This is the Decarbonisation Dialogue, a podcast from Salix. Welcome to Delivering on Climate Change, our collective challenge. I'm 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.
Today, I have a wonderful guest with me. I have one of my Salix colleagues, and that's Becca Waite. And Becca is an Energy and Carbon Programme Manager with our team here at Salix. And I'm delighted to have you. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. Becca, can we start? Can you please tell us a little bit about your career and your education, your background here at Salix today? We'd like to hear a little bit about how you got here. Yeah, so I kind of started with a social
science background. I did an environmental politics master's, which was kind of a holistic view of environmental management, conservation and, of course, climate change mitigation strategies. I joined Salix nearly three years ago and I kind of used my foundation in kind of that holistic environmental politics background to focus on energy management and the built environment. So I've kind of built my specialism there now.
Yeah, so I've been here for three years and I think, you know, Salix is a great place to work to be at the forefront of watching these decarbonisation projects kind of from phase one of the public sector decarbonisation scheme, which Salix funds through the Department for Energy Security and
Net Zero. We've kind of seen the development and the innovation of decarbonisation projects and the kind of different technologies and work types that... are being funded now for public sector buildings it's a really interesting and exciting place to be um at the moment so yeah it's really interesting to put that my background in social sciences and understanding why um we need to obviously reach net zero and now kind of putting that into practice in how we're actually
achieving it is is a really exciting place to work thank you moving on so you mentioned the schemes some of the schemes that we deliver We're delivering hundreds and hundreds of projects over a year. Can I ask, how close do you get to those projects that we deliver? And is the success or failure in your hands? What's your
actual role in that work? Yeah, so in the energy and carbon team at Salix, we're in a really... important and interesting part of the business because we receive all the applications for for funding so there's the public sector decarbonization schemes there's the devolved Scottish and Welsh schemes as well And we've obviously got our recycling fund programmes and we still assess projects for that. So there's various different criteria that these applications need to meet, but they
all come through us. And we have a great team of staff and we work with our technical contractors to assess the feasibility of these projects and decide ultimately whether they're suitable for funding. have various different documents that applicants fill out so that we can access all of the information about why they want to do these projects. It really is a story. What is
their net zero journey? What have they considered for their portfolio of buildings that they can do and target our funding to the most needed buildings and needed areas as well? So we get those applications in and it's quite a gruelling time and assessment period to look through tens and hundreds of projects. doing a variety of
different interventions. So it can just be LED lighting projects for some of the loan schemes, can be quite extensive in that respect to the really complex heat network projects across cities. You know, we see it all and we decide ultimately
whether they're suitable for funding. And so going back to that decision that you're making, because you do see... hundreds if not thousands of applications throughout a year and you met you you used the word grueling um what is it about the what is it that i mean there are huge differences but what is what are the commonalities in these projects you're looking at the paperwork and presumably also speaking to the project managers and those aspiring to get their projects over
the line what is what is the commonality about what what these projects are trying to do Everyone's trying to achieve their net zero targets. Everyone's trying to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels. It's just sometimes trying to put that into the same sort of template is quite difficult. So I think when I say gruelling, I mean... You know, you're looking at various different heat decarbonisation plans, feasibility studies, different public sector bodies and different contractors, consultants
do things in different ways. So whilst we're all trying to deliver these projects and achieve those carbon savings and achieve that value for money and actually deliver them on the soil, on the ground, it can be hard to kind of intersect all that information over a desktop kind of study.
So it's communicating. through each of them even though they're trying to achieve the same thing obviously they're different projects they're different people so trying to do that in quite a short amount of time and obviously we've got quite strict rules in terms of when money can be spent and when things need to be done so that's why those those assessment periods can be difficult but also really really interesting and presumably you see a huge amount of passion come across
from those individuals trying to get their projects through and perhaps if they're not successful At one stage, you might see that same project or similar project from them later on down the line in another scheme. Yeah, exactly. I think that's one of the best things about this job, to be honest, and about working in this area is the passion that you see. It's not just a job for a lot of people. This is what's really
important to them and what drives them. So it's seeing the passion from public sector bodies and the applicants that kind of really is quite
motivational in our work. um and as you say if they're not successful in one round we can see the project come up again it's that determination to really get this project over the line but we also see projects that huge capital projects that might take five uh five years or a decade to actually complete and they can access multiple years of funding and one year is an extenuation of of the previous and you're really linking up what is being achieved so it's great to go
on site and actually see what is being achieved i'd love to hear about those site visits because it gives you another opportunity to get under the skin doesn't it of the project and and actually appreciate the challenges that those people have faced trying to pull that through? Yeah, exactly. It's going to hospitals and to schools. We've been fortunate enough to see kind of projects all over the UK, you know, different projects.
