43 years in energy: beyond the race for cheap power

Adam Sroka (00:56)
Hello and welcome back to the HyperCube Podcast. I’m joined by Clark McFarlane today. Clark, would you like to introduce yourself for the audience?

Clark MacFarlane (01:04)
Yes, I’m Clark McFarlane. I’ve retired about six months ago from a 43 year career in mainly in Siemens. I started at Parsons here in the northeast where I’m sitting at the moment and they were acquired by Siemens and Siemens was an excellent thing. I started the energy industry but thankfully due to the broad corporate nature of the company

I was able to look at their building management, security, defense, IT. And then after having enjoyed a break from energy came back to the renewables, particularly the wind industry of which I was in for 15 years and thoroughly enjoyed it. So, doing a few things to keep myself active still in the industry, but, yes, happily, put full-time work behind me.

Adam Sroka (01:53)
I just think wow like such a long career in the industry I I feel like energy is what those industries where sometimes like anyone that’s not been doing it 20 years is considered a newbie and so I’m like maybe a decade into my energy career and I’m so it’s all so exciting there’s always stuff going on but like you have seen massive change come and go you’ve seen big plans get enacted like

and not just in like one part of energy as well, like across like you said the kind of corporate landscape. What do you think that perspective brings to the energy transition today in people that are in the space?

Clark MacFarlane (02:32)
Yes, I mean when I started in 1982 there was one energy company. So we had the Central Energy Generating Board. So you weren’t going on to U Switch or websites or whatever and changing your provider. It was one company mainly coal-fired power stations and there was 108 of them I think. It was just around 100 of them and they produced electricity and a bit like television.

They produced electricity and you used it in your home as they produced it. It didn’t go anywhere else. if I compare that to today, today we have got, you know, 20 odd companies providing electricity. One or two have gone out in business and amalgamated. There are over 2000 different power stations burning biomass and chicken litter and tires and all sorts of things. There’s 12,000 wind turbines. There’s

1.8 million, 1.9 million buildings with solar panels on them and the grid system has to be able to take electricity backwards as well as forwards and store it. I mean can you imagine if I’d said to you in the early 1980s that let’s take water because it’s the most ridiculous thing, if you collected water in your home

you’d be able to shove it back along the pipe and we’d need to accept it back into the system and use it again. You’d think the world was mad. And if I was going to say you could see all the power stations around you distributed and there was going to be dozens of people offering them at you with different technologies, different prices, and you needed to understand that, you would also think I was mad. So changed a lot. We’ve got more.

diverse. I think we use technology more. I think we become a younger industry. We were very male dominated then, very heavy engineering, which was quite dirty. I think we’ve opened ourselves up to the public and different careers. And you know what? I have loved seeing the change. I think you can either embrace change and get excited by it, or you can wish for the old times, but the old times were pretty tough. don’t

think anybody wants

Adam Sroka (04:50)
Hmm.

Clark MacFarlane (04:51)
to go back to the early 80s.

Adam Sroka (04:53)
Yeah,

not the easiest period of history. it’s so I think it’s fascinating because like the water analogy is brilliant actually, because I think because electricity is what it is, even to engineers and physicists like me that maybe haven’t deeply studied like AAA, there is still a bit of a mythos around it about like, sort of magic about how it works. And so I’m down the wire, whatever. like exactly like I didn’t even try to

push water back up your pipes. It’s totally bonkers. And I think like you can extend the analogy to like, imagine talking to someone in the early eighties about running like a whole factory off of a battery for hours. And they would think you were absolutely berserk, but it’s possible. And it’s actually a very real part of the system today. I guess like, seen change come ago, seen big plants happen.

You said you didn’t expect to come back to energy but wind drew you back in. What was so compelling about wind, about the sector at the time that hooked you?

Clark MacFarlane (05:56)
It’s a really good point that when I left, I spent I think about 23 years in the energy industry. And when I left it within Siemens, Siemens was great. I mean, it offered me chances to run businesses in the UK and across Europe, which, you know, those chances you get in your career are absolutely wonderful. So you take the opportunities. And when I’d sort of left energy, we had just bought our wind turbine business. We just bought bonus. We were looking at different transmission businesses.

And I thought, well, that’s fine. It’s going on a path, but it was still on large power plants and it was still a range of technologies. And I went off to do exciting things. So, know, exciting things with building management and fire security and defense systems, IT systems, you know, that I run our IT business across Northwest Europe for a number of years. And we develop things like digital passports and we digitize the MOT system.

We helped develop iPlayer with the BBC and Adobe, which won a BAFTA by the way, for its technology. So there was just exciting things to do in a range of countries and in a range of industries. And for an engineer to try different industries, well, why wouldn’t you and go off and do that? Then suddenly energy started changing. We had the, we’re going to do climate change and the

biggest impact we can make on CO2 reduction is through our energy system. And you think, wow, there’s not only a new technology, it’s not only a something fresh, we’re going to build something new, it’s going to be exciting, we’re going to have new facilities to do it. But also, it’s got a purpose that will bring different people into the industry. And at that point, I thought, you know what, that’s a, that’s a good thing. Let’s go and try that. Because in my time,

Energy was seen as a necessary dirty engineer and it wasn’t really seen as a career for many people and many diverse people. you know, I’d love, you know, the industry today, which is quite diverse in many ways, geographically, gender, global, and we’re all involved in it. yeah, quite a lot of excitement at the time. Siemens had a portfolio which I believed in.

and I still do by the way even though they don’t pay me and yeah so yeah it was enthusiasm that brought me back.

