Addressing the energy talent gap with David Hunt (CEO & Founder at Hyperion Executive Search)

There is a big talent problem in the energy transition.

Where do you make the trade off between the skills versus the energy experience versus the availability versus other factors? Because there's a big convergence of multiple technologies. So, you know, you can't just look at storage and batteries in isolation without thinking about, you know, grid connections, or you can't think about solar without thinking about storage, you can't think of EV charging without thinking about power. So that there's much more of a need for leaders to be aware of broader market conditions and other parts of the market, lots of moving parts. Because it's very difficult or next to impossible to define a strategy for your storage business or your solar business or your or or or your EV charging business without looking at the the market in a more holistic way.

Hello, and welcome back to Transmission.

As the energy industry evolves, the skills and approaches in overcoming emerging challenges needs to change too. This week, David Hunt, CEO of Hyperion Executive Search, joins Quentin to explore the challenges and finding the skills and talent needed to get us to net zero. If you're enjoying the podcast, please hit subscribe so you never miss an episode, and leave us a review wherever you listen. Let's jump in.

Hello, David. Welcome to the podcast. Great to be here. And if you recognize that voice, that's, of course, David Hunt from Hyperion Executive Search, who does a marvelous podcast. Before we get off the blocks, if you're not subscribed to David's podcast, go and check it out. They've had some awesome guests. Hundred and fifty episodes, something like that?

Just about to hit a hundred and fifty. Yeah.

Hundred and fifty. And you've been going a bit longer than us.

Yeah. It's taken a while. We started almost four years ago, but it's we've been sort of, I I guess, running a few series in every other week. But, yeah, hundred and fifty is quite exciting.

And you do the let's let's get stuck into it. So when what's Hyperion as a search firm, and how did you get into doing the podcast?

Very quickly. So I started Hyperion ten years ago, actually, just just over ten years ago. It's been an executive search firm or headhunters exclusively in cleantech, because previously I'd actually been running a solar EPC and developer. So we work exclusively within cleantechmology.

And it found ourselves quite quickly getting working primarily with scale ups, start ups, post investment start ups and scale ups, and it just became fascinating and interesting. And talking to our clients about their individual entrepreneur journeys was just, for me, really exciting and interesting. And I thought there would be value to the markets to hear some of those stories because it's not easy. Right?

You should well know yourself. It's not easy to start a business and scale a business. So I started just thinking, well, how how can we share those stories and add value to the marketplace? So I started interviewing entrepreneurs, basically, and founders, but all in cleantech and dust leaders in cleantech, and it evolved from there.

And it's a it's a lot of work to do a podcast like this. So do you have a team? How how big is Hyperion? And then who does the podcast editing production?

We've got the marvelous Izzy who's sat with us here right now who who gets it all I might have some, actually.

You won't be the first who said that.

No. But Izzy's very happy at Modo, aren't you? But he's a he's a lot of work. It is. So who who does it all for you?

It used to be mostly myself and obviously it is quite obvious when you're trying to run a business as well because I started essentially as a as a side hustle. It wasn't intended to commercialise it at all and it kind of got legs and become much more of a thing and it took up more of my time. So we now use a studio in Liverpool, so they mostly do all of the editing and and and posting and sort of pre and post production kind of stuff. In terms of organization, we have a small marketing team, so they help with with organization and then disseminating the podcasts.

But still effectively, I still probably bear most of the the the the brunt. But I enjoy it because it's again, it's conversations and it's most of the clients, not all, most are clients of Hyperion and or wanna be clients or would be clients of Hyperion. So it's it kind of has a duality of of it. But, yeah, this is much more hard work than most people think.

And what what are your favorite episodes? Are you had the I really enjoyed well, I'll let you go first.

No. Do tell. It's hard that it's always like which is your favorite baby because you're the sort of the the the dismissed people. But I think, yeah, there've been some people who open up. You know what it's like in the conversations?

