Hello, welcome and thanks for listening to Carbon Climates, an energy podcast dedicated
to discussing all things energy, carbon and sustainability.
We also want to point out what's getting hot, aside from our planet.
I'm your host Aine and today I'm joined with my carbon climate and co-host Ralph, who
I will be introducing shortly.
So before we get into today's topic, Ralph, how's your week been and can you tell us a
bit about yourself?
Hi, this week's been a bit mental as weeks normally tend to be for me.
I had lots of client meetings, lots of internal technology development meetings, which I'm
sure we'll talk about over the next however long.
Oh yeah.
But it's also my birthday this weekend, so I've been planning a few bits and pieces around
that.
So we're going to see the Barbie movie on Friday.
Very excited.
Can't wait.
Have to find something pink.
We pink shirt or like go as Ken like.
I don't have the physique, unfortunately, to pull off the Ryan Gosling vest on its own.
All you need is a Primark shirt and shorts and sandals on your set.
Like yeah, it's really good.
I went to see it a couple of weeks ago.
Yeah, that's good.
So what is your job title?
So I am a net zero applications engineer at Katagen.
That means that I as an engineer, I'm involved with both technology development of our net
zero tech, but also I engage with stakeholders, which is a fancy word for people who don't
work for Katagen about what they need our technology to do.
So how big does it need to be, how efficient does it need to be, what regulations, what
safety need to be fed into that design.
And I work with the R&D engineers to develop those systems that you wouldn't necessarily
think about when you're building a new technology.
Wow.
And so how long have you been in this sector?
So I have worked in sustainable energy for four to five years now.
I am what's called a recovering academic.
An academic who got very frustrated with the speed that technology and progress was being
made purely because of the way academia is and there's not anything wrong with it.
I wanted something that was a little bit more fast moving, a bit more practical in its application.
But I started my climate education off of my undergraduate at Queen's University as
part of my chemical engineering course.
Which is what my masters is in.
And then progressed into a PhD also in chemical engineering, but more focused on hydrogen
energy systems.
And then transitioned from that role into a postdoc where I was doing kind of education,
but also research in decentralized decarbonization activity.
And then moved to Katagen where I'm building the technology for those systems.
Wow.
That's amazing.
So, see, at school, did you ever envisage yourself in this sector?
So I'm probably quite a stereotypical boy in that STEM subjects were more my strength,
I would say, than things like languages and arts, which has changed as I've gotten older.
I don't have any aptitude for languages, but I love going to lots of places.
But at school, I focus mostly on chemistry and physics.
And that's probably where chemical engineering comes from, particularly physical chemistry,
which is kind of thermodynamics, engines, the stuff that would more traditionally be
associated with mechanical engineering in some ways.
But I always had that aptitude that was definitely not biological science.
It was more kind of physical practical science at school.
And that was where my decision to go to university to do an engineering degree came from.
And the decision was between mechanical and chemical for me.
And I felt chemical was a broader qualification because you have lots of different industries
that you can get into.
And that is the same for mechanical engineering.
But I felt that the specific sector suited me and my strengths a bit better.
Plus I also thought chemistry, I was quite good at it at school.
And then I did it at university and realised I am average at it.
That's always the way.
You're like, oh no, I've peaked.
Yeah.
Chemistry at university is very different than chemistry at school.
And I think I realised after my degree, it's because there's lots of chemical engineering
in chemistry at school.
We just don't call it that because it's easier to call it chemistry.
OK.
All right.
OK.
Brilliant.
Thanks, Ralph.
So you've probably guessed from Ralph's explanation, today's topic is the focus of hydrogen.
So Ralph, before we start discussing all the basics, I've got a joke for you.
What do you call the number one secret service element?
I don't know.
Bond?
Hydrogen bond?
You can keep that, you can tell your friends.
Maybe it was not shared.
Yeah.
OK.
I'm going to come ricochet right back.
OK.
Brilliant.
But yeah.
OK.
Enough fun.
Today's topic is discussing hydrogen fuel.
So hydrogen is the number one element in the periodic table and can be used as a fuel like
electricity.
There are many different ways to create hydrogen from fossil fuels with the steam methane reforming,
which is when methane is heated to a certain temperature and that is able to be broken
down and hydrogen is able to be extracted from that and also from water.
There's methods like electrolysis, which electricity is used to split hydrogen and oxygen atoms.