Adam Sroka (08:26)
No, and I think so. Yeah, like I worked for TALES once a lot of time and being

Clark MacFarlane (08:30)
Aha!

Adam Sroka (08:31)
an engineer, like there is just a lust for that, big engineering, lots of kit and like big heavy things that are hard to build and complicated. think like that rotating machinery wind turbines, I could totally see the draw of just seeing a big thing that just works, pull you in.

And it’s undergone, it’s like a sector that’s really come into its stride over, I guess, that time span you’re talking about and go from one.

Clark MacFarlane (09:01)
The other

thing was it was something that impacted you locally. So if you worked

Adam Sroka (09:05)
Yeah.

Clark MacFarlane (09:06)
for GEC or you worked for Siemens or you worked you know quite often what we were making in the UK we were exporting to Africa or India or Canada, South Africa at the time. We weren’t really building a lot in the UK until the Dash for Gas came in the late 90s early 90s. So a lot of what you were doing was overseas supply whereas

this was changing the landscape of your own country. know, with a good moral compass behind it, something you felt good about. So, you know, I kept saying, I think I made a speech about 12 years ago, which was I’d taken 28 years of my engineering career to do something sexy, you know, something that actually

Adam Sroka (09:50)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Clark MacFarlane (09:51)
people thought was worthwhile doing, you know.

Adam Sroka (09:53)
I mean, like, and you’ve done some pretty big stuff, right? So let’s talk about the wind sector deal, the offshore wind sector deal. That was a pretty important piece of what eventually came to be Clean Power 2030. And you had a significant hand in that. Like, talk us through that story. And like, what did you get right? What would you do differently if you revisit it?

Clark MacFarlane (10:11)
So it was, I mean, first of all, I’d been involved with the government from various government contracts, which I’ve just discussed on IT and defense and everything like that. So you probably don’t realize as a businessman or as an engineer, you have the opportunity to advise people who are going to change what happens in your country. think people, know, their ambitions are right to my MP or I’ll do something or I’ll meet a cabinet minister. But actually,

I find civil servants and politicians actually quite interested in your experience and you bring it forward. having had that background, this idea of going and engaging with energy ministers and civil servants was nothing that was out of the blue and many of my Siemens colleagues were doing it in rail and in healthcare and in other places. So again, it wasn’t an unusual thing to do.

And I just have this passion, which I shared with some others, which were, unless we understood what was stopping a politician making renewable energy, particularly wind at the time, central to their policy going forward, what was stopping you doing that? Or what would we have to do as an industry? And I used to say that I want to see all the elephants in the room.

Let’s see the elephants in the room. If you’ve got an elephant, put it in the room. How big is it? How smelly it is it? How can we solve that problem and work together? So for me, the sector deal was an opportunity because we had the industrial strategy at the time, which allowed us to engage. And by the way, at the first meeting I went to myself and Ben Sykes, we were told we weren’t even an industry. In fact, they weren’t sure we were a sector. So why should they talk to us about doing a deal?

And it took us 26 months to negotiate the sector deal with enough certainty. But the thing was, we explained to them that you could get it cheaper. You could improve energy security. You could get deployment of energy assets speedier and a lower cost compared with some of their other traditional ideas. It doesn’t have the waste.

you have, you get an offshore wind farm, you can get the CO2 back within a year of what it makes to manufacture and install it. can pay that with electrical vehicles, it’s five to six years. So in terms of your impact on your government policy, and of course energy security has come a long way to the fore now in everything that’s happened in the last few years. But actually what made the difference, and this is what was, when we showed them

where we could create jobs across the country, particularly in areas that

Adam Sroka (13:05)
Yeah.

Clark MacFarlane (13:05)
had become deprived or had traditional industries closing down. Maybe deprived is the wrong word, but certainly they had struggled to create a lasting employment. And we showed the geography of the ports and the areas where wind farm could, and operations and technicians. Suddenly, the government could see the opportunity.

So whilst we’ve taken all this lovely stuff about security and cost and renewable, it was actually the economic benefit of the industry that made it stick with the then conservative party. And then it was championed when Boris came and he wanted to make it a thing and make it a bigger part of energy policy. And the great thing about doing a sector deal was when you get there and I did it.

with industry colleagues, which is another good thing because you sit with your customers, you sit with your suppliers, and you get ideas from everybody in the room. And so that was a learning experience. But it’s still the basis, that sector deal of our energy policy today. And not many people get to finish their career by saying, you know, I wonder if I’ve shaped something that might just last for a long time.

Adam Sroka (14:20)
That’s really I mean, I love that. And we recently had Claire Lavelle from Bucking Offshore Wind on

Clark MacFarlane (14:25)
yes.

Adam Sroka (14:26)
the podcast. And she was talking about some of the decisions they made around floating offshore wind, fascinating technology. And they’ve chosen to go with concrete as the foundation equivalent, And she said one of the reasons for that is because they can manufacture it in the UK. And over the course of that project, they’ll create

2,900 jobs, I think she said, and actually revitalize this concrete kind of foundation industry, which is going to repurpose other stuff. And basically it’s enough cash. It’s such a big injection of cash. It kickstarts this whole plant and it will make that like the center of doing it effectively kickstarts the supply chain. And like you’ve been particularly focused on supply chain development. And I guess that’s just one example from a story I was told recently.

But

it’s so fascinating for people that don’t consider like the secondary tertiary by actually, I kind of designed the thing, I’ve got the funding, am I going to build it or who’s going to supply me with the parts? What do you think are like the biggest barriers in the UK to really localizing that supply chain? And what are the biggest opportunities?