Occasionally, we get people, despite them being fairly cagorous of nature, it takes a bit of work to get stories out of them, and others, are are more keen to share. Certainly, I think some of the storage episodes have been great fun and have got good traction. Ascend Elements, for example, when we we had those, guys on in the US before they came to Europe. It was hard to pinpoint. It's I I think it's just a guess where the conversation meanders away from necessarily we we never script like yourself, but we have some themes. But but it's where those conversations become two way and not just the question and answer.

Yeah. I enjoyed the David from PV Case.

Yes.

I enjoyed that. That was a good conversation. I I mean, there's plenty in the archive. So, yeah, if you're listening, go check it out. Let's move on from podcasting and talk talk about what we're here to talk about, which is there is a big talent problem in the energy transition. Yeah. And you guys know probably more about that than than anyone.

And we're gonna dig into now where the gaps are, the skills gap and the hiring gaps, and how companies are resolving that, and what some of the challenges are for the next five or ten years. Yeah. Because we need a we need tons more people working on energy transition stuff. Yeah. So we need to accept that many of them won't have the skills and experience. You you're not gonna have ten years, you know, a a a, job description that says five years experience in grid scale batteries.

It's prob you're not there's not that many people out there.

So we've got some big problems to solve. Yeah. Where should we start? What when when companies come to you, what are they generally looking for and what do you hire for?

Primarily, they are looking for the ten years experience in markets that have been established for five years. So that that's, I guess, the the need in the haystack, which is essentially why you come into a search firm and and why we've been very successful because we can do that. But it does present the challenges, as you say, that it's a very limited talent pool. I think perhaps to make some clarity, we recruit primarily strategic important hires, so board level, c suite heads of, VPs.

So sort of more more strategic, new boots on new countries, expansion kind of roles. There there's a huge demand though from that level through to, you know, blue collar. So clearly, just actually physically implementing our project managing infrastructure, whether it's solar or storage or EV charging infrastructure. There's there's massive demand there.

I think that's important, and we try and voice that as much as we can to governments and and that there's a skills issue and a jobs opportunity there. But it's equally the case at executive and senior level. The challenges are a little bit different because, obviously, in terms of scale, there's less of those jobs, but there's also still a very small talent pool of experienced people. So then it's the challenge of, you know, where do you make the trade off between the skills versus the energy experience versus the availability versus other factors?

And that's kind of where we work with clients to try and come up with a solution. But most of the time, to be fair, does require people from industry, but we've been blessed and we still push to look at where appropriate a transference of skills. So somebody could somebody come from I mean, the obvious one is, you know, solar and storage storage and solar, but but things like from telecoms or oil and gas or other sort of more established industries where people can bring a set of skills and the learning curve isn't perhaps quite so steep.

And the the big elephant in the room on top of that is the diversity question, which is just such a challenge in our industry.

Yeah.

I mean, it's we we we struggle with it. I mean, to to to get it out there, we really struggle with it because we've used search firms, and we we often requirements to use a search firm is that we wanna we want a diverse pipeline. Right? And we've had search firms turn around and say, you're just not no.

We're we're we can't do that. Or your requirements on that are too high. It's a it's a real challenge to to get the balance right between finding pipeline actually candidates. Yeah.

And, also not positively discriminating because that's that's illegal Yep.

And figuring out this whole thing. I mean, so when when folks come to you and say we are looking for diverse pipelines, how do you resolve that? Where do you where do you go looking in for pool? Where where are the pools of candidates where you can I'm actually asking you the favor.

You can tell me. Where are the pools of candidates you can go so you can make sure that you are getting people not just with Oxford degrees who look a certain way and act a certain way? Yeah. No disrespect to Oxford degrees.

But you're also dipping into pools of talent where people didn't have the same opportunities. How how how are you thinking about that as a search firm?