Hydrogen also has many uses, such as fuel cells in which hydrogen is generated into
electricity and also used as a fuel and can also be used as a fuel in internal combustion
engines or motor engines like the ones of like loads of transport systems.
I don't know if I can say their name, like transport industries.
So yeah, there's lots of public transport sectors, particularly in Belfast and...
Yeah, OK.
That's good.
...that use hydrogen and are trialing them at the minute.
You will have seen them around.
You may not have heard them though, because they're very quiet.
That is...
Oh, I like that.
That's really good.
I like that.
That's a really good sentence.
So in December 2021, Northern Ireland raised its first NI energy strategy, which centered
around the creation of a hydrogen economy in order to make the 2030 and 2050 targets
in Northern Ireland.
And from your description earlier, Ralph, I believe your company is at the forefront
of that.
So I want to talk a bit more about KAD-A-GEN and just exactly what it does.
Can you describe a typical day for you?
Typical day for me, a very boring answer is there's no typical day for me.
But most of my day is spent developing around our technology.
So at the minute, I'm working really closely on one of our technologies with the rest of
the R&D engineers.
My main role is looking at things like business models, commercialization plans, sensitivity
analysis around costs and prices and margins and all of the fun things that most engineers
don't like to do.
And how that's presented is in things called feasibility studies.
So these are really important aspects of new technology where you take empirical data or
measured data from smaller scale experiments.
And when I say smaller, because some of the stuff we're doing is in the freight container,
so it's not small, and apply that to a much larger system.
So for instance, we might look at something like a power station.
And obviously we can't build technology at the same scale as a power station at the moment,
but our technology can solve some of the carbon related issues around energy generation.
So I take the information from our pilot projects and apply that to a larger scale and using
a lot of my engineering toolkit, so it's not just, that's 20 times bigger, so it's 20 times
that.
I will work out with a best engineering guess what's a feasible system.
That can be everything from technically, will it work?
Will it do the job it needs to do?
All the way through to how big is that going to be?
How much is it going to cost to run?
How many people is it going to be needed to maintain it and operate it?
And that then feeds into something called a pre-feed study, which is a technical piece
of work that an engineering team will actually produce for delivery of a project.
So I exist in the space between kind of nebulous innovation and real tangible projects that
exist in the real world, which is a really exciting place to be.
But it means when you turn up for work in the morning, you don't know what you're going
to be doing.
Oh, I see.
Okay.
So you always have to expect the unexpected with your role.
Yeah, I think it's a role that's naturally very suitable to some engineering qualities
because you have to be flexible and adaptable, but you also have to be competent, accurate
and reliable in what you do.
And as you go through most engineering degrees, you learn how to solve problems.
That's the basic definition of an engineer, someone who solves problems usually for money.
Okay.
And that mindset is a really valuable thing whenever you try to apply technology to a
new problem, because you will see ways that it can be used that maybe more conventional
or people more close to the process can't see.
A lot of the work we do is with big energy users who view themselves as making products.
So cement, petrochemicals, glass is another good example, but we don't view what they
do as product led.
We see an energy system and one of the products is the thing that they sell.
So we're able to approach the problem from a different angle and integrate technology
solutions that they wouldn't necessarily think of because they're focused on what makes them
money and what makes them sustainable.
Oh, pretty good.
That sounds pretty extensive, I have to say.
Was there any sort of training you did to enter this role or what kind of craft did
you do when you first started?
So the prep started for me in my undergraduate degree.
I was able to specialize in carbon and climate as part of my engineering degree.
And that's quite common across lots of third level institutes in your final year, you'll
be given the opportunity to flavor your degree to your desired field.
So some of my colleagues ended up doing pharmaceuticals.
So they manufacture drugs that save millions of lives around the planet, which is fantastic.
I was never going to be able to do that.
So it was pointless, us both doing the same education because it's not setting us up for
success as we move out into the real world.
That's where that started and the interest in sustainability and balancing energy networks
came through there.
And I was able to very luckily do a PhD in that, which allowed me to spend lots of time
researching lots of things and finding out lots of information, whether it was all useful.
That's up for debate.
But it allowed me to have a really deep understanding of energy networks and systems.
But it also allowed me to hone what we call multidisciplinary learning or lateral thinking
is what some people would call it, where you're able to take skills or knowledge or understanding
of say economics and apply it to a non economic topic.
But I was able to do that with different energy and material streams across Northern Ireland
as an example, and look at how wastewater, population and electricity usage all interact
in a nexus with each other.