Clark MacFarlane (15:36)
Yeah, so it’s a great question. I mean, I’ve, I have championed the supply chain, you know, of course, I was the market leader within the supply chain. So I mean, it kind of comes with the territory.

Adam Sroka (15:50)
Thank you, buddy.

Clark MacFarlane (15:52)
You’ve got to champion the supply chain. But I did take it seriously for us as an industry, because we had to develop, as I said, UK jobs and UK opportunities. And of course, we led the way.

when we built our facility in Hull, is absolutely magnificent in terms of a good modern engineering, but using traditional skills, it’s using carpentry skills, it’s good painting skills, it’s using the caravan industry and the fiberglass skills and the aerospace skills we have. So actually, what you need to ever think of is what is fits within the UK. So the concrete example is a very good one. You know, when we first started

Everybody said, these turbines are made in Denmark or Germany or somewhere else. And you think, yeah, we tried 4,000 suppliers to get them to make castings and forgings and things like that. They’ll go, that just doesn’t exist in the UK. So what you ended up doing was, we’ll make blades because we’ve got fiberglass, we’ve got aerospace, we’ve got that type of arrangement. We’ve got ports that we can bring them out in.

We published a couple of years ago the tapes of things we could do in the UK. And a good one is electrical electronic systems are really good. Electrical and electronic engineers, we’ve been traditionally very strong at that within the UK. Whereas everybody wanted all these cast and forgings and big fabrications because they were the big bits that came in. And we had to be smarter than that.

So for me, it says do what we’re good at. In the UK, we’re very good at a number of things. We’ve been very good at logistics and moving things. We’ve been very good at ports and sea and working offshore. We’ve been very good at electrical and electronic engineering. We’ve traditionally been quite good at fabrications. In the past, although if you’re going to compete with Asia at the moment, you’ve got to get the labor cost under 10%.

or by either robotics or volume or logistics, something like that, because we can’t compete if the labor costs too much. So there are some challenges in sitting in the UK, but I think we understand those challenges and you can get to do them. and of course we’ve had cross skills. So, know, Martin Whitmarsh, he helped me. He was the CEO of McLaren. He then went to do Around the World. He then went off to Aston Martin,

but he was quite good. He said that, you know, he talked about taking stuff from, you know, motor racing and automotive into, you know, sensors and various things that they used, you know, and eventually that was drones and technology. And you think, yeah, of course we have got a lot of condition monitoring stuff in various industries in the UK that we could use that technology.

as part of growing the industry and as part of ensuring the quality and monitoring the assets. So yeah, I think the supply chain is in a good space if we think carefully what we’re strong at because producing something in the UK only for the fact that we want something to be made in the UK is not sustainable.

We’ve got to make something in the UK that fits logically within the industry globally and it makes sense to make locally. And I think at the very beginning, we just got caught by these, we can’t make these big things overseas. We need to bring them in the UK. you know, we’ve had one or two tire manufacturers not last, they’ve not been sustainable because they haven’t really fitted into what is the core skills in the UK.

Adam Sroka (19:41)
And I think like a really pragmatic approach. If you agree with globalization or key to the economics or not, it kind of doesn’t matter. Because if you if you aren’t leveraging your unfair advantages, or what’s like, what have you got a head start in what what is here already? What are we really good at a higher kind of

GDP per capita economy is with more people is going to come along and just wipe us off the face of the map with it. So how do we lead into those strengths? Because it takes time for the skills in the workforce, especially if it’s like complex technologies to to

Clark MacFarlane (20:16)
Hmm.

Adam Sroka (20:16)
catch up. It takes time for universities to craft the right education programs or apprenticeships to be designed and enacted and the experience to land. So I totally believe that we should lean into our strengths. And I would make the

Clark MacFarlane (20:28)
you

Adam Sroka (20:29)
case that

Much like sensors is a great example in automotive, fiberglass, I would make this the case that applied AI actually is something the UK is very good at. Now we’ve lost the race on, we haven’t got sovereign AI, we haven’t got like a frontier language model and things like that. But some of the best funded startups like ever are appearing in the UK to take on the likes of Nvidia, to take on frontier models, InepiBall, there’s some interesting things like that.

But that’s the base layer of the kind of digital technology space. If you go into the layer around taking that tech and applying it to a domain, I think the UK were really very good at that. And it’d be a shame. And this is always my point that the energy industry doesn’t leverage some of that and look at what’s coming next. How do we make the project more efficient by leaning on the wealth of data and analytics and stuff that…

A, we have our fingertips and B, we’ve got the skills for ahead of others. Right.

Clark MacFarlane (21:32)
So I think that you’re spot on. I mean, there’s a number of universities started off with what they were very good off, you know, so, so I mean, even with ourselves, had converters and inverters, generator designs, and then because that was what existed in strength in our universities. And we were definitely good for innovation in the UK. We shouldn’t talk ourselves down.

I think we quite often talk ourselves down or look at what the rest of the world’s doing. So for example, we have a lot of data. I take just wind on its own. You’ve got geological data. You’ve got wind data. You’ve got wake effects of different turbines coming along. You’ve got how the market works in terms of the loading.

coming in, you’ve got a lot of cables, making sure that subsea cables, which we’ve been really good at because we’ve had an oil and gas industry and we’ve got technology. But using all that data that we’ve got to optimize a wind farm, optimize the position, optimize where this assets go, optimize it when it’s operating, minimize its losses, having the maintenance at the right time, doing things like digital twins so that we can, you know,

predict when it’s going to have an issue. All of that, but you know, we’ve got drones bringing back data as well. So we can predict when something’s going to break, crack, rust, whatever, you know, there’s a whole lot that I think and a wider section of AI tools can do from the very development of what a wind farm looks like to the optimization of a business case and making sure we’re getting the best out of it. And, you know,

When we build these assets we quite often talk about how many gigawatts we’re going to get or terawatt hours or whatever but actually the best assets are the ones that make the constant return and encourage people to invest in further assets so the industry can grow.