You've got to be consistent and determined to do so. It's not easy. We're very proud of that in twenty twenty two, forty two percent of our hires were female, which in cleantech, you know, primarily in a lot of tech tech companies as well that we work with, that that was quite a stretch. It wasn't quite so strong last year, but it took quite a few years really of looking at not just where to look, which is one aspect, but how to actually approach and how to engage with people in those marketplaces, how to be a trusted source of conversation for people, whether it's from gender diversity or or other obviously forms of diversity, which are important as well.

For us, we set about funny enough to talk about energy storage, it was working with a client called Arendco, which you may know, Am I Arendco Group with Rupert Newlands, and they they very quickly said exactly that. We we needed the shortlist. We're a bunch of four guys, all from Imperial, all white middle class guys, great at what we do, but that's what we are, so we need diversity. And we sat down with them and then started to internally formulate a plan to okay.

So where do we go to look for these people? How can we tell a story to people in those markets or or lesser sort of obvious places to be? So engaging with people like powerful women, women in science and education, some of the sort of black and mon monarch ethnic trade groups and associations and and communities.

So I think the challenge for other people is you it's not something you can dip in and out of or just say, oh, do you know what? We'll we'll say we're looking for diversity or we'll, you know, we'll we'll we'll spend something quickly. You need to really be seen and credible and and consistent in those markets to be able to have people willing to reach out to you or respond to your responses as a headhunter, to accept and acknowledge that you're gonna be treated equally if you might not have actually the Oxford degree or you might not even have any degree potentially depending on the nature of the role, but still feel confident to be able to say, actually, I can have a conversation with these people.

Yeah. We've got we like hiring wildcards.

So people who don't have a background in energy Yeah.

We call we call them wildcards because they wouldn't technically meet the requirements of the job description in the experienced sector, but there's something about them. We we just Abbaz is, we've got lots of people like that who come from other sectors.

Yeah. Yeah. It works, though, doesn't it? I mean, that's one of the things we call them Kerpals. We we wanna shortlist. A will try and find diversity on the shortlist as much as we possibly can, but we'll also try and include a a curveball or or two in there as well. And quite often, to your point, it's the curveball that gets the job because they offer something a little bit different.

Yeah. Probably worth mentioning, two white guys talking about diversity is probably not the best people to represent this this conversation full stop. But, yes, tricky one. How I wanna talk about salaries because this is there's there's something funny going on, which is that I'm noticing and we're noticing that with there's a big difference between average and the best talent.

Mhmm.

So salaries, like a ten x person is now starting to earn a lot more money. Yeah. There's also a big locational element now. So we're seeing a big difference between London salaries and outside of London, same as in the US.

We're seeing, you know, Austin and New York and the Bay Area. And it's almost like a reversal from what happened in COVID. It feels like we're an in person business. So we choose to run through Thursday.

Everyone is together in one of our offices. That's very important to us. Yeah. And, by the way, we're willing to pay for that and for the best talent and talk more about our salary policy if interested.

But how what's going on with salaries in this sector, and what trends are you seeing?

I I know what's going to touch us back to your original point is that there's a very short talent pool, so demand outstrips supply by a significant factor. And when the sudden those markets suddenly get hot, that that becomes accelerated. So for a period of time, it has been in in storage. Probably in the last eighteen months, the EV charging and structuring mobility sector has gone through that ultra hype.

There's been a lot of investment coming in, therefore, a lot of growth and therefore, a lot of demand for talent, and then that's that obviously spikes then the the salary levels to a to a level which is not healthy really. Because what happens, Graham, at your point there, is that the the the top the a players probably deserve and are and will be a good return on investment even at those salaries. Hundred percent. But what happens is that everybody else that's that that's a beep there kind of then suddenly expects and gets elevated salaries.

And we speak to some bang average people on some huge salaries, and it's like you know? So it does make it hard if you are then on the other end, you're trying to scale. Even if you've got VC money off from Everest, you still gotta be responsible in terms of utilizing that capital wisely.

