This is the Decarbonisation Dialogue, a podcast from Salix. Welcome to Delivering on Climate Change, our collective challenge. Welcome to the Decarbonisation Dialogue. I am Hannah Walker and I believe that the best way to communicate a message is by being passionate about what you are talking about. Through that passion, I believe you take people with you and create action using your influence to make change and make a difference. Our task today is to get all of us to net zero.
With me today we've got a wonderful guest and that's Nadine Mustafa. Nadine is a research associate in chemical engineering department and the centre for environmental policy at Imperial. Nadine specialises in systems modelling for carbon management and decarbonisation technologies, developing net zero strategies including carbon accounting,
policy and carbon markets. Her work integrates socio -economic and techno -economic aspects of various energy technologies, including carbon capture and storage from various applications, CO2 removal from the atmosphere, nuclear power and sustainable fuels. Nadine also serves as the Programme and Policy Officer at the Coalition for Negative Emissions, advancing negative emission
technologies and related policies. Nadine graduated in Chemical Engineering and Business Management as a minor from the University of Birmingham, and her PhD research focused aspects of carbon capture, which involved a study of the kinetics of carbon dioxide absorption. But I'm hoping Nadine can explain all of that in very simple terms. I am afraid I am not a scientist. But welcome very much to Nadine. Welcome. Lovely to have you here today. Thanks, Hanna. Thanks
for the introduction. Thanks for having me. Okay Nadine, can we start off by talking a little bit about your career in science, engineering and environment. You're a strong role model. Is this an area, for example, and I'd like to know about your background, how you moved into it. And I'd also like to know, is this something you would encourage, for example, girls to consider as a career? The short answer is yes. I'd definitely encourage girls to join this career. I have to
say though that I joined it by pure luck. And I also want to say that it's probably because I didn't have enough role models in the space when I was younger. So I was the kind of student that got the highest grades. I was valedictorian and so on and so forth. But the only option that was ever presented to me was being a medical doctor. And that's quite common. So I'm Egyptian and it's quite common in the Middle East that if you're a top student, you do medicine or engineering.
But as a girl, it was always that, you know, no, you're going to be doing medicine. It makes more sense. I'm not really sure why, because the hours actually are not as flexible. But usually as a girl, you're pushed into medicine. And so I was actually going to do medicine. And I mean, even my A levels, I didn't do physics because I was going to do medicine. And the only reason I ended up in engineering was because I was talking to my parents and they wanted to send me abroad
to study. And I felt that I didn't want to stay abroad for that long. Jokes, obviously, because I've been in the UK for 10 years now. But at least when I was younger, there wasn't enough role models within the space of engineering and science to show you what you can do within that space. So sometimes all you think about when you think about it of an engineer is that you think of someone with a hard yellow hat and a blue jumpsuit, which is absolutely not true.
I actually know very few people that wear this blue jumpsuit in engineering from everyone I know that's an engineer. And so I think just the general understanding of what engineers can do is something that we might lack and there's a lot of things that happened since I got into
engineering that kind of help with that. And you're using your skills and your education, that engineering background for good now because your job is largely about the impact of climate change and actually looking at the solutions to mitigate that. Can I ask, because we're going to spend hopefully a large part of our... interview today talking about sustainable fashion. But before we do, I'd like to talk about the trends regarding clean energy at the moment. Because
it's not all doom and gloom, isn't it? I know you're quite a positive person in nature. I've read the interviews, by the way. Yeah, I mean, a lot of people do say that I'm quite optimistic. And I am because When I first started my PhD and I was telling people that I work in sustainability and climate change, very few people knew what I was talking about. And then there was a point where I was volunteering and teaching and I asked students, you know, what do you know about climate
change? And they actually knew a lot. And so I was very surprised. So like the first five slides of my presentation became redundant because they actually knew what I was talking about. Whereas if I were to give that lecture or lesson, a couple of years back before that time, no one would know what I was talking about. My friends wouldn't know what I was talking about. They didn't necessarily understand why it was important to be more sustainable or what climate change
was. And when I was first working on carbon capture, again, pretty much no one knew what I was doing. My sister is an engineer. She had no idea what I was doing. I'm optimistic because I think there's so much happening in this space. There are, there's so many policy directions, like the directions of the policies are going in the right way. And industries are trying to also go in the right
way. And I think there's an overload of information, both from a, I guess, from a governmental or industry perspective, but also from a consumer perspective. And so we need to kind of collaborate more on that. But generally, I'm an optimistic person because I think there's a lot happening in this space. There's a lot of people talking about this, doing research, working in this space, really trying to get us to our targets in decarbonization and net zero. And so, yeah, I don't think it's
all gray and dull. I do think we're going in the right direction. The only thing I would say though is that now is probably the time for action. We've talked a lot about this. We're researching a lot and we're going to continue doing that. We're going to continue talking and we're going to continue doing the research. We're going to continue communicating the science and we're probably going to need flexible policies, whether governmental or industrial, as we know more.