Adam Sroka (23:41)
And I think that leads us nicely into project economics, right? Because actually, the uninitiated, the scope and the scale of getting offshore wind projects, even like through any single gate, let alone all of them, is such a huge body of work. With tighter returns and like auctions, the way projects economics are going.

How

do you think it’s changed in recent years? Is it getting easier? it getting harder?

Clark MacFarlane (24:09)
It’s not getting easier. mean, let’s be honest. I think there is an issue here. For some reason, particularly politicians and maybe members of the public, only accept renewable energy if it’s affordable. There’s like this where it needs to be at a certain cost. We even do an auction.

We won’t pay them any penny more for our energy, And yet, when the oil and gas global market, we end up in whatever they ask us to. So I think we’ve got to be very careful to only measure the value

of the wind industry and the solar industry in its cost levels, because it adds a lot more value to society. First of all, it creates the economic benefit and the jobs I’ve just talked about. You know, if we ask a supply chain company, what’s the biggest issue that they’ve got? Yes, they can get funding and there’s lots of places we can get funding now and there’s European funding, so they get that competition. But what they want is pipeline.

What they want is certainty of orders, what they want is a continuous industry. And therefore this constant pressurizing, constant auctions, constant looking at the business case is in danger of making a lumpy industry rather than a smooth pipeline. And that will not help why do I answer the question that way? Because I think I would say the economics of doing a wind farm

are hard because we’ve had oil prices, energy prices, we’ve had logistics problems, we’ve got one at the moment haven’t we? to at the moment through you know it’s not the first time we’ve had a shipping channels that have been disrupted. So I do think it’s getting harder, interest rates are high, how we finance them is an issue but I would say as long as we’re not

over greedy because we want everything to be super cheap then we can get business cases which are really good for the benefit and the speed of which we can deploy renewable sources and by the way I always say that caveat is with it still has to be an energy mix I would never stand here and say stop nuclear, stop oil today, stop because we need transition

over a period of time and we need to make sure we manage an energy mix. But we need a lot of energy if we’re going to get rid of gas because it’ll run out and we’re going to transform vehicles, houses, boilers, heat transport. mean, we need a lot more electricity. So therefore, let’s help the difficult business cases be acceptable to society rather than beating everybody up from them.

Adam Sroka (27:09)
Yeah that’s an interesting point. Such a hard nut to crack because if I zoom right out you think…

The price of energy is such a politically charged point and the political cycle being four or five years, like, it’s so hard to say, I’ll take this bet and in 16 years it will pay off and naturally we need to do it anyway. That how many energy ministers, how many of those 10 energy or 13 energy ministers are going to take that bet and say, oh, bear with me because I’m going to lie with them.

be the one that lasts over a decade. It’s it’s so, how do you unpick that at the core without real significant structural change to the way the regulator, the industry, everyone’s kind of doing it. And I’ve got an answer for you genuinely like bafflement.

Clark MacFarlane (27:58)
No, mean, I think you’re a politician. So these 10 energy ministers who’ve had 13 years, come in and they clearly, want, none of them wants to say your energy is more expensive. You know, that’s not a good message from a politician. Even when the current Labour government came in, we’ll reduce your bills.

And we do need to make sure we have the cost of energy affordable. I mean, one of the problems we’ve got with energy transition and just transition is that some of the solutions are quite expensive. You know, and getting the public on board to do climate change and to take on renewable technologies and sustainability of products is difficult because it’s not access to them. And if it’s access to them under the cost of living crisis, it’s quite expensive. So there is a pressure on us to make sure we control the costs.

However, it’s also a challenge to make sure that we don’t have a volatile energy mix. So if you’re budgeting, whether it’s a company, whether it’s a country, whether it’s you as a household, it’s not necessarily the cheapest today if it’s going to be volatile

next month that does you any favors. What you really want is stable energy prices so that you can plan for them, both company, country and individual. And Therefore, I think what the politicians are missing a trick is by making all these false promises to society and companies that they’re going to somehow bring down the cost of energy. I think if they’d say to them, we’re going to have energy security so the energy is there when you need it

we’re going to tackle climate change. So we’re not going to shut you down with CO2 taxes and whatever we’re going to provide you a solution so that your business and country doesn’t stop. and we’re going to keep the price constant at a level that you can predict. And I think renewable energy and particularly wind energy and solar brings you that predictability and energy security. That I think is the true value rather than just a race to the bottom of the price.

Adam Sroka (30:10)
It’s just making it happen. Yeah. I know I, I’m highly agree. That

Clark MacFarlane (30:13)
Ha

Adam Sroka (30:15)
is, yeah, just making it happen.

