to the entire manufacturing sector as it is today.

And that's just a matter of how quickly we get on with it. And again, if you compare those two scenarios, It changes massively how much of that funding comes from the private sector. So the private sector will fund seventy percent of the the money required to get to net zero. The investment required.

But again, looking at those difference in scenarios, it's a hundred and sixty five billion pounds more comes from the private sector. If we just get a move on with it. And so when you think about that means that then less comes from the public sector, which means that it's cheaper for everybody overall. So there's a big message of urgency, really, and just that, like, the next year, the next decade, all of it is is really important.

And we haven't got time to mess around with general elections and things like that. Like, the work needs to continue in the background. As we get onto that grid is another big thing. There needs to be investment in grid so that it can both take increased amounts of electricity.

Obviously, as we move more to decarbonize heating and transport, there's gonna be, you know, a need for more electricity. I think it's percent more by twenty thirty five. So how can we make sure that we have a grid that both can handle that, but also can move electricity around the country in the right way? Cause there's no point generating a load of wind up in Scotland if you can't get it to where you need it.

So it's, yeah, is that there's the the queuing system at the minute for grids connections, I think, projects at the minute waiting up to fifteen years to get a connection. So there's a lot of the nuts and boltsy bits that need sorting out. Okay? Alright.

Now on to the last two questions. The first one is if you got to see to plug, this is a special slot where you get to plug whatever you want here. Correct. Second question is your contrarian view.

What do you believe that most people don't? But we'll do the first one first. Anything you need to plug? Yes.

If you are listening to this and you are not an Energy UK member, then definitely head to our website.

So as I said, we have a very high profile both in media and in government we trusted because we have we look across the whole system. And as a member, you get benefits such as access to our insights, and analysis, events that we run, you get member discount training, things like that, and networking opportunities, and we can help raise your profile in when we're speaking to media and government. But also on our website is the the clean growth gap and this is the series that I've been talking about this investment series of this series of reports about investment that we've done with Oxford Economics Yeah.

And there's some really good stats in there. And then also So if we access that stuff for free. Yeah. All of that stuff.

Yeah. Okay. No. You need to give me five grand and be a member. No, Jake.

No. That's yeah. And and that that kind of stuff we do make available for because obviously we share it with politicians and think tanks and things like that because it's we want people to see that case because they're the ones making the decisions. Right?

So it wouldn't be good if we just kept it for ourselves. But, yeah, and then the kidajoules website, of course, where you can buy Lovely earrings like these and the ones that I showed in it. Awesome. And now the contrarian view.

What is it? Yeah. This one is a bit hard to think about because I am paid to take an industry consensus view. Right?

So it wouldn't be right for me to come in here and start saying stuff. So I think what I will say that it's probably consensus across the whole industry and is that I think we need to do better at engaging with the public. I think the contrarian views that I think we can do it through the arts. I think there's loads of cool opportunities where actually we could engage with imagine taking Benobo offshore to a wind farm or getting graffiti artists on tournaments.

I don't just something just to drum up a bit more noise in a fun and more creative way about energy. And that that could be from I've I've always thought it'd be really cool going to a school, brief one half of the class about nuclear, brief one half of the class about offshore wind and get to have a rat battle or something like get them talking about it. So, yeah. So lots more to be done in the arts.

I saw a coldplay have got some sort of that they've been doing some stuff with dance floors that generate electricity. It's probably a bit too far down the the I know it's it's portraying a message, but I'm not sure. I really believed it. But there but definitely, there's a lot more to be done in the arts.

I couldn't back that enough. And, yeah, funneling more money into the arts in general. Sounds like you think to me. Exactly.

And I just I think we're gonna need hundreds of thousands of people to come work in this sector, and then we've gotta find ways to reach them. And so, yeah, a few years back, I did the documentary with BBC, and we took a window, and we took a crew out of Shore to Huntsy One. And then it was amazing, but it was a proper logistical challenge, sorting out film crew, going from vessel to vessel up to a sort of a window by and all this sort of stuff. And it came out.

It was cool. It was a half an hour program all about the wind farm. And you do it, and you're like, great. This is my job.

I great. I've done it. And my sister was like, why? Was like, because it's it's important that people understand about this sort of stuff.

And then a few years few years later, one of my old colleagues called me, And they said that they'd had a person that was training to be a hairdresser apprentice or trying to be a hairdresser, and they'd seen the program And as a result of the program, they then decided to train to be a wind turbine technician. And it's like, that's why what I do is really cool. That's why comms is important, and that's why think it is important to get out to the public and talk about what we do as an industry. Agreed.

Agreed. And that's why you guys do such a great job, right, your podcasts.

Your energy academy? Yeah. We do it for the good for all the good reasons, but I think most of all we do it because it's fun. Yeah.

That's why I do killer jaws. I do it's all in my spare time, and I always tell myself I'm never gonna do it if it gets stressful, and that's why I've been sitting on a snoop dog, dogga bank song since March that's, like, it's, like, eighty percent of the way there. I just can't look at it at the minute because I'm just not in the right mind, but, you know, I won't do it until I'm ready to do it, and that's it should be fun. I think if you're gonna do stuff like that, right, especially if it's any spare time.

Which snoop sound is it of interest? It's it's my name. What's my name? So it's like it's doga bear.

There you go. Snick preview. I hope so. Now I'm gonna do it. Okay. Yeah. Nice.

I made you have to do it. Alright. Juliet or killer jules. I wanna say a massive thank you for coming on the podcast.

Thank you. If you listen to this and you wanna hear more about what kilojoules or Juliet Sanders or Energy UK are up to We're going to put some links in the notes so you can check them out. Do check out that the report that you guys did with looks like economics as well. We're gonna go away and read that.

And of course, if you like it, hit like subscribe, and all those buttons, it really means the world to us. Thank you very much. Thank you.