Growth. It’s what Labour has failed at so far in its tenure and something it’s desperate for. A lot has been made of the commitments to use net zero as a lever for growth, however although we invent lots of very clever things, how come we haven’t had a Tesla or Amazon set up here?
We are really bad at breeding unicorns? Not the mythical beasts but a private start-up valued at a billion dollars – the US has lots of them and we have hardly any. So are we doing something wrong when it comes to developing tech companies?
That’s what I asked Myrtle Dawes, boss of the Aberdeen based Net Zero Technology Centre. Originally set up as the Oil and Gas Technology Centre, its mandate was to help the North Sea maximise economic recovery of the black gold, however as the sector has moved on, so has the centre and its role is to now encourage companies helping to cut emissions.
She told me:”We’re funded, by government and industry as well, 50%. And so really, it’s been about how can we get the entrepreneurs and developers and the startups – with all these great ideas about how to solve problems – with those who actually have the problem and are willing to pay for that? And so that’s what we do.”
We talked about the blame many place on the fossil fuel sector for the state of climate change and also the push for one kind of future, a renewable one.
“For me, it’s not really a blame issue. It’s about what is it that we can do quickly to address the issues? But, you know, I don’t believe in single issue management, so I don’t think we can just have net zero on its own. I do think we do need economic development. We do need to collaborate with our global partners, because net zero in the UK on its own also means nothing. So we do need to export and that’s what gives us the opportunity to really tune in to our technological, skills and use that as part of our export, portfolio.”
So why are unicorns here so rare I asked? If we have plenty of great skills and technologies how come a net zero solution business isn’t skyrocketing? Myrtle believes the role of the NZTC is to address that by flipping the discourse.
“The very clever people have, solutions to problems that no one has told them that they have. And so they would normally go looking for that problem, to marry, but actually, what we are encouraging people is to go to the people with the actual problem and then see if your solution can be adjusted this way or the use case.
“So it isn’t unusual for a developer to come in. Remember, they’re very, proud about their technology or their idea. And we’ll sit and they’ll say, this is how we think it can be used, because you have to have a use case.
And I say…we can think of a different way. And the other thing that we’ve done, which we’re very proud of, is because we get so many small ideas, you know, this is point solutions. Sometimes someone will come with an idea here to do this and someone will have another idea to do that. And we say, oh my goodness, if they join that together, now we’ve got a solution.
“For example we had a wave device and a subsea, battery storage, which was two different projects that came into the centre. One was doing a wave device – but had nowhere to store the electricity. One was a battery you could have on the seabed – but no electricity going into it. But of course, if you wanted to have, electricity offshore, locally, you need both, don’t you?
“And so, so that joining together. And that’s why we work so close with the industry. What are industry’s problems. Let’s bring them a system answer rather than a part there and expect them to go and fix something else over here.”
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