I've seen one where the local community has really rallied for this project to go over the line. Schools where children are writing letters to say how excited they are about their biomass boiler. And just understanding when you go to a listed building, why it's so difficult for works to carry out. the beautiful kind of architecture of the building. And it kind of puts everything into perspective of why these projects are sometimes really hard to deliver. Super. So very technical.
Obviously, your job starts with being very technical. You talked about your educational background, the social science behind all that and that holistic view. The term net zero, it's something I work in communications and it's something we obviously talk about in every other sentence. But in simple terms, how would you explain? net zero to someone who's not technical and it's such a huge part of obviously the work here how do you put that into an easy to understand format for people?
Yeah I think there is a lot of jargon but net zero essentially refers to the balance between the amount of greenhouse gases produced and the amount removed from the atmosphere. So essentially just making sure we're removing as much as we're producing, acknowledging that some emissions are unavoidable, especially as we're transitioning
to that net zero kind of landscape. So obviously you've heard of things like carbon capture and storage where you're kind of removing that carbon rather than using kind of natural sinks such as, you know, planting more trees and things like that. But it's essentially making sure that we're kind of reducing our reliance on fossil fuels and not emitting as much as we have previously.
Thank you. So very technical indeed. And it's great to have you here because I want to mention the other issue that I know we've talked about in other discussions is, do you think there are enough women in this area? Your background is very technical in terms of those qualifications. How do you feel working in this sector? Yeah, I feel like sometimes, you know, particularly in my job, I speak to a lot of engineers. It's
typically quite a male heavy industry. I think diversity is obviously important in any workplace. Just I think with engineering in particular and the built environment and the innovation that we need in this sector, it's really important to solve these diverse problems with kind of diverse backgrounds and perspectives and solutions. I think that's being reflected more in kind of some of the more graduate schemes that we're seeing. But it really does need to be reflected
at every level. And I know from experience and speaking to other women in the industry, it can be difficult when you're the only woman in a call or in a meeting. It can be difficult to come across as reputable. But I think it's a lot of workplaces are respectful and it's great at Salix. There are a lot of opportunities. It's probably not something I think about every day, but sometimes it does get drawn out in certain
situations. But I can see in the graduate schemes that I think there is a little bit of shift in getting more women in engineering. And do you think that goes all the way back to school? Because we go into a lot of schools, don't we, and we talk to a range of children. And this is really obviously ignited. everyone's interest, you know, especially young children and especially children in the way they talk about climate change and saving the planet. Where does that come from
for you originally? Yeah, I think in school I was not brought into STEM subjects. It was not something that was exciting or kind of, you know, one of the first things that was brought to me as an opportunity. I do think that's why it is so great to see these school children being so excited about the solar PV on the roof and actually seeing the technologies being installed, how
an air source heat pump can transfer heat. into the radiators, just actually seeing it and talking about it, because I would never have spoken about how the boiler works at my school. So it's really, it's actually just putting it into practice. And I think it can really, when you link it to the net zero agenda and what we're doing for the planet and what we can achieve, I think it really excites all children about, you know,
their prospects for the future. So when you mentioned the site visits a few moments ago, it is a chance to meet those children and see how they are interpreting
that. whole dialogue around net zero and looking at their ground source heat pumps and being very much part of that and teachers integrating all of the science and all of the technology into their curriculum that can only be a good thing for everyone yeah i think schools are really incentivized to do that as well um any schools that apply always talk about how they're gonna plan it into their curriculum and the parents although they're not happy about the car parks
