Net zero: can batteries re-industrialise Britain?
Episode 28 of the Autotrader podcast Women in the driving seat, hosted by Editorial Director, award-winning motoring journalist Erin Baker is released today. The series aims to rip up the rule book on the female-empowerment narrative by sharing personal as well as professional experiences, examining the space where both collide, and the challenges, fears and successes happen.
This episode explores the future of energy and technology, with a particular focus on the UK and what we’re doing as a country to achieve net zero – and the steps needed to get there. We discussed environment, and where the most advantageous place to make materials is - especially if it’s an energy intense process.
All episodes in the series feature a Podcast Pit Stop – a quick fire round covering the professional and personal including; Chemistry or physics? Lab or library? Cathode or anode? America or Europe?
Join Erin as she puts scientific innovators in the driving seat.
Podcast preview
Valerie Jamieson:
“Just one gram of fusion fuel could replace 20 tonnes of coal.”
“Tiny, tiny amounts of fuel – hugely energy dense”
“Fusion is the process that powers the sun, and billions of stars you see up in the night sky.”
“Renewables are going to be what gets us to net zero by 2025. But our energy demands in the world are just going to continue to go up as we bring billions of people out of energy poverty, as we turn on more AI data centres.”
“Renewables is what gets us to net zero, fusion is what keeps us at net zero.”
“This is not fusion or renewables, it’s working with renewables, and the beauty of fusion is this provides base load power.”
“When the sun’s not shining, when it’s calm, when you need that power – at the moment that’s fossil fuels that are supplying it. In the future, that can be fusion and fision as well.”
“There’s a lot of government investment going into this in the UK. At the recent spending review, the government announced £2.5 billion for fusion over the next five years.”
“There’s a really healthy pipeline of young people coming through and what inspired them is that fusion gives them hope.”
“We’re oversubscribed with young people wanting to study fusion because they see that this is an answer to solving the climate crisis.”
Isobel Sheldon:
“If we could unlock the energy that’s in all the matter around us, we wouldn’t have an energy problem. It's just finding a key to unlocking it.”
“Fundamentally, there’s been five revolutions in battery technology in the last 250 years.”
“We’re trying to build a business that will stand on its own two feet without artificial or synthetic support. And one of the only places you can do that outside of China, is the US.”
“We’re looking at ways to try and improve the competitiveness of the UK, so that we are an attractive place for the battery facilities.”
“We already have two big battery facilities here in the UK. The Envision AEC facility in the northeast was actually the first and only gigafactory for about 10 years in the whole of Europe.”
“It’s not that we don’t have that capability in the UK, we do, we just need more of it moving forward.”
“The UK is about 25% of new car sales in the whole of Europe.”
“I think one of the problems we’ve got is attracting enough people into engineering and technology. So much of the world is now looking attractive from a software or an AI perspective because that’s where a lot of the investment dollars are going at the moment.
Notes to editors
ABOUT ERIN BAKER
Erin Baker is an award-winning motoring journalist and Editorial Director of Auto Trader. She writes a monthly driving column for Vogue, is a World Car of the Year judge, consults for Goodwood and hosts She's Electric, a national roadshow bringing women and electric cars together. Erin is passionate about narrowing the gender gap, both in the automotive industry itself and between car brands and female consumers, through more targeted language, marketing and experiences. She is a single mother of two boys.
ABOUT AUTOTRADER
Autotrader Group plc is the UK’s largest automotive platform. It listed on the London Stock Exchange in March 2015 and is a member of the FTSE 100 Index.
Autotrader’s purpose is Driving Change Together. Responsibly. Autotrader is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive culture, it aims to build stronger partnerships with its customers and use its voice and influence to drive more environmentally friendly vehicle choices.
With the largest number of car buyers and the largest choice of trusted stock, Autotrader’s marketplace sits at the heart of the UK car buying process. That marketplace is built on an industry-leading technology and data platform, which is increasingly used across the automotive industry. Autotrader is continuing to bring more of the car buying journey online, creating an improved buying experience, whilst enabling all its retailer partners to sell vehicles online.
Autotrader publishes a monthly used car Retail Price Index which is based on pricing analysis of circa 800,000 unique vehicles. The same data that powers the Index is used by the Office for National Statistics to make the UK’s official measures of inflation more robust, as well as the Bank of England to feed the broader UK economic indicators.
For more information, please visit: plc.autotrader.co.uk
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