I was catching up with my Swedish colleague yesterday and she mentioned a piece of art that starts with words along the lines of ‘dear great great great great great… grandchild…’ It’s an apology for the state that we have left the world in. I also saw an article in the paper along the lines of ‘youth told not to blame elders for state of the world’.
Both got me thinking about what I might say to future generations and how might I explain the life and career choices that I made, particularly around my involvement with energy.
Let’s start with the difficult stuff. I have done a lot of work with fossil fuels. A lot of work in gas, which I told myself was about keeping people warm, whilst knowing that there was a problem. A lot of work in electricity, which until recently was based on coal, I even did a project on coal supply chain logistics project for a UK power station to improve the flow of coal from South Africa. A bit of work in oil and gas, where extracting more is always the game.
Some of my work will have to be judged by history. Right now, I believe that nuclear power is an essential part of our decarbonisation plan. But there is a lot of radioactive waste that will still be here in thousands of years’ time, and we don’t yet know whether we will deploy at the scale and pace needed. Perhaps we are creating different political tensions and some countries may use nuclear power to build nuclear weapons.
I hope to be able to write to future generations on the part I have played in pushing a decarbonisation agenda in the electricity sector, teams that I have worked with have been responsible for a lot of the move away from coal and into renewable energy. I also hope to be judged favourably on the work that I have done to support vulnerable customers. A big part of my work has been driving efficiency and cost reduction, which makes energy more accessible and affordable for people.
How do you reflect on your work, and what are the highs and lows for you?