being closed for the you know electrical upgrades and things like that it's the bigger picture and I think everyone is really really excited and kind of on board it's you need that buy -in to deliver these projects. OK, so going back to your day to day work, you're assessing a lot of projects and something that I've worked with you very closely on, Becca, is our webinars. We do a number of webinars. We do webinars when
we launch schemes. We do webinars. The decarbonisation dialogue is a webinar to bring in speakers to talk about their own experiences of these kind of projects. Now, in webinars, I hear a lot of talk and a lot of questions in spite of all the information that we put on our website. And I think it's good that we still hear quite basic questions about whole building approach, what end of life is, carbon cost criteria. And you
talk about those in your webinars. You're often referring to guidance notes from whichever scheme it might be. But when you're talking about whole building approach. And end of life, particularly, that's something that comes up again and again. How exact can you be? Sometimes I hear a little bit of a struggle in the answers that we provide at some of those webinars for people. Yeah, I think it can be difficult for people to understand
because it's obviously it's a policy. It's for our scheme in particular, the public sector decarbonisation scheme. And in people's everyday lives, you don't often come across, you know, there's a lot of jargon, different terms of use are used. Obviously, one of the key criteria for the public sector decarbonisation scheme is to retire those end of life fossil fuel heating plants, you know, the dirtiest oil boilers and the oldest gas boilers and that infrastructure and really just retrofit
those buildings. So to be eligible for the scheme. Though that fossil fuel heating equipment needs to be considered to be at the end of its useful life and therefore it makes good, you know, value for money sense to replace it with a low carbon alternative. You know, it's not as effective to replace a one -year -old gas boiler that's working quite efficiently with a new low carbon, you know, heat pump. There's not as much sense
there economically. End of life heating requirement, a fossil fuel heating plant needs to be at least 10 years old to be eligible for the scheme. Again, in terms of the scheme making sense, the applicants are encouraged to take a whole building approach. So really not just think we're going to take out a heating plant and replace it with a heat pump. Really thinking about how you can make that building as thermally efficient as it can be. So putting in double glazing where there
is only single glazing. Thinking about... um any roof insulation or solar pv that you can ensure that you're reducing your heat demand and getting that as low as it can be putting in a suitable sized low carbon heating system so heat pumps heat networks electric boilers and we fund a variety of low carbon heating technologies and then any energy storage solar pv making that running cost kind of as low as possible so that you're kind of making it work for you rather
than just you know doing a like for like heat pump in for a boiler it doesn't it doesn't make sense it's not best practice so we really do encourage that in all applications and of course we're talking about large public sector projects but also at Salix we work And I appreciate you don't work in the housing area, but for a lot of people now at this point, they'll be considering whether they install an air source heat pump at the back of the house and looking at planning
regulations and all of that. Because the built environment is responsible for 40 % of the UK's carbon emissions. Now, I appreciate that we are. A small part of the big picture, but it's a significant part of the big picture. And the work that you're doing is a significant part of all of that. Big question. So are we going fast enough? I think we're definitely on the right trajectory. As you mentioned, kind of we're a small slice of it, but I think the public sector are responsible
for 2 % of total UK. territorial emissions and we've got a target to reduce emissions in public sector buildings 75 % by 2037. So it is a big task and you know just working in my job I can see there's hundreds and thousands of buildings that need this type of funding to decarbonise.
Funding obviously is available and it's a huge catalyst for achieving net zero but the scale of change needed is huge and the demand obviously kind of outweighs that at the minute unfortunately so it's getting those kind of leveraging those funding mechanisms is really important for public sector organizations um but kind of the output could be tens and hundreds of thousands of carbon saved each year um yeah so i'd say we're going in the right in the right direction but maybe
not quick enough i think a big step is decarbonizing decarbonising the power supply as well. I think an interesting fact recently is that Britain's last coal -fired power station has been decommissioned.