And you can start to overlap, always understand things and find places where you can start
to do some really cool things with what people perceive to be a problem.
That's actually to use the adage of in Chinese, the problem and opportunity are the same word.
It's usually one industry or one areas problem is a solution or an opportunity for someone
else to come in and fix it.
And bio waste is a great example.
In Northern Ireland, the number one crop we grow is grass.
And it's seen as an issue.
How we fix it is we turn it into silage, which is used to fertilize plants.
And there's lots of issues around fertilizer, over-neter application of soils, phosphorus
retention.
And we're not getting into that today.
That's a different episode in itself.
My time and my PhD allowed me to learn how to interrogate subjects by learning from across
different areas, which is what you do as an engineer, particularly when you work in a
company that develops technology.
Well, very interesting.
That's Ralph.
Okay.
It's time for a quiz round.
Each week I do a quiz round and I tailor it towards the specific subject by giving it
a name.
So this week it's the hydrogen round.
I think when it's typed out, it'll look a lot nicer.
Like when I typed it, I was like, this is genius, but is he actually saying it?
I don't know.
But yeah, this is where I give you some facts and we discuss some more.
So how many different types of hydrogen are there?
So we talk about there being a rainbow of hydrogen.
Hydrogen gets assigned colours and the most common ones that get talked about in order
of sustainability are grey or black hydrogen, which comes from fossil fuels, blue hydrogen,
which is the same as black hydrogen, but with the carbon captured and stored sustainably
and green hydrogen, which is produced from renewable electricity and water.
So it has no carbon associated in the production of that molecule of hydrogen from start to
finish.
That's brilliant.
And for a catagen, which do you work particularly with the specific type of hydrogen?
So we are developing technology we call HGEN, which is a way to make green hydrogen from
renewable electricity and water.
But we don't use electrochemistry to do that, which is what electrolysis is.
And it's the most common way that that's done at the moment.
We use a thermochemical cycle.
So that uses more traditional catalyst chemical reactions to create hydrogen and oxygen from
water.
But it's not a single step.
There's three stages in that process.
But because it uses heat as a driver, whenever you get to really heavy industry, high heat
energy users, there's a lot of benefit from having another process that can use that heat
and manipulate that heat flow across the two processes.
And it scales in the same way because it uses the same base chemistry.
We're developing that as a way to generate hydrogen.
We also have a second way because we never do one thing.
We always do loads of things.
This is probably closer to what's called an orange hydrogen.
So we have developed a technology that breaks down biomasses into hydrogen and CO2.
For those of you that are more familiar with that, they may go, well, what's the difference
between that and grey hydrogen because you're still making CO2.
But the use of biomass that isn't competitive with food production, which is what our technology
is designed to be used with, means that the CO2 that's produced comes from the fast carbon
cycle, which means it's captured from the air by plants and then it's released back
into the air whenever you break the material down.
So it's a much lower carbon intensity way to get hydrogen.
Most importantly, it uses significantly less renewable electricity.
So we are quite lucky in Ireland and Europe that we have lots of renewables that we're
trying to get onto the grid.
But in places like Africa, South America, South East Asia, there's huge amounts of energy
poverty.
So if you can produce a solution that gives you more sustainable energy with much less
renewable electricity input, it's much more applicable in areas like that around the world.
So we see lots of different solutions coming for lots of different areas of the world with
our technology.
And that extends even to the biomass types that will go into the system.
And that's one of the things that we're very keen to do.
As a company, we see ourselves as solving problems using engineering.
So we're not just a clean tech company.
We are actually a solutions company.
Okay, well, I said this was a quiz round, but you ended up like, wow, like I feel like,
you know, like I've definitely learned something.
Okay, well, like answer my second question.
Do you know what hydrogen means?
Hydrogen is in the actual word.
Yes.
And I feel like you already know the answer.
Actually, so a lot of my PhD was focused on ammonia.
I do know about the entomological route of the word ammonia, which comes from the Ammon
Temple in Egypt.
I don't know where hydrogen comes from.
Okay.
Well, I don't think it's as like as deep as what you said about ammonia, because that
sounds like a proper description.
This is one I think I just got off Google in two seconds.
But hydrogen means creator gen of water.
Hydro.
And you're just like, really?
That was the question.
Probably the reason why it's called that.
So whenever hydrogen, you can't see me air coating, air coating was first discovered,
they didn't think it was a separate gas in its own.
What happened was some crazy scientists in the 18th century put electricity into a big
bath of water with a copper plate in the middle of it and noticed there was a whole bunch
of bubbles formed.