But we do need to do more action now and less. you know, talking about it. Okay, so you're seeing a lot of good policy, a lot of business decisions, and you talk about all of us. Now, here's a good chance for us to move on to sustainable fashion, because it's something that we're all in some way involved in. Now, according to the United Nations Alliance for Sustainable Fashion, the average consumer now buys 60 % more clothing than we did 15 years ago. So we're buying, we're
consumers, aren't we? We're big consumers. We're buying a lot more. And I know that you've done a lot of work on fast fashion and sustainable fashion. Why are we talking about this in connection with climate change? Why, what does sustainable, I'd like to know what does sustainable mean and what is sustainable fashion? So I would say sustainable fashion is designing, producing and consuming the clothes in ways that minimize environmental
harm. And so that's how I would define it. And I would also consider things like the ethical labor practices. I would put that under sustainable fashion. And the reason we consider it a thing and we need to think about it is that fashion, for example, contributes a lot to the global CO2 emissions. As far as I remember, the last reference I've read was 10 % of global CO2 emissions, which is a lot. So I think in comparison, aviation
is 2 % to 4%. And I can send references just to make sure that the numbers are absolutely correct. I mean, other than CO2 emissions, it's also the second largest consumer of water worldwide. It pollutes the oceans with microplastics. Textile dying itself is also a large polluter of water. I think it's also the second largest. And then that also means that, you know, a lot of our textiles are actually dumped each year into landfills or burnt. And so 85 % of all textiles are dumped
each year or something like that. It's quite important to kind of consider all of this and generally kind of think about what does sustainable fashion mean. I do think it's unfair to kind
of place the entire burden on individuals. So it's not, as you mentioned, there's, you know, a lot of textiles being produced and as I mentioned actually when it comes to things changing so I remember when I was at university I did a minor in business management and part of a supply chain management course I studied how amazing the supply chain of Zara was because it can design produce and like you know get to the point of sales the lines within two weeks and so The fact that suddenly
we used to produce two fashion lines per year, so autumn, winter, and summer is spring, summer, and suddenly we can start producing 50 lines per week was an amazing thing from a supply chain perspective, right? And we studied that. I remember I wrote an assignment about how amazing they do this and how they cut the lines and all of that. And then fast forward five, whatever, years later when I was doing my PhD and looking at climate, I was like, oh my God, that's horrific.
The fact that we do this is horrible. And whilst it's amazing from a supply chain perspective, it's horrible from a climate perspective. And we don't need that many clothes. Again, I think that kind of points back to what I was saying about, you know, things do change. And I've seen that based on just my studies from undergrad to PhD. So that's why I'm optimistic. And you quoted a figure a few minutes ago, which is quite jaw dropping, actually, you said something, I
think. you'll correct me again, I'm sure, but 85 % of textiles end up in landfill. Is that 85 % of textiles, because there is that overproduction that you've talked about, is that the textiles that are being overproduced or is that the material, are those the materials that are being bought, consumed and then discarded, or is that everything? Everything, I think it includes everything. Yes, yeah. So just come back to that sustainability. You're right, it can't just be up to the individuals,
but it's not as simple. I think about my daughter, who's a university student, and she shops in charity shops. She does the vintage. She doesn't buy new. She buys secondhand, recycled, or she's either in my wardrobe, actually. But is it as simple as organic? Because there are many sustainable alternatives, aren't there? Organic. vegan, renting, swapping, all of those issues around that. I mean, is that something you also look at? Does that make a difference? It definitely makes a
difference. Again, I can't remember the exact statistic, but it was something like if you were to keep your clothes for an extra six months and actually wear them, you instantly decrease the environmental impact by, let's say, 25%. I'll get the exact statistic and send that to you. But so something as simple as Genuinely maintaining your clothes and, you know, wearing them can have a massive difference. Doing everything you just mentioned makes a massive difference.