Clark MacFarlane (30:17)
I mean, if you have a constant energy policy, In this country, no energy assets get built unless the government policy supports it. It’s as simple as that. You’ll not get a nuclear power station, you’ll not get a wind farm, you’re not… and at the moment it’s auctioned, so they’re very much controlled by government. But even solar,

It’s controlled by government, the tariffs you get and can you sell it and Heat pumps, they want to do 60,000 a year. mean, again, there’s government targets for those type of things. So if people mess around with policy and they don’t have consistent targets and consistent methodologies, then we will not achieve what we’re trying to achieve. You know, this auction based,

we’ve got no gigawatts, we’ve got two gigawatts, we’ve got six gigawatts. I mean, how does a supply chain prepare for that type of market, and keep, how can we develop the skills? How can we develop the consistency if you’re just up and down all the time? Well, you suddenly have a boom, we’ll have 10 this month. I don’t know, that’s not happening. That’s not how an industry is able to plan.

and digest, you can’t suddenly build new facilities and take on new skills all the time. Even with the growth we had in Siemens Windpower at the time in the UK, including the service business, we recruited a person a day from 2012 to 2016. A person a day. Now I can tell you just onboarding them people, getting them into your company,

getting them trained up, who by the way is the expert when you’ve got that many people coming in? Can you keep everybody safe? Has everybody got a consistent quality? And I think sometimes that’s lost on policymakers in terms of the challenges they give. Thankfully now we’ve reached a level at least across Europe.

where you can say we’ve just about industrialized the wind industry. There is enough now volume to do it. So I think that helps us make a difference. But for me, constant policy. Here’s something to consider. So in the UK today, if I take all the electricity network, and this is the NISO figures, so these are officially published figures, we’ve got about

nearly 300 terawatt hours. Forget terawatt hours, the number is 300. That’s how much electricity we could produce in the UK. The gas network is 540. including all the process industries and household is 540. NISOs say that will come down to nearly zero in 2055 because we’ll run out of gas and LNG will be

expensive and whatever. We need to replace that by electricity. We’re 293. I don’t know how much of that 540 is a straight swap into electricity, but let’s just say it’s another 300, right?

Adam Sroka (33:26)
Yeah.

Clark MacFarlane (33:27)
Which is a conservative number, right? So we’ve got to double the electricity supply we’ve got by 2055. Oh, wait a minute, 2055 is in 30 years. ago. How much of the 300 have we got today that’s going to exist then?

Well, maybe only 50 of it. Suddenly we’ve got 550 to build. We’ve only got 300 today. Would you have a policy that was up and down and argue about whether we should have more of this and less of that? If I was sitting at mission control, I’d be a full throttle making sure that we have an industry capable of delivering that. Otherwise the lights are going to go out and things are going to stop. And that’s how I see the energy challenge.

and we need a policy that sees that goal and sees that vision and reach and I think the 2030 clean power, ambitious maybe naive as it was, has been modified now because they can see the value of some nuclear, they can see the value of maybe oil and gas particularly to do carbon capture on it, the new fields, they can see the value of it but at the end of the day unless we have a strong renewable energy backbone in it we won’t achieve the security, we won’t increase the speed.

that we need.

Adam Sroka (34:42)
So it’s interesting to think about that. And it’s the kind of like long term thinking that you have to have if it’s going to be offshore wind, right, which a big chunk of it will be because just for where we are, that makes no sense. But I think then you talk about that, well, leads us into the next problem that a lot of people whinge about. And it is a significant challenge is the grid, right? Well, how do you transport? How do you double the amount? Okay, if you could click your fingers and have another 300 terawatt hours.

Well,

how are you going to get it from A to B? How does that work? And a lot of people do complain about grid, but you talk about it being actually this huge opportunity as well, don’t you?

Clark MacFarlane (35:18)
Yeah it’s interesting, I you have a national grid which is quite an old infrastructure but remember I started this by talking about pushing water uphill. Can you

Adam Sroka (35:28)
Yeah.

Clark MacFarlane (35:28)
imagine what we’re doing with electricity at the moment? You’re storing it in cars, you’re storing it in batteries, know we’re producing it ourselves you know there’s this block you know as I said 1.8 billion buildings using it and pushing it back you’ve got 2000. The grid system,

it’s only going to get more complicated, you know, as we have more chargers for EVs, we have more processes that have currently got gases in them that we need to electrify. So it needs to get more complicated and therefore the grid system is a great opportunity to modernise our country for a digital future, digital electrical future.

Cause that’s what’s sustainable. That’s what’s going on and from your phone to your computer, to your AI, to whatever it is, you can see the direction that the, world is going and we shouldn’t miss out. you know, we should not miss out. I have a concern from the supply chain side. We’ve, we’ve grown Asia a lot and now America suddenly realized we we’ve grown Asia a lot and Europe looks a bit weak. We should make sure.

that we maximize what’s made in the UK and across Europe. And I think we’ve got this opportunity with the likes of renewables, with the likes of grid, with the likes of AI and data and all those type of things to get a grasp of that and to build it. Grid’s great. We have a strong electrical electronic engineering basis of this country. We’ve got lots of engineers in the past that have built successful.

Our universities are very strong in that. We have great research and innovation. Just building the grid alone is 130,000 jobs up to 130,000 over the next five or six years because we need to take that grid and make it far more flexible and reactive and also in a different place because, you know, a lot of it was built where the coal fired power stations were and it went out.

