Professor Colin Herron, MD of Zero Carbon Futures, explains how decarbonising manufacturing and changing our behaviour is key to achieving net zero.

The transition to electric vehicles (EVs) is often seen as the answer to our climate emergency. And yes, it’s fair to say the increased use of EVs across the world will have a positive impact on our collective carbon emissions.

But what if the process to make electric vehicles produced more carbon than the petrol and diesel car they’re replacing? Whilst the end product may be net zero, the process to make it may not be, and that is one of our biggest challenges when it comes to achieving net zero - decarbonising the manufacturing process from beginning to end.

We are making steps in the right direction, and the automotive industry is helping lead the way. Nissan’s new £1bn flagship Electric Vehicle (EV) Hub - EV36Zero – in Sunderland aims to be completely off grid, using solar and wind energy to power the site. And Britishvolt’s decision to open its new gigafactory in Blyth, Northumberland, was in part influenced by the area’s access to clean energy sources.

By decarbonising our advanced manufacturing sector, we’re helping create new innovations, tools, and practices to decarbonise other sectors too.

An area that often isn’t discussed when we talk about net zero is the need to create a full recycling economy. What happens to our EVs when they reach their lifespan? By scrapping them, we could create more pollution and cancel out all the product’s good work. Our net zero challenge is to manufacture, operate and dispose of a product in a carbon-free and efficient way.

The North East is already making an impact in this area; helping to influence policy around net zero. We’re very good at testing ideas to see, will it work, and is it the right thing to do. A great example of this is the unique Customer Energy Village at Northern Gas Networks’ (NGN) research site in Low Thornley, Gateshead, which is being used to research different technologies for decarbonising home energy use. If you don’t test the theory, you don't challenge the theory.

Despite the strengths we have in the region we’re not very good at promoting the research expertise and capability we have at our universities and specialist centres like the Faraday Institution North East (FINE), North East Battery Alliance (NEBA) and the Driving the Electric Revolution, Industrialisation Centre (DER-IC). One of the ways we’ve tried to address this is by bringing all the separate parts together to form a whole - an academic ecosystem that can support the private and public sector. We’ve been attending national and international conferences to really shout about the skills, talent, and expertise we have in the region. In order to raise the profile

of our research capabilities we need to have everybody across the region aligned.

A big challenge in reaching net zero is that we may not be able to bring the technology we need to the market place in the volume required, and in the necessary time frame. We really need a firm political focus and a realistic strategy based on what we can actually deliver.

We also need to develop a pipeline of talent to help deliver our net zero ambitions. I recently visited a school in the region and I noticed in the one of their science rooms they had a mannequin of a scientist. It was an old man, dressed in a white coat, with a look of Albert Einstein about him, complete with crazy white hair. If this is what we’re telling primary school aged children what a scientist looks like then we have a very long way to go in inspiring young people to follow careers in STEM. We have to be able to influence children at an early age and make science and engineering fun.

I’m always disappointment that lots of young people don’t know what an engineer does too. An engineer isn’t someone that comes and fixes the photocopier when it breaks; they design it. Engineers get rockets to the moon. Engineers make things happen and solve technical problems.

I really believe young people are the key to change, and I think they will be the generation that makes net zero a priority. Many people are engrained in politics and reluctant to change. If we can educate young people about the importance of the climate crisis and the need to change our lifestyles, it will become second nature to them; they’ll know nothing different.

We need to ask ourselves, are we prepared to move from a comfortable life and make material changes? Because if the answer is no, then we won’t achieve net zero. We have to recognise that, like COVID-19, we need to change our lives.