Washing clothes in a way where, so not under extreme heat, so under colder water decreases the amount of microplastics that goes into the ocean. So there are things that as individuals we can do. And the more we do these things, we also send more of a signal to industry and government that we need that, you know, this is something we care about. And so we need you to act upon it. The only reason I said it's a bit unfair to kind of put the whole burden on individuals
is because there's a lot of information. And so, I mean, I think about that and anything else that I buy that I'm not really, you know, an expert in or know much about. So, for example, skincare. I try to look into that and I mean, I'm a scientist, I'm a researcher, and I still get overloaded with so much information. It's like you get someone telling you, you know, this is absolutely so bad for your health. And then the second person says, you know, no, this, no,
this is amazing for your health. And then it goes on and on, especially with social media. We cannot expect an, you know, an average consumer to not even average, you know, even someone that, you know, can actually do the research. to do that research for apps for every single choice they make, right? Like it's too much. And so
it shouldn't really be that sustainability. I mean, the aim, I think the goal that we need to reach is that it shouldn't be the sustainability is a luxury, but it's that it's the default. And to do that, it needs to be a collaborative thing between individuals, the consumers, basically policies and also industries. Everyone needs to kind of take their share of responsibility because no one specifically is exactly to blame, right? But if we all do our part, we're going
to reach that goal where it's the default. It's not a luxury. It's not a luxury that you only do if you can afford to spend more or if you can afford extra couple of hours a week where you're doing this research. It should be something that's easily accessible and affordable. Generally, at the moment, if you want to buy something new that's sustainable, there is a price, isn't there?
Do you think people, at the moment, you're relying on people wanting to pay more for something that's been sustainably and ethically produced, aren't you? Yeah, so it's definitely more expensive. I think there has been surveys where they asked if people are willing to pay the extra price for something more sustainable. And the surveys showed that, yes, there's a lot of people that are willing to pay this extra price for something
that's sustainable. So without industry being extremely transparent and you know the right policies it's a bit hard to kind of justify paying more because are you sure that this is actually more sustainable because you will definitely find you know some information out there that's saying it's not. And as I said like as an average consumer I mean I don't have the time to kind of you know make sure that every every single choice I make on a day -to -day basis is more
sustainable. And that's too much, right? And so that's why I think it's a collaborative thing that we need to do. And that's why I think it shouldn't be a luxury, it should be a default. And it's not that now, then that's fine. But that's what we should be working towards. Do you, in your view, do you think people, we're talking about the general public here, do you think people are prepared to change? Do you think people want to do the right thing? And do they
care enough? I do think people care and I do think people are prepared to change. But as I said, I think it's quite important for it to be a collaborative thing. It's quite important to be involved in the process. It's quite important for there to be transparency and trust. And sometimes I think industries think that they need to solve the problem tomorrow and that's not the case, right? We just need to know that you have a plan. and it's not perfect now, but it will be close
to perfect at some point. It might not be perfect, but it's good enough for now. Having this flexibility where we're moving towards long -term robust models that are sustainable, whether it's from a business perspective or from a consumer perspective or from a policy perspective, is quite important.
as i said the reason i'm a lot of the reason one of the reasons that i'm more optimistic about this is because a lot of people actually you know come and ask me questions they're like is this actually you know more sustainable should i be doing this or should i just like not do that because i've seen videos that say both to be very honest it's not that i always know the answer so sometimes i actually have to go i'm like i actually don't know and fashion was one
of those things where i didn't know I mean, as you mentioned in my bio, it's not really my expertise, like the fashion part. The environmental impact part is my expertise, but its application into fashion is not something that I've done from a purely research perspective. It wasn't my PhD, but it was something that someone asked me. And then I also thought about it. And I was like,
I actually don't know how bad this is. And I remember when I first saw the environmental impact statistics, I was like, oh my god, I mean, let's say I'm working on aviation and it's like, you know, two to four percent and everyone's so worried about this. Why aren't people worried about that? And so I think people do care. I am getting a lot more questions about this, both by the way, both from an individual perspective and from a business perspective and from a policy perspective.