And also it’s got to cope with different frequencies. mean, when I was 1982, when I started, it was 50 Hertz. Everything was produced at 50 Hertz plus or minus half a Hertz and the control down the national grid. Now you’ve produced electricity in all sorts of different shapes and sizes. It’s got to deal with that. You can either see that as a, my word, it’s going to cost a lot of money and it will. Or you can see it as that is the enabler to allow us.

to grow other industries and get people jobs and get a modern future. Don’t let us become a Victorian built engineering. Let’s be a modern built country. And also then you can get people into it. So if there’s 130,000 jobs, it’s not just electrical engineers. You don’t have to understand current. There’s people going to be doing planning, development, construction.

transportation, project management, administration, finance, who knows? It’s an industry around it. And it’s also that grid change is going to go on for the next 10, 20, 30 years. therefore you can have a career in it as well. okay, it might have a bit of geographical, but if you don’t want to travel abroad and you want to live in this country and you want to go around and there’s a lot of people like that, happy to travel.

for the work in the country, but a bit more reluctant to travel overseas. It’s great. You can have a long career. So I think it’s a good opportunity. It fits with what we do in the UK. It really is a benefit to the UK and you can have a long career and develop yourself in it. When I was leaving university, and I went into energy, one of my brothers went into the beer industry and the other one went into the pharmaceutical industry.

We picked industry that we knew had longevity and requirement and you could have careers. I like the idea that you can still have an industry and I know people chop and change these days, that you can have a career and at the end of the day, you can actually build something that you can say, I did that and have a job satisfaction and something that

means something to you at the end of the day. Show your grandchildren.

Adam Sroka (39:44)
I totally get that. I think there is something very like 130,000 jobs, what a load of cost, etc, etc. But it’s, it’s a physical thing that has to be in a physical place. It can’t get taken away to some tax haven and lost to some other country like it has to exist here material like again, the conversation with Clara Buck and she was saying that

There’s these big celebrations when like a new turbine gets launched

Clark MacFarlane (40:10)
Yeah, yeah.

Adam Sroka (40:11)
on the waters. It’s a physical, like local pride. And I think that whole point around maybe not traveling as much, I’m actually not sure if that’s true because there are so many other developing energy systems around the world that are like where we were a decade ago. You can take your experience and export it there if you do so choose.

One of the things I want to touch on is like, just to change gears a little bit.

Offshore

wind is enormous, right? And actually just the scale, like the minimum bite of the apple can sometimes feel like far too large for anyone. What sort of advice would you give to like small or medium companies that are looking to grow into the industry? Like hypercube or a digital services business, like we want to be in the offshore wind space more and more. We find it fascinating. We do great work there, but…

For me, my startup or other people thinking I want to build something in offshore wind, should you advising? What should we do?

Clark MacFarlane (41:06)
So I do think there’s a lot of help that we’ve put in the industry over the last 15 years to be able to help small and medium companies. So let me talk about what assistance. So first of all, it depends what the company’s trying to do. Are you trying to make something, are you trying to renovate something, are you trying to find a partner for something, are trying to get funding for something? There’s a whole lot of asks that small and medium companies have got. And thankfully today, we’ve got a whole lot of places you can go.

So let me just mention some of this. So we’ve got an offshore renewable energy catapult, which is based in Glasgow and Blyth. And they have an SME focus looking at how they can help SMEs, whether that be grant funding, whether it be ideas, whether it be putting in touch with somebody that’s actually trying to do the same thing or supporting you with that. You’ve got the likes of OIC, the Offshore Wind Industrial Council, which is what I was on for a number of years. That’s the official government body. They’ve got a cluster organization.

So they’ve got different clusters, I think it’s eight or nine clusters around the country where businesses who are working in that cluster can come together and understand how they fit together. And if you can sell or you can find somebody that’s interested in what you do within your local facility, then that’s a good place to start. Then you’ve got trade associations. So I was on the board of renewable UK for eight years, 500 members there.

Everybody thinks when they see all the sponsors of events, it’s the big people, but actually the tail is hundreds of them. So they’re actually a lot of them are small and medium companies and that trade association can, can help you with your network, help you understand what’s happening in the industry, help you understand the gaps. It publishes a lot of things on what do we need in terms of product place, technologies, skills and jobs. You know, there’s a lot of information that can.

can be helped there. Then you’ve got the Crown Estate now with our accelerator program where they’re encouraging business in certain areas to develop and they’re giving them some funds and support. And of course, now we’ve got GB Energy looking at things like ports and taking ownership of certain things and looking at offshore floating. So today, I would say, you know, have a think about how you’re trying to get into it. Do you have an existing?

business that you’re looking to expand, have an innovation that you’re looking to expand, is there somebody you’re looking to sell to? You know, what is it your ask is? And then if you go onto the renewable UK websites, for example, or the OIC website, you’ll find a lot of publications and contacts of people that you can start or the catapults. So I think my advice to you is just figure out first what question you want to ask. What help are you looking for?

Right, because sometimes when I speak to small companies, they’re not 100 % sure what it is. Do you want to speak to somebody? Have you got something mature? You try to develop something, you try to some funding, but what’s your ask here? Let’s just, because then I can send you to the right person because we now have an infrastructure in the UK of support. It takes a few of us to help you find it. So what we did was last summer, we actually published through our UK, look on the, if you’re this size of company, if you’re in this type of

industry here are the bodies that I’ve just outlined that can help you and guide you. So I would encourage people to have a look at that. Why has it taken us so long to get this sorted? Well, because we’ve been developing an industry, we’re developing the support mechanisms as we go along. You know, there wasn’t a GB energy. We didn’t grow our UK and make it as strong as we did though. There wasn’t a catapult until 2012 or whatever it is or 2011. So

Having now generated those, we’re now in a position, I think, to help individuals.

Adam Sroka (44:58)
That’s amazing. And like, it can be daunting as a founder doing things like I’m hand on to try and make sense of it all. But it is one of those things that if you do spend the time, you get the right support. Actually, people want to see you succeed. And they want to see like if you come up with something that is truly innovative, and you’re excited by it, a lot of people are keen to help you share it and get in front of the right people. And I would say that we’re quite good at that across the energy industry, from my personal experience.