Oh.
So they called that a gas battery because they realized they were able to conduct electricity
across the water.
Hydrogen and oxygen are the two things that come out of that because they had actually
invented electrolysis, but they didn't know that it was called, they didn't know it was
two separate gases.
So they called the gas that came out of it hydrogenous gas because it comes from hydrogenation
of water.
So that might be where it's come from.
Oh, wow.
Okay.
Yeah.
It's it's reverse thought to me.
Hydrogen as a substance is not something that we as a species knew about for quite a long
time.
It's only really helium as an element that was discovered later, kind of the lighter
end of the periodic table.
That's because hydrogen doesn't exist naturally on Earth.
It's so light, it just accelerates right up like an atmosphere into space.
So it's very difficult to find any of it naturally on the planet.
And where we find it, mapping like in Vince Steenformant mentioned earlier.
That's really brilliant.
Okay, so on to our next section.
That's the end of the hydrogen section.
We're now on to the big discuss issues.
Okay.
So according to my search bar, according to my search function in my PDF year, when I
was looking at the NI Energy Strategy, hydrogen appears 20 times throughout the document.
So what are your thoughts on the mention of hydrogen in the NI Energy Strategy released
in December 2021?
So firstly, it was great to have an energy strategy.
It's something that people like hydrogen have been calling for for a long time.
Northern Ireland, through lots of different reasons, was slightly behind the rest of the
UK in releasing them.
What we were ahead of the Republic of Ireland when we released their strategy last week.
So that's a big tick for us because we're still ahead of the curve.
Northern Ireland as a whole is an importer of energy.
And that means that we need to find ways to be more energy secure.
One of the ways traditionally energy security is enabled is to extract hydrocarbons, fossil
fuels inside your geographic region.
So fracking essentially is the only thing that's available to us.
And there's lots of issues with fracking and we're not getting into that either because
that's a whole topic.
I can make if we did a podcast episode, it needs to be puns with it.
What's the frack?
What the frack?
Yeah, yeah.
The other way you can do that is by building lots and lots of renewable energy generation.
And we are blessed to have lots of wind and lots of rain in Northern Ireland and we have
about six or seven gigawatts of potential offshore wind, which would supply most of
our electricity demand if we could access it.
So having a strategy that allows us to start to deal with that is really important.
And hydrogen is a really important tool because funnily enough, we don't use much energy when
we're asleep.
And it tends to be that most wind blows at night in Northern Ireland.
So we have this wonderful resource that we can't use during the night and lots of people
use energy during the day when there's less wind.
So we need something that bridges that gap and allows us to store that energy, capture
it and use it.
And everybody goes, right, well, why don't we just make loads of batteries?
Batteries are great at some things.
They're not particularly energy dense and we can't actually transmit electricity onto
our grid network at the minute.
It's fully at capacity.
It's like the M1 going on on a one day at Path 5.
It is just full, can't accommodate any more electricity.
So we need something that can use that electricity where it's generated at a wind farm and turn
it into something that's not electricity.
And hydrogen is a really good use for that.
OK, well, yeah, very good.
OK, well, also, the energy strategy talked about the need to start the hydrogen catapult
linked with academia and linked with academia and they just get more skills out there for
people like learn how to be in the hydrogen industry.
There was the hydrogen academy that started last year.
I think there was a February 2022 news article about it.
But like, have you guys had any interlinks with that?
So I actually am technically a graduate from hydrogen academy.
So I have done my grade five hydrogen education thing and that was partly through University
of Birmingham.
We have actually a large number of expertise in this field and I've been working very closely
with the likes of Queen's, University of Ulster and Belfast Met to bring those skills across
to Northern Ireland because we have essentially the goldilocks of hydrogen tests bedding in
Europe.
So we've got lots of renewable electricity.
We've got urban and rural populations.
We've got high dependency on imported fossil fuels.
So a lot of our academics, a lot of our industry has realised that one, we need to change something
and two, we've got a real opportunity to lead the rest of the world in this space and knowledge.
And part of that is the hydrogen catapult.
Terrible name.
We shouldn't be flinging hydrogen anywhere.
But the idea is that it accelerates us into the distance in terms of hydrogen technology
and Catagen are one of only three companies in the world that can make e-fuels, which
are carbon net zero hydrocarbons made from green hydrogen and CO2 captured from the air.