So. being a researcher at Imperial, you get to be quite close to the real world impact and contributing to policies and business strategies. And so there's a lot more traction now than when I first started my PhD of people coming and asking us, they're like, can you please submit evidence on this? Can you please look into this for us? And should we bother with it? And how can we actually reach net zero and so on? So I think People are asking and people do care, both consumers and industries
and governments for sure. It's just that there's a lot of information, as you say, out there and it's a matter of getting through that information and working out the truth isn't there. And as you say, you're a scientist and you've struggled to reach that information. So we're facing a climate crisis. In terms of energy, let's talk about energy for a moment. What do you think the picture looks like in the UK? Do you think
we're doing enough? to tackle climate crisis because we have a 2050 target for clean energy and zero carbon. Do you think we're leading the world or do you think we're trailing behind? Do you think we're on track? Because obviously we can't afford to stand still, can we? I think the UK is a leader in terms of targets. So we have very, very strong targets for 2050. We have the Committee on Climate Change. So they've just
published their latest budget. you know a lot of really good progress in terms of decarbonizing their energy demand so phasing out coal and investing massively in renewables for example we've decreased our emissions by more than 40 percent compared to the 1990 levels but the first 40 percent is probably the easy part because like we you know phasing out coal already kind of gave a lot back a lot of carbon budget back Whilst, yes, we have very ambitious targets and whilst, yes, we're
going in the right direction and, yes, there's a lot of policy directions that I think are very optimistic, we're not necessarily on track to meet them without bold coordinated action. And so now is the time to kind of start doing the things. We need to start building the plans to produce our sustainable fuels. We need to start looking into how we're going to be doing our energy storage. We need to start looking into what kind of infrastructure are we going to need
to electrify our lives, basically. We might not get everything right the first time, and that's fine, but the only way to kind of learn, there's a certain part of engineering, the only way where you learn is when you start doing it, and then you're like, okay, no, actually I can do this better the next time. And so I think we're at that stage where we need to start learning by doing, because that also obviously decreases
the costs of things. And so the UK has the ability to be a leader in that, being a leader in the technologies and actually decreasing the costs. We do. We have that possibility. And we also have a lot of natural advantages, don't we, in the UK? Obviously, we can't rely on wind and we can't rely on sunshine, but we do have a lot of natural advantages, but challenges around connectivity, don't we, in this big conversation about where our power comes from and all the
mixes, energy mixes. Just going to talk about that net zero or goal for net zero. Do you think we have the skills? Because that's the other big topic of conversation. You're a scientist and you've been working on this agenda. You've talked about how you're explaining it to your colleagues, your friends, your family. But do you think we have enough skills? Because do you
think we have enough experience? And I'm talking about the practical skills as well, from whether it's fitting of heat pumps, which we haven't talked about, but it's all in that energy mix, to sourcing the right materials and whether that's the we're talking about sustainable fashion. Do you think we've got the skills and then the vision? I'm going to answer this with I don't know. And purely because this is something that I'm working on. The reason I say I don't know
is because we actually haven't done enough. studies to kind of you know sit down and be like okay this is how many people we need for this this is how many people we need for that and the reason i said i don't know it's not that you know do we have enough enough skills it's that we really need to consider the retraining and reskilling of the skills we already have because there is a lot of overlap and i think people kind of you know forget about that they forget that we have
a lot of overlaps like for example if we're talking about you know capturing co2 transporting it and storing it We've built pipelines. We know how to do that before, maybe not for CO2, but we've done pipelines before, right? And so we can retrain and reskill people from the different industries that have done this to do that, other than carbon dioxide, but also hydrogen. There's a lot of hydrogen in our net zero strategies.
Again, the storing of hydrogen, for example, or the transporting of hydrogen, we haven't done it for hydrogen specifically. to a large scale, but we've done it for other things. We've done it for natural gas, for example. So it's not just as simple as we need to find all these new skills for what we're going to do. It's more that, okay, we have those skills. We have X and
Y and Z skills. How can we repurpose, retrain and reskill or utilize those skills to make sure that we don't lose them before the next generation comes up? As well as that diversification of skills, there's quite a few skills, skilled people retiring, you know, that we've had that expertise and they're going to disappear at some point. Yeah. So I remember I did like a qualitative thing for nuclear power and the age of the workforce
was, a lot of it was above 50. And so unless we, unless we kind of, you know, we've lost the part in between because we weren't doing nuclear power for a couple of decades properly. But then if those people choose to retire in the next five years and we don't have a plan to make sure that their expertise is moved down to the different generations or the upcoming generations, then
we lose that skill set completely. And so I think the answer is not, yeah, as I mentioned, it's not as simple as we're going to be doing this massive transition and we need all these new skills because that's not true. We don't need
all these new skills. we're going to need some new skills yes and we're going we need to make sure that we get those but also we're going to have a lot of skills already at hand that we can retrain and repurpose and re -skill and so doing this doing this at a large scale is quite important and we actually just submitted evidence to the parliament on this and one of our researchers, so there was five of us at Imperial that submitted evidence on this and one of, and we got called
into the Parliament and one of our, one of the researchers went to Parliament to kind of present that research. So also something I'm working on, just measuring the socio -economic impact and you know what kind of jobs do we need and
under what categories. I think we need to go a step further and you know map the skills we already have, how are we going to kind of Use them in the in this transition what skills can we might we be losing and how can we maintain this and just have a plan basically on that and i think that's why the. Again an optimistic thing that's the reason the parliament asked for evidence on this so we're definitely going the right direction
and hopefully you know. And at some point we're going to have that plan, but it's something we need to do for sure. Fantastic. And that is fascinating work. And particularly when you talk about nuclear, because that's a very good example of that as we revisit nuclear, the skills, let's grab that before they do disappear. Interesting age demographic there as well. So how does your work and your passion for the environment impact your own lifestyle?