Clark MacFarlane (45:27)
Well, it’s interesting. mean, it’s like everybody, you know, used to talk about the cost of offshore wind coming down. You know, we started at 150, 160 per megawatt hour. There was auctions down in the late thirties. Okay, it’s gone up again, but due to economic pressures and costs and everything. everybody, while it was just bigger turbines, it was not just bigger turbines. There was a whole lot of innovation. The direct drive took out 50 % of the components.

because technology had changed the way the components interact. worked from anything from cabling to cable connections to the way we did logistics to specialist material that got rid of cranes to maintenance regimes that didn’t need people to go to them. And we changed the vessel requirements. I mean, there was innovation. And I used to say there was 23.

major innovations and I don’t know how many minor innovations went into those 23. So the industry somehow promotes itself by these major innovations but actually it’s not, you know, from, I mean, on floating, just getting cable connections or mooring connections or something like that, that robust, that are easy to connect, that are, you know,

strong that are easily put in place if you could do it onshore rather than offshore it’s a lot cheaper there are things that we can do to save cost so you know I do think there is plenty of space for continual innovation I mean mean floating is is just you know starting for example in many respects and so therefore yeah plenty of space there.

Adam Sroka (47:10)
I mean, like it’s great to see because it’s not a solved problem. It’s too hard to be a solved problem, right? And so seeing it progress and change, it’s amazing. If you were to start again, if you were entering the workforce today, maybe you were a graduate listening to this podcast or you’re in your final year of university. What skills would you pick up this time round? What do you think is going to be important for the next decade?

Clark MacFarlane (47:34)
So it’s interesting, I’m involved with three universities and I did spend eight years, I just stood down as the chair of the Engineering and Strategic Advisory Board at Durham University. Fascinating what the change at universities I’ve had to go through over the last few years has been unbelievable, not only technology but funding and challenges with funding and offering different.

profiles and less international students due to visas. mean, it’s one thing I’ve always said to them is, is in engineering, we’ll need construction and we’ll need electrical and we will need people who understand general engineering, project managers. lot of courses now are core over the first couple of years. You don’t specialize until later. When I went to university, you chose electrical, mechanical, civil. These days,

you choose it halfway through a full year degree. So I like that idea of general engineering and then universities are suspicious of AI because that’s cheating in exams or it’s cheating in in coursework And actually I’ve said to them, you really need to embrace it. It’s you need when, when somebody turns up now, it’s how they’ll develop their job and how they’ll add new value to their company. You get there.

You know, as a graduate, that’s just the entry ticket to your career. It’s the impact you then make in your career that matters. And if you can be sharp, bring new skills, new technology, then you’re great. You will be able to learn and you’ll be able to bring something and you will find it exciting and fulfilling as you get that. And I think picking up on the AI and the innovation is a really good thing.

And then the second thing I would say to anybody coming in is we’ve changed a lot in engineering since the time I came in. You’re in a great position as a graduate to come in because the layers of management don’t exist. You when I went, had a memo that went to a manager that went to a manager that went, I have no idea where it went to, have anybody made a decision? But now we’ve got flat structures, there’s town halls, there’s emails, there’s

internal web chats with, you know, on various platforms that allow people to be heard, to communicate, to work as a team, to get ideas from other people. Use your social media, use your communication, use that inbuilt now in terms of that generation skills when you’re at work to engage with your colleagues and to build your

network and to get fresh ideas and make sure people listen to you. There is, you know, I never had that opportunity. My directors sat in a corridor I was never invited to. I couldn’t get my ideas heard. Today you can get your ideas head. You can change your company. You can change your job. You can make an influence.

Adam Sroka (50:42)
I agree, I wholeheartedly agree. I spent my life after uni in start-ups, smaller companies, and it’s even easier there. But yeah, we do take a lot of that stuff for granted. It’s funny, I noticed now that I’m CEO of my thing, right? No matter how much I ask for feedback and candour and all that, people are reticent to tell me the truth or tell me like, bad stuff. And I’m like, I’m the most open to it. Like, I really want to hear it.

But I think it’s just hangovers from the past, the way it was hard to do that communication. It is hard to bring those walls down, but it is changing, definitely.

Clark MacFarlane (51:17)
I

think in the past, mean, and maybe the lights of my generation were to blame. I it was, you know, I mean, when I was a kid, it was spoke when you spoken to, knowledge is power and only certain senior people had the knowledge. I always used to say, if knowledge is power, give everybody the knowledge and then we’re a more powerful team. You know, it’s like, and I think you’re at that stage. Some people are frightened for the job. Some people are not quite sure how to phrase it.

You say, tell me whatever, speak up. We used to be one of the phrases and then the people that spoke up used to get themselves in the bother. So therefore, you know, there’s a cultural thing which is how, sorry.

Adam Sroka (51:55)
try not to do that.

Clark MacFarlane (51:59)
Yeah, but there are some cultural places, you know, where I’ve seen people speaking up and they’ve been trodden down. I think

If people leave a job or people don’t get a job, it’s because they don’t get on with their manager. know, as research tells you that it’s, it’s, yeah, corporate culture is important, but actually your relationship with your colleagues and your manager are what really matters. And anybody that’s going into a job, they really need to have that open relationship with the person that’s supervising or responsible for them. And, know, whether it’s how you get stressed, how you cope with things.