And oftentimes salary and or hiring is is a massive cost for people, one of the bigger costs in in many operations.

But it is a problem when you get these spikes and and it tends to follow investment where there's a lot of investment goes and a lot of growth clearly you want and hiring happens, and then those markets become overheated. And then you find, as we say, people that are sort of, you know, average to to poor sometimes on some very good salaries, which you can say is good for them. But the flip side is when markets turn and things become tough, you're out the door. You know?

Economics are economics. And if you if you end up getting an inflated salary and the markets changes and you're not effectively returning the value of that cost, you're out the door. So it's you could say it's great for candidates, but I don't think it is. I think a balanced and fair market is what's the better better thing.

And, again, that but that is the challenge. If you're looking for great people, they are expensive, and it's not always easy to separate the the the the person that you're looking for with some of those costs versus that's just some location issues or other factors as well.

What are you noticing about in work in office work and location?

What are the what's the last few years look like? What trends are there?

It's definitely trending back to a hybrid, stroke office.

I don't think it will trend back to a full office. I think COVID has taught us all. As we all know that, you know, you can do things remotely and you do. But, certainly, for the first probably two, three years after COVID, two years, then eighty percent of our roles were remote. The exceptions were if you're in a a lab, for example, or you're a CTO, you had to be physically where stuff was being built or made or innovation was happening, but but it was significantly biased towards remote. We've seen in the last year or so that that's drifted back to more people wanting at least a hybrid model.

Good example at the moment actually is we're we're recruiting for a client with an office in Hamburg and and Amsterdam, and they require again three days of the week in the office. But on the flip side, then they are willing to and other companies are willing to contribute a little bit to that relocation if necessary.

Yeah. I mean, we we we tried everything. We tried one day. We tried remote. We tried in office.

And then we we surveyed everyone. I mean, I had a pretty strong belief in in office in general, so I I must say I'm very biased towards being in office. I think as a as a as a growth the rate of growth that we want to achieve, I think that that that kind of work works best when you're together. Then we surveyed everyone.

What we found is people didn't really care, they just didn't want to go into an office if it was half full. They wanted to go into a busy office or not at all. And so we said, right. We're gonna set we're gonna set these days, and it's it's worked really, really well for us.

And I think probably a year, eighteen months ago, we had candidates pushing back on it, and now we have pretty much nobody push pushes back on it. In fact, people say they want that. They really want to be in in person.

It it comes down to most things about culture, and and, obviously, that is is a part of culture in terms of how and where you interact. I think one of the things that originally people were reluctant to, and still now, is if you go to the office, it let's say everybody's in the office, and you come to the office and spend you down a Zoom call, there's no point you've been there. Yeah. So it's actually how do you utilize those days when you are in the office differently from when people are remote? And I'm sure you that's part of what you do is that you you have that collaboration time or or you use the time that people are in the office in a way that you couldn't do quite easily remotely. You don't bring people in the office because they should be in the office and then get them sit in a cubicle and spend their you know, that they're on a Zoom call or or or just with the head of the laptop because they could do that anyway.

No. And also, I mean, we have some great fun. I mean, it I I I big believe that work should be fun. Yep.

And because I think that's that's how you're gonna get the best out of people. And I think I think fun you know, there's limited fun you can have in your own house on your own all day. I don't have any fun in my house. Yeah.

Oh, well, I don't know.

I do have fun in my house, so my family, but but but certainly not on my own. So let's let's think about these hot spots then for a second. So where where's the hype at the moment in the jobs market?

Coming back to the point of more in your office, geographically, there are hot spots. Clearly, in the US, you've noted a couple. I mean, Austin's it it it's hot. Of course, the West Coast is very hot.

New York's very hot. In Europe, Berlin, Barcelona, Amsterdam, hot spots because there's a lot of clean tech start ups investment going on there. So the geographical hot spots. In terms of market sectors, then anything around storage and grid to optimization and flexibility are clearly massive topics that you very well know and, where there's a lot of interest and a lot of hard a lot of investment going into that.