I kind of think about the different things I buy or how I travel or where my energy comes from. I also start thinking about, okay, what's going on with the energy transition in Egypt, for example, or I grew up in Kuwait, so I think about that as well and just any country I visit. And what's really interesting about this, I think,
is something that also affects my research. For example, fashion was something that's not in my research, but it's something that I looked into because I was like, okay, this is something I buy. You know what's going on there. Whenever I travel and then looking at it from a global perspective and realizing, you know, there's.
there's different countries involved in this we all need to reach net zero we all need to you know contribute to the to the to minimizing our carbon budget and all of these countries have different resources and so they're all actually going to reach their net zero targets and in different ways is also quite cool and impressive and again it reflects in my research when i think about things because Then I'm like, okay, you
know, there's no silver bullet. And I always say this, I think in any interview I've ever been on, I always say, you know, there's no silver bullet. And the more I work on different technologies, the more I realize there isn't a field that I've been in so far where I'm like, if we do this one technology, we'll be able to solve that whole field. There is just, you know, I haven't come across that yet. And so it definitely shapes. how I live both from a personal perspective,
but also from a research perspective. And they both blend in, which is really nice. And they give me ideas. So my personal perspective also, you know, gives me ideas with my research perspective. But as I mentioned, it's not always easy to kind of live sustainably, fully, and it's not always affordable. And so I try to kind of focus on the most meaningful things I can do because, you know, no individual can solve this alone. And that's why I think throughout the whole interview,
I said, collaborating a lot. And I said, you know, we used to do this together a lot. You do talk a lot about community, community of knowledge. You talk about the global. If we can all just talk, it's not just one person's responsibility, whether it's government, whether it's business, whether it's all of us. You talk a lot about that. In terms of your work, one final question I do have for you is that you've achieved a huge amount already. You've just talked about papers
being submitted to Parliament. What are you working on now? What next? What's the next big thing for you and your research? As I mentioned, my background is in chemical engineering, and now I work both between chemical engineering and the Centre for Environmental Policy. My PhD was quite technical. I was in the lab for like 10 or more hours every day, just, you know, doing in front of my reactor, doing a lot of analysis.
And what I'm doing now is a lot more at the so it's it's research and then but also the interface between policy and action just kind of how do we move everything i've done or know into real world impact and i really like this quote that the institute of molecular science and engineering at imperial uses i'm sorry if i say it wrong but it was something along the lines of you know it's not enough to make uh simple molecules we must make them work in a complex world That's
kind of where I'm at now and looking at it also from a global perspective, from a systems perspective, zooming out a bit. So maybe it's not perfect in every part of the chain, but it's good enough. And so how does that work from a systems perspective and a global perspective? So making it work, making what you're working on, making it work. Because throughout the interview, you have talked as well as talking about the community and that whole global action. You have said a couple of
times, having a plan. So it's turning that policy and all that work into that plan and making it make change. You have been absolutely a perfect guest. Thank you very much, Nadeem. There can be no doubt that climate change is the biggest challenge of our time. Today, we must reduce greenhouse gas emissions to slow global warming. Today, we must act for tomorrow, adjusting our lifestyles to current and future impacts of climate change. Today we must use our collective wisdom
to deliver on our climate commitments. Today we work for tomorrow's world. Please don't forget to subscribe to our podcast channels and tell us what you think and would always be interested in your ideas. Email us at podcast at salixfinance .co .uk. Thank you again to Nadine Mustafa for joining us today. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. You've been listening to the Decarbonisation Dialogue. a podcast from Salix. For more information about our work and to find more content, please
visit salixfinance .co .uk forward slash podcasts.