What are you really strong at? What are you really weak at? What can you bring up? You got a fresh idea. If you can generate that great relationship, then when you ask the question, people would be in a safe space to be able to answer it. However, having been a CEO for many, many, many years, I could tell you that the majority of people that arrived at my desk were the people with problems that they couldn’t solve and they’re now looking for me to solve. So therefore you’ve got to understand that you do get more of the

negatives that you ever get the I’ve got something positive I’ll just go along and don’t clock it

Adam Sroka (53:13)
Yeah, I mean, I always say to people, I get that and I say to people, but look, that’s my lot in life. That’s like, I’ve built this, like I built this run for my own back. That’s fine. And it’s, yeah, all part and parcel of the role, I guess.

Clark MacFarlane (53:27)
It

is, but you see, you get the privilege and I’ve, I’ve mentored so many people

Adam Sroka (53:30)
Yeah, it’s a payment.

Clark MacFarlane (53:31)
and developed so many people’s different career. I’ve seen them now in, different jobs. sat in RUK, I think it was four or five people that used to either mentor or work for me. And you end up seeing them, you know, make an inference. You’ve got that opportunity to develop that team and to bring them into go different places and to, see how they develop. And that’s a, it’s, that’s a privilege.

It’s like many people said to me, you’ve done different industries and you’ve done, you know, a long career, 43 years and everything’s changed. How do you manage to cope with it? And I’ve said, well, actually it was quite simple because what the product is, is not critical to the leadership style and impact that you have because you’re trying to engage with people, motivate people, guide them.

make sure their roles, responsibility skills are matched to what you’re trying to do, get feedback with them, look at your competition, look at your customers, making sure you engage with your customers. The basic ways in which you run an organization and the requirements of an organization to work with people and to integrate with people, whether they be a customer, a supplier or an internal, they haven’t changed fundamentally.

Okay, the methods we use it, the style, the informality rather than more formal, that’s all changed. But the basic skills are there. And in fact, in going from IT to defense to wind to energy to whatever, I found that 90 % of what I did during the day, and I checked this once by looking at my calendar, was the same.

Adam Sroka (55:07)
As someone said to me recently that like after a certain level all jobs become sales or leadership. That’s it. there’s no, there’s certainly in every organization ever all jobs become sales or leadership. Look, we are close to time. just want to, before I let anyone leave, I always like to ask two questions. Do have any like controversial opinions, hot takes or like big predictions that you could share with us here?

Clark MacFarlane (55:33)
So my controversial opinion is we need to sort out floating and it’s too quick to put in an auction. We still need to do demonstrates. need to be careful with that. We need to solve storage because if we don’t solve storage, we’ll be building assets forever and we’ll have so much over capacity. So we must get storage solved and get it regularly dischargeable and used to store something.

never discharge it because it was only built there. So I think that I always said to my team, this industry changes so quickly with technology, government opinion, whatever’s happening, projects being built, you should refresh yourself once a year. I used to take my team, usually at the end of the year, so like November, said, what have we assumed today that isn’t going to happen and isn’t going to change?

So for example, one of the things that we thought was going to happen is that the world was going to get on board with climate change and it was going to be an easy just transition and it’s not. people can’t afford it. They are definitely, you’ve got people who are not climate change doubters, but the method of which we’re going about it. So you’ve got to promote our energy industry and our renewable energy industry permanently.

I don’t care whether you’re on a bike ride, you’re in the pub, you’re in the mums and toddlers or whatever. We must make sure that people understand the benefits, the wider benefits to them in society and the jobs and the way it goes forward. Do not sit and just work. You need to be in sales for what we do as an industry and be up to date and challenge yourself as any of your knowledge over 12 months old. Cause if it is, I think you need to think.

what’s changed and what you need to go forward.

Adam Sroka (57:26)
I absolutely it. Clark, it’s been amazing talking to you today. Thank you so much for imparting some of your experience of wisdom on us. For people in the audience that maybe want to find out more about you or what you’ve been up to, companies you’ve worked with, or if there’s anything you’d like to promote or plug. No one’s ever promoted like Open Mic Night in the Local, but I’m waiting for it.

Clark MacFarlane (57:47)
So, I mean, if you want to contact me, then go onto LinkedIn, you can see what I’ve done. You can see the companies I’ve been involved with and the management I’ve done in different industries across the UK and 70 different countries. And if you’ve got an idea, contact me. I’m very approachable and open. In terms of

What am I doing in my post retirement? Well, because we created the offshore wind growth partnership, because we invested the industrial growth fund, I’m very much trying to make sure that we support the supply chain. That might be with your network, with your business case, with your funding. So I’m very keen that if you asked a question, if I’m a supply chain today, where do I go? Who do I get to? What do I get?

I think that’s where I still have a passion to make a difference because I still want to create economic benefit in the UK and long lasting sustainable jobs as part of our industry because that’s where we all came.

Adam Sroka (58:49)
Absolutely love it. Well, I wish you all the best in your retirement and in those endeavors. And hopefully I’ll have the opportunity to make as big an impact as much change as you have over the next 20, 30 years of my career. But thanks again.

Clark MacFarlane (59:02)
So, confidence

of the people coming by me will do better than me.

Adam Sroka (59:06)
Thanks very much, Clark.

Adam Sroka (59:09)
Thank you once again for listening to the Hypercube Energy podcast. As always, if you have any feedback or comments or you want to get involved, please get in touch. And if you want to find out more about what’s happening in data and AI across the energy sector, please join the Beyond Energy community and I look forward to speaking to you soon.