So that that's still hot. There has been a slight cooling and even a reversing in some regards in EV charging infrastructure and the mobility space, A bit of consolidation around some of the manufacturers of EV charging infrastructure. But broadly, that's still a hot topic, particularly around fleets, larger scale and storage sorry. Large scale sort of storage and EV charging infrastructure, collocations, this kind of stuff.

So immobility is still hot. Storage and grid is still hot. Solar's picking back up again. There's a lot of hype around hydrogen, but probably not a lot of hiring, I would say.

Izzy's looking at me like you've done done bang on about hydrogen.

We could do we could have a long conversate we could have a long conversation about hydrogen.

So you do a lot of exe so you're focused on executive search, which is the management leadership within organisations.

So I'm sure you spend a lot of time thinking about what an executive team or a board should look like. So what what have you seen over the last ten years? What's your take on that?

I think certainly people are and COVID helped with this, I guess, to some extent, the importance of the communication skills and the ability to build and maintain and lead with strong culture.

I think that's been the big transition and change generally in in my working experience and and in the last ten years. People clearly need to have a certain skill set. They need to be able to perform to a certain degree. They need to be able to, you know, do the the job at hand. But increasingly at leadership, the job at hand is changed from purely an up an execution one, which is clearly important, but equally to more in terms of that element of leadership and and defining culture and communicating.

There's a number of reasons for that, partly because, again, the the nature of the workforce has changed. We're getting younger people in. Even at executive level, we're still getting younger people in who have different expectations potentially.

And you also have, going back to the point of, you know, more remote or hybrid working, and therefore, you have to work harder to maintain culture and to actually keep the communication channels open and to make sure people are fully productive. So I think that's the biggest change is that people now need to over and above being good at the mechanics of their job, they need to be good at communication, being agile and adept at changing their leadership style, not fundamentally something different, but to to not treat everybody the same in a regimented way. And I think those are challenges that when you're brought up or or perhaps even in a corporate environment where you're much more siloed into this is your job, do this thing, and and you don't need to worry too much outside of that. So internally, that's a challenge.

And externally, what we're seeing as you you see yourselves is there's a big convergence of multiple technologies. So, you know, you can't just look at storage and batteries in isolation without thinking about, you know, grid connections or you can't think about solar without thinking about storage. You can't think of EV charging without thinking about power. So that there's much more of a need for leaders to be aware of broader market conditions and other parts of the market, lots of moving parts. Because it's very difficult or next to impossible to define a strategy for your storage business or your solar business or your or or or your EV charging business without looking at the the market in a more holistic way and having data and resources and ability to look at how that those industries are are collaborating and and often converging.

There must be a load of jobs now that didn't exist ten years ago.

You know, it's I often think about this, like, when the yeah.

This AI is gonna take all our jobs, blah blah. And, obviously, that's not the case. It's just giving people to do different things. And there's a load of jobs now. Even product management, which is something I believe heavily in as a magnificent career, isn't really something that existed twenty years ago. What what jobs and job titles are being created in this new world of the energy transition that didn't exist ten years ago?

Clearly, data has changed. So there's a lot now of our guest CIO, chief information or and chief innovation officer. That's the other title. A lot of these titles have their acronyms that are not always the same thing in the same company.

So sometimes you'll see something that means different things to other companies. But clearly, you're always in around innovation and managing a leading innovation. Roles around how to utilize data across a a business. So those are probably the the, I'd say, the biggest change in terms of job titles potentially or where there perhaps weren't seats on the board or seats at the c suite before.

So that's probably a a little bit of a change. But but mainly, roles haven't changed much. It's more how they're handled and what falls under the responsibility of those roles.

Yeah. The CIO c the CIO one always gets me.

There's so many different parts of the CIO.

