Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast Net Hero Podcast – With Sumit Bose

We talk constantly about Britain's skills shortage. We need more engineers, more people in energy, more people in nuclear and renewables and the answer nearly always seems to be the same: get more young people into STEM.

Fine. We absolutely need them.

But what about the thousands of highly skilled people we have already trained who are sitting outside the workforce because they took a career break, were made redundant or simply couldn't find a way back in?

Natalie Desty, founder of STEM Returners, tells me this week why she's leading a crusade to do just that, bring back people who have fallen out of favour, lost jobs or simply had to walk away due to family life. And how they have so much to offer to plug the gap!

Natalie spent years in engineering recruitment watching perfectly capable people disappear from consideration simply because their CV wasn't neat enough.

“I saw these really capable people who wouldn't get seen through standard channels,” she told me. “And we had an advanced skills gap, particularly within defence engineering. I went to a Women's Engineering Society conference about the year before I started STEM Returners and the speaker said there are 75,000 people who have left STEM who would love to return.”

Women are a huge part of that missing workforce. Natalie says 46% of the engineering returners she works with are women compared with around 12% of the wider industry, with caring responsibilities the biggest reason people step away.

“There's a retention issue for sure at that mid-career female bit,” she said. “A lot of these people would have been retained if they were in a more supportive, flexible environment. It's almost like they felt they had to leave because they were letting the company down.”

And the frustrating thing is that a short break can become a very long one. “Often women will think I'm going to step away for a bit. I'm going to step away for six months, a year without realising that actually that's going to turn into five years because it's going to take that long to get back in.”

STEM Returners tries to provide that bridge through supported placements where employers can see what somebody can actually do rather than dismissing them because of a gap on a CV. Natalie says they have now returned around 700 people to work and 96% get a job at the end.

But I think the bigger point goes beyond helping individuals back into work. Returner programmes can also become a way of moving skills between industries as the energy transition accelerates.

“A returners programme, it's almost like it automatically doubles up as a transfer of learning programme,” Natalie explained. “They're a mechanical design engineer but they're pivoting their skills from a different industry.”

That could mean taking decades of experience from oil and gas, automotive, defence or rail and using it in renewables, nuclear and other growing sectors.

Natalie believes we need to stop treating this workforce as an afterthought.

“For me, I just think we need a fourth pathway. We've got apprentices, we've got graduates, we have about reskilling… We have absolutely no pathway for the experienced people who have left and all of that capability that we've lost, that we've already invested in as a country.”

And perhaps most importantly, bringing experienced people back helps the next generation too. “We cannot fill this gap through early career routes alone,” she said. “Bring those mid-career, experienced professionals back at the same time who can mentor, who can help and develop the young people coming through as well.”

That really does feel like a no-brainer. Listen to my full conversation with Natalie Desty on the Net Hero Podcast, download the episode wherever you get your podcasts and please subscribe.

 

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Hugo Energy will soon launch a product that allows households to earn cash from their batteries

For today's podcast, we sit down with the CEO of Hugo Energy to get a vital insight on the ever-growing battery and energy storage landscape.

After starting off as a lawyer, Ben Dehsi made his name in the energy industry with the creation of Hugo Energy, an all in one energy app.

The company is gearing up to launch its newest product, Hugo Flex which is set to be a game changer for battery storage by helping households earn money from their batteries.

Listen to today’s podcast to find out how this innovation is made possible and how important battery storage is in the energy world.

 

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Are sails about to make a comeback on the world's cargo ships in a bid to decarbonise ocean transport?

When you tell people that sails could play a big part in decarbonising global shipping, it sounds almost absurdly old fashioned.

We spent the last century replacing wind with engines, building ever larger ships and burning enormous amounts of fuel to move most of the goods we consume around the planet. Yet after my conversation with OceanWings CEO Emmanuel Schalit, I came away thinking that perhaps the future of shipping is going to look rather more like its past than we imagined.

Emmanuel has been sailing since he was five and that connection with the sea has stayed with him throughout his life. He understands just how much power is sitting there for free if you know how to use it. “I started sailing at the age of five, which is a long time ago… I sailed around my part of France, which is Brittany. Then you go further. And at this point, I've sailed pretty much anywhere from the northern tip of Scotland all the way to the Greek islands.”

His point is not that we somehow return to wooden ships and canvas sails. Modern wind propulsion is an entirely different beast, using huge automated rigid wings controlled by sensors and software and fitted alongside the ship’s existing propulsion system.

And Emmanuel is very clear that this is not about wind replacing everything else.

“With the way the global economy is structured today, what our business is about is hybrid vessels, like the steamships of the end of the 19th century. We provide part of the propulsion with wind and the other part has to come from something else. Today diesel, tomorrow it could be alternative low emission diesel, hydrogen, it could even be battery. But it's really about combining both.”

That is what makes the concept so interesting to me. We spend an enormous amount of time debating whether shipping will eventually run on hydrogen, methanol, ammonia, batteries or some fuel we have not perfected yet. OceanWings starts from a much simpler place: whatever fuel you use, use less of it.

The technology can also be fitted to ships already operating, which matters when you consider how long commercial vessels remain in service.

“If you think about a global fleet of 100,000 ships, if we had to wait for them to be rebuilt, it's likely that both you and I would be dead before,” Emmanuel told me. “So we need a better solution. And the solution is that on many large segments, tankers, bulkers, LNG carriers, we can retrofit existing vessels.”

Then you get to the carbon maths and suddenly this stops sounding like a romantic idea about harnessing the wind and starts looking like a serious decarbonisation tool.