And we are also developing alternatives to other technologies that make hydrogen, which
are going to be important for specific applications.
We are an and not or company.
We see everybody in our society as having a role to play.
And for many of us, we will probably never think or interact with hydrogen directly.
But it's an important understanding because public perception of hydrogen.
And this is maybe a little bit before most people's times is mostly rooted in the Hindenburg
or if you've seen Oppenheimer, the hydrogen bomb.
So a lot of people, when they think of hydrogen, think of lots of energy, explosions, fire
and lots of death.
That is one of the things that it's very good at, which is releasing lots of energy very
quickly, but there are also lots of other things that can do just as much damage and
be just as volatile.
And it's becoming aware of how to handle it and store it, process it properly and be
able to deliver technologies that do that safely that we're trying to learn.
People like Ulster University have had the High Safe Program, which is a research group
that is totally dedicated to looking at hydrogen safety, both in use and generation for a decade
now.
So in this space, we are actually a leader, a thought leader in probably the world, definitely
Europe.
And that's reflected in the expertise.
So having that enshrined as part of the NI strategy is really going to accelerate the
links between academia, funding bodies, the general public and industry tech developers
like ourselves to be able to promote this entire region as a base knowledge of hydrogen
energy, which is going to be really important in the next two to three decades to help us
aggressively decarbonize lots of really big polluters around the world.
Wow.
So it's like a really great thing, the launch of this hydrogen training academy in Northern
Ireland.
It's at the Northern Regional College, but as you said, I think it's credited for being
taught through the University of Birmingham.
Well, the first minister of economy, minister of economy at the time, I think he still is,
Gordon Lyons.
Yeah.
Says the economy will fully maximize opportunities associated with hydrogen as the emerging leading
sustainable energy solution.
Just a summary of what you've actually said as well.
Leading is probably up for debate.
I think most people would accept that hydrogen is going to play a really important role.
It is not, and I don't like this term, but everybody uses it.
It's not a silver bullet.
It's not going to solve all the world's problems.
Just like the internet didn't, just like electric cars didn't.
But hydrogen, particularly for areas that depend on liquid fuels and don't have big
gas networks and lots of really densely populated areas is going to be really important for
us to move energy around to where it's needed.
Okay.
Wow.
Well here, you'd have words of Gordon Lyons, but I'm like, you know, Tom, here, take back
what you said about the ship.
I'm Gordon.
I'm sure you know how to stop.
Do you know him?
Oh, very good.
Yeah.
You always try and go to events and like you always see them there.
And so it's funny, but the ones in the, in certain departments, they, after they speak
at certain energy seminars or events, they always seem to run off afterwards.
I think it's just so I can't, I want to ask you a question.
Answer me.
Yeah, that's a, that's a political decision.
They only stay around generally if they're announcing something positive, which is great.
But having, being able to talk to politicians is really important too, because they're really
important drivers of change.
Right or wrongly and engaging with everybody in the community is really important to us
because as a company, we have core values that we don't want an energy transition that
leaves people behind.
So we talk about the just transition a lot and it's come up a lot kind of in national
media recently.
Our technology is designed to be suitable for lots of different applications.
And the reason for that is we're seeing people who live in really rural environments, they
have poor electricity access or really reliant on diesels and kerosene for heating their
homes and powering equipment or farm equipment are being left behind and shouldering the
burden of carbon taxation.
But they actually live in the places where all of the renewable energy is generated.
So you have this agricultural area with high wind potential that's being aggressively decarbonized
in a negative way.
But actually, if you can harness that natural resources they already have there with new
technology that allows them to create net zero versions of the fuels they already use,
you can bring everybody on that journey.
And it's just a much more sustainable way of changing our energy system that doesn't
make people like.
Wow.
Well, can I just say, like, you've been absolutely brilliant to have on.
So I'm going to wind down.
Actually I've got two more questions for you.
Can't even read my own script.
Apologies.
So what do you enjoy most about your work?
I enjoy working with people.
So I didn't realize I did until I actually left my university degree.
But I do enjoy working in a team.
I really enjoy the process of what we call collaborative innovation.
And that's where I might come to you with a problem and you might go, I think this is
how we solve that problem.
And we bring it to our mate out of the room and go, this is a problem.
We've got the solution.
We'll go, that's really good, but have you thought about this?
And there is almost like a momentum that builds in the group of trying to solve issues and
problems.
And I'm really fortunate to work with some fantastically wired brains that are completely
different from my own.