We need a CPO. Was that a chief product officer, or is that a chief people officer? And so there's again, there's, I guess, some of those things which are easy to dig beneath, of course, but there's a lot of misunderstanding. And, also, I mean, roles, for example, like a COO, what does a COO do? In every company, you could write, you know, almost entirely different job description.

The best COOs buy lots of doughnuts. That's all that's all I know.

I'll make sure it's still rough to make sure he's he's good.

They buy a lot of doughnuts. No. The COO is an incredible position, but you gotta be you gotta be getting doughnuts out to the team. Come back to the makeup of the board then. So what, what what are you seeing out there and, an executive team what what what do you see companies focusing on?

I think that's an area where there's perhaps a lack of focus or lack of thought, essentially, in what that needs to look like for two reasons. One of which actually, what you need in a leadership team and what you need in a in a in a board also changes with the stage of the company. You know, if you're in an a round and you're twenty people, that's very different from suddenly you're you're at a d round, you're you're international, and, and everything's changing around you. So the actual makeup of the board and makeup of the leadership team evolve as the company changes, which is different from, obviously, if you come from a corporate environment.

It's kind of like governance and and these things are the are the more key factors. You still need an element of that as you as you scale, particularly if you're gonna take on money, of course, but it's more a case of then around the table, are we fit for purpose for what we are now? So I think board positions, typically, you should look at tenure for no more than two years. That's not so you can't sort of sign a contract, so to speak.

But every two years, reassess actually what is it that we need right now. And same to a degree with the leadership team. Again, you're gonna be changing your leadership team on a regular basis, but you need to think that are they equipped for not just for executing on our current plan, but are these individuals capable and agile enough to perform when the company is in a different situation?

When we are, in five or six different countries, for example, or when we are in four or five different markets, are there are those individuals capable of, we believe that transition. So I think sometimes people hire for what they need now without clear thought on what is it we need now and in the next three, four, five years potentially. And it's hard to see that far down the line, of course, in the industry win because it is so dynamic. But looking at anything in isolation, I think, is the danger when you think or even when you see someone you've seen people make hires because this individual had a a beautiful set of experiences, that that were quite rare, and therefore, let's get them on board.

But without thinking about, well, what are you gonna do with those sets of skills, a, now and, b, when your world has shifted a little bit, as it should do. If you want to grow, then by definition, things you need to shift what you're doing and who's doing what. So I think, going back to your point, it's really looking at things on a holistic point of view of of what's the trans what's the journey for the company. And also looking at it from a team perspective, if you put it into a football analogy, you don't need a team full of Mohammed's allows because it's not gonna work.

So if you are, looking at your board or you're looking at your team, what skills and personalities do you already have, and where are the gaps?

So that's something, again, I'll just encourage people to look at context rather than purely the skill set of the individual that you need.

Yeah. It's hard, man, because every I it was my job as CEO when when we first started the company, my job title was CEO and there's three of us in a room. It was all a bit ridiculous. And then over time, this my job's completely changed and changed and changed.

And even just holding on to it and performing in that, it's every six months, the job description completely changes. And it you have to go back. It's like you have to go back and re almost rewrite your own story on it. Yeah.

And it's it's it's exhausting. It's ahead of a privilege, and I love it. But it's it's a real challenge.

That's just And it's but also communicate that, by the way, because, again, in terms of the team because what you're doing for that six month period of time, everybody gets, oh, this is what Q's doing. This is what Circular is doing. And then, you know, you have the same you know, most of the my early stage of the of the company was was was still actively, you know, internationalization, growth, and fundraising, and this kind of stuff. It is different. The title is the same, but actually the job is entirely different. So, a, that's a challenge for the individual and for the hiring, but it's also challenge then to communicate that into the business so people don't say, well, well, how's Q doing? That's not what I thought his job was.

Yeah.

It used to be everyone's mate, and now Yeah.

Yeah.

Now he's not. And then it is also half of the the the leadership team. Right? Because you hire someone in to do the job, and we we've definitely been through this.

And the the job is one thing, and then you say, okay, we're launching in the US. You gotta get on a plane. Yeah. And they might have young kids, and, you know, you're you're saying you gotta perform, you gotta lead, you gotta you gotta be present.

Yeah. And that that's tricky. And it's not about whether people are capable. It's like, do they want this?

Yeah. Because if the company keeps growing quickly, it's gonna just evolve and evolve and evolve. It's hard.

Well, that comes from transparency, is is to be really clear and and not BS anybody in the process that this is the direction of travel. You know? And if things go to plan, there will be international travel. There will be time away from home or there there will be exit situation that occurs.

Are you comfortable with that? Because at any level, it costs it's costly. But particularly at a board and senior level, if you hire someone and it doesn't work out after two, three years, that's that's or even less than that's really costly, financially costly. And and in terms of your, pace of growth, it's costly.

So being super transparent right off in terms of what are the warts and all, what is the direction of travel, this is the expectation now, but this is the expectation likely to be coming down the line. And field travel early people say, well, actually, now I've got, you know, three kids or I'm tied to Munich or London or wherever it might happen to be. I'm I'm just not going to be traveling. Then for all the skills that they possess now, they're not the right person to hire. So that element of transparency and being really clear on what is the journey and what does the path look like, you know, I think is important.

Absolutely.

And now coming on to the last two. So the first one is, if there's anything you wanna plug, this is your chance.

Well, of course the podcast, which you're kind enough to mention already, Leaders in Clean Tech, which I obviously interview entrepreneurs within clean technology. So do check out that, it's on YouTube more recently, but of course on all the podcast platforms.

And Hyperion Executive Search, if you're growing leadership teams, then, of course, reach out to me or one of the team. We work in seventeen countries. We work exclusively in clean technology. We've been doing this for a good period of time, so I'm always uncomfortable plugging too much. People mostly will hopefully have heard of us or know of us, but we can certainly help discreetly if that's something that you have.

No. Plug plug plug away. This is the this is the plug section. And then let's get to the contrarian view. So what what do you believe that perhaps not the rest of the world believes?

No. That's cool.

Anything's on the table here.

Yeah. I think within the market, I think I'm always probably happy to call out BS, particularly around some technologies that are shoehorned into places they don't belong, and the obvious one is hydrogen. I think it has a great part to play in some parts of the transition, but not in a lot of the places it's it's promoted. So I guess I'm controlling in that regards.

I'm also quite happy to call out BS where I see it from the status quo companies, oil and gas, for example, energy companies in transition to greenwashing. There's a lot of that still that goes on. Sadly, there are organizations who acquire businesses to stifle them rather than to grow them, and some of our clients have fallen foul of that in the past, and we've seen it firsthand. So I don't know if that's quite the controlling thing that you're looking for.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I think politics is important. I think it's gonna be really interesting what happens in the US, if the orange monster gets back in again. But yeah.

So I'm not a conspiracy theorist. But I do think there's a lot of on the hand elements that affect our sector in media and from the traditional oil and gas and energy companies, almost like the old tobacco playbook of misinformation or disinformation or over information that confuses people, which actually stops us getting to where we need to be from a transition perspective.

And, fortunately, you know, owning the company now, I don't have a corporate, PR team that tell me not to say these things, so I can I can call it out where I see it? But I think it's a genuine thing, not to be I say they're the conspiracy theorist, but I think it generally is. There's a lot of things against us in the sector.

Some of them are technological, but that's probably the minor minor things. A lot of it is around the status quo and the people who don't want us to succeed quite as quickly. And that does sound a little bit dark and sort of Machiavellian, but it's the fact that I think we are held back as a sector through policies and primarily through media that sort of want to slow the transition. We could move much more quickly without some of that. From my perspective, we don't have the time to be sitting around. We need to accelerate as quickly as we can, which is why organization like ours and yours exist.

So not sure that's contrarian, but I'm quite happy to call out the fact that there are some, darker forces that we need to be aware of and be happy to shout about.

Wow. But, yeah, agreed. It's not all plain sailing. There's the funny thing is on that, I think there are some dark some some dark forces.

It's funny. I'm not a conspiracist theory, but a theorist but, which is classic. But, yeah, I think I think, for, generally, everyone thinks they're doing the right thing. I think, like, for example, there's a there's a big problem with misallocation of capital into projects that don't really make sense, and technologies don't make it sense.

And you you mentioned this hydrogen silver bullet thing, which I think has now died down. But I think the people trying to build those projects do genuinely believe they're doing the right thing. And so it will come down to in my opinion, it will come down to cost, and it it will come down to timeliness and expense.

And we shall see, but I I don't think there's any there's not a doctor evil anywhere who's trying to figure out No.

I don't think there's a doctor evil anywhere. I think it's very difficult for some people to to transition. But I would say if you're working for an oil and gas company on the oil and gas side, and you wake up every morning knowing what you do is detrimental to the health of the planet and your own children, your own family, I think you've got to ask yourself a question. And a lot of people are uncomfortable asking that question or or pointing it out.

Why I'm uncomfortable with it is, I hear here's the the the juice of the conversation. I'm uncomfortable with it because I'm so reliant and my whole existence is reliant on oil and gas. Yeah. And so I and having and I worked a bit offshore. I worked works in offshore gas for a bit of Centrica and and their upstream organisation and some incredibly bright, committed, fantastic people.

And I don't know. I think, like, what I'm wary of and sometimes we do this sort of modo, and I always kinda shut it down or try and educate. So I I don't think we should point fingers at the people who are out there. If you've if you've ever worked two weeks on, working twelve hour days on an offshore platform in the middle of the sea in the pissing cold, trying to get gas onshore so people can heat their homes, and then for, like, people in, like, a nice office in London living their life saying, you know, what you're doing is immoral.

Yeah.

That that feels like a bit that that that I I can't get comfortable with that.

I think there's two things there. Firstly, you know, the thing it's not a zero sum game. It's not binary. We have to turn it off tomorrow.

Of course, we can't turn off oil and gas tomorrow. It's the world would collapse. Right? That doesn't work.

So nobody's saying that. I think you can get as soon as you start saying we need to transition more quickly, you said, oh, but, you know, your your iPhone's made of plastic, you know, of I know it is. We can't do it overnight. And equally, there are some exceptional people working in these industries.

And our vision at Hyperion is to make sure those exceptional people are not working for oil and gas and and and petrochemicals or or or or those industries. They they transition their careers into into the transitions. And, again, you know, everybody has to feed their family. Right?

So it is a bit I I do get you can't sit in your ivory tower and say, oh, look at you know, everyone's gotta feed their family. You gotta do what's right for you and your family. But I also think that the more people and companies you recognize that that their own personal self interest is in the transition.

And I guess that's why sometimes you have to be a little bit controversial, perhaps challenge people in their thinking.

So So this is why we do the contrary review because you get these kind of discussions, which is awesome.

Yeah.

Alright. Well, I wanna say a must say thank you for for joining us on a podcast, coming down to London to do this in person. It's a real privilege.

We are big fans of all the stuff you're doing, so please carry on.

Hundred and fifty episodes. I'm excited to see what you can do with three hundred episodes. And, yeah, if you're listening to this, repeat, go check out what Hyperion are up to, because there's some awesome content on there. Some great founder stories, which are an inspiration. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you for listening to Transmission, a Modo Energy podcast. Transmission delivers conversations from industry leaders and experts exploring energy markets and the operations and technologies related to grid scale battery energy storage. Check out our other episodes by searching Transmission wherever you get your podcasts. Check out the Energy Academy, our video crash course on how markets in Great Britain and ERCOT work or head to motoenergy dot com to see our written research. Thanks for listening.