So I think we need more pressure. We need... political incentives we need financial buy -in but we are seeing those kind of big steps on our way to reaching net zero that are really encouraging and you know encourages people you know to carry on those good those good projects and technologies are changing all the time aren't they in developing and there's a lot of pressure and a lot of uh focus isn't there on the actual technologies that we're we're looking at um that
perhaps aren't available yet but they're there for the future Yeah, so I think some people are still a bit cautious about putting heat pumps in. So there's still a lot of work going into improving the efficiency of heat pumps and how they work. You can, you know, they're standalone, cascading, high temperature heat pumps, whatever works for your building. But that is still an area for development as we move away from those
fossil fuel heating systems. The connections to district heat networks, obviously kind of a big move with the zoning regulations coming up. We're expecting a lot more kind of urban areas to be connecting to those district heat networks, which are often the lowest carbon, lowest cost kind of form of heat available, but also geothermal. hydro. There's a lot in this space. I think we're quite open at Salix to explore
new technologies. We just need to understand that those carbon savings can be achieved and that there is real evidence for that. Because I've seen the email box to your team, to yourself. It is vast, isn't it? People are asking those questions about technologies. People are really hungry for it, aren't they? And ambitious for the projects that they want to deliver. So that's
absolutely fascinating. But in terms of your work at Salix and within the public sector, because you specifically work on the big projects, can I ask, I mean, we've got a great flavour of it, but what most inspires you when you come into work every day about your work? And then I'm going to ask the subsequent question is, what can all of us do to be better at this? I think what motivates me is working closely with these
public sector bodies. Often if you've got kind of an in -house energy team, there is so much passion to get these projects over the line. Some projects are headed up by headteachers and by people where it's not actually their day job. It's something they're putting in extra to access this funding and be able to deliver these projects. So it's the passion, receiving emails of excitement about these funding opportunities going through. I think the innovation as well, as we just touched
on, kind of the new technologies. I think everyone's still learning about how these technologies work. You're kind of learning on the job about how we can improve things, make things better, and kind of seeing the impact of how much carbon is actually being saved. We deal with a lot of data at Salix, and you're really kind of seeing
projects being delivered. Our previous phases of funding, you're seeing projects being delivered and annual carbon reports coming in showing how much carbon is being saved whilst you're in the midst of allocating funding for the next phase. So you're seeing every kind of milestone of it. And it's just quite an interesting kind of intersection to be. And then also we kind of mentioned on the societal impact. So getting kids more excited
about science and engineering. And, you know, hearing about how the new glazing in a hospital is making patients, vulnerable patients, more comfortable. It's not only just saving carbon, it's actually having a real impact on these buildings that a lot of us use in our local communities. So I think that really keeps me motivated. And you're learning all the time. Obviously, it's a huge learning curve all of the time from all of these people and projects. Exactly. And everything's
moving at such a fast pace. There's always something
new. to be learning so yeah and you you sound like you're an optimistic person and do you feel optimistic generally about the picture that we're facing in terms of climate change and our huge challenges to reach um the targets that we have i think in in day -to -day work it's easy to forget and just think about what this project is achieving what our fans need to achieve and you can kind of lose sight of the big picture but i think I kind of speak to, you need to be
optimistic. You need to be realistic and you need to be optimistic. You kind of need to avoid, I think a lot of young people are feeling kind of climate anxiety at the moment and you only have to kind of turn the news on to see kind of the extreme weather that we're facing across the world. And you can kind of catch yourself in moments of, are we really going to achieve this? What is our future going to look like?
But, you know, we work at the forefront of delivering these kind of low carbon technology projects, removing carbon and direct carbon from the atmosphere every day. You can kind of see that impact and we are moving in the right direction. We just need to carry on the pressure, carry on the education, not just for, you know, the younger generation,
but everyone. We need more skilled, you know, craftsmen and people working, you know, putting these boilers in, trades people so that people feel comfortable putting an aerosol seat pump in their house. And that kind of political incentive covered in the media, we just need to carry on with that pressure. And I think our team at Salix are definitely feeling optimistic about what we can achieve if we get all those ingredients right. Superb. Thank you very much, because it
is a very inspiring team over there. And I do recommend that people come along to our webinars, whether it is scheme launch webinars or decarbonisation dialogue webinars, because there is so much learning and so much sharing. So thank you very much to Becca Waite today for your time. Thank you for providing such incredible insight and sharing your knowledge and your skills. There can be no doubt that climate change is the biggest challenge of our time. Today, we must reduce carbon 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. Thank you to Becca. Thank you for your time. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast and send in any views or ideas to our email address, which is podcast at salixfinance
.co .uk. Thank you. 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.