But part of that is we have a culture of cat and gin that encourages challenge and encourages
making mistakes where appropriate.
And it means that people feel empowered to say, I think this can be done better.
I think we're missing something here.
And turning up every day and knowing that the likelihood someone comes to me and goes,
the other way we're dealing with this, have we thought about doing this?
Is just really cool because you go away every day having either learned something new about
something you didn't know, or you're really excited about what we're doing.
And I think for most of us, at Catagen, that's what we love is we're fixing a really, really
important problem in part.
But we're doing it as a group of people who are really motivated to stop the climate emergency.
We're not doing it because it's going to make money.
We're doing it because it will clean and decarbonize the air.
And that's actually our purpose as a company.
And that's how we hire people.
We hire them if they have a shared purpose with us, not just because they're brilliant
engineers or they're fantastic at a spreadsheet.
Wow, that's great to hear.
So any prospective engineers who want to get into the hydrogen industry, they should look
at Catagen.
Yeah.
So we're going through a really, really cool growth period of the month where we're bringing
lots of people on.
We're hiring people across mechanical, chemical, electrical, software, civil engineering, but
not just engineering.
We have accountants coming in.
We have people with geography degrees.
We have people with politics degrees coming in.
And they're supporting things like project delivery, health and safety, assessment of
sites for activities.
And then we've also got the kind of more normal, boring office work.
Yeah.
I'll not insult any of my colleagues about admin procurement.
Building builds and materials for projects, getting make sure everybody gets paid.
So we have such a varied workforce and such a varied experience that I think it adds to
us as a strength.
And we deliberately go after that different worldview and different experience.
So even if you don't necessarily think you can have a job that's in net zero tech, because
I have a degree in accountancy, that's not what it's about.
It's about having skills that are transferable and want to do something to change.
That's really great to hear.
I'll post a link to the Catagen website and your email address and your Facebook page.
Maybe LinkedIn.
Yeah, LinkedIn.
I know no one uses Facebook anymore.
Like I don't need Messenger.
Okay.
Well, that pretty much sums up the podcast episode of Hydrogen.
So before we go, do you have any advice for future graduates looking to get into the energy
hydrogen industry?
Yeah.
Learn as much as you can and read and listen to things like this.
But the big change in my outlook on why I now have a job like this was I didn't just
do what I thought was the best thing to do.
So after my degree finished, I was looking for jobs and I was looking in the Republic
of Ireland, Northern Ireland, the UK and the rest of Europe.
I was looking at petrochemical jobs, pharmaceutical jobs, energy jobs that would be very traditional
for chemical engineers to go into.
And I had a couple of successful interviews, I had a couple of job offers and about six
months after I left, I realized that it's not what I wanted to do.
I wanted to work somewhere and do something that I was one excited to go to work about
because I am an inherently lazy person and need to be motivated to do anything.
But I could see such a problem with the climate emergency and just for reference, this is
maybe nearly 10 years ago now, I finished my degree.
You can see such an issue in this space, particularly with my education at Queen's, that something
just had to be done.
So I was like, I need to go and find a role that allows me to try and help solve this
issue.
Yeah.
If you're passionate about conservation, biodiversity, climate change, new renewable
technology, there is such a glut of not just skills, but effort that's needed from people.
That if that's something you want to do, just the best thing to do is to reach out to people
because most people here in this space are in it because they want to make a difference.
They are more than happy to have you help them.
That was really beautiful and really nice and really heartfelt.
My piece of advice, which sounds rubbish now, but my advice is say hi to the hydrogen industry.
That is true as well.
I tend to go big blue sky, I'm a blue sky thinker, but there are very practical things
you can do.
If you want a STEM degree, you need to have things like mathematics, a science in your
A levels or your S levels.
Interestingly, you don't need chemistry to be a chemical engineer at most universities,
but to be in the climate space, you have to be an active participant and an active contributor.
So get out to protests, get out to watts, get out into your local community and help
make a difference because that's the attitude that will do you well in the industry.
Okay, wow, brilliant.
Okay, well that wraps up our episode.
Thank you very much, Ralph, for coming on the show.
Definitely, I'll definitely have you back.
You're so full of knowledge, definitely need to discuss more.
But yes, thank you for listening to Carbon Climates.
If you'd like to follow us, our Instagram is at carbon underscore climates and I'll
keep you up to date with all our latest episode releases.
I'll also be posting links to all the articles and information we talked about in today's
episode if you're interested.
Okay, thanks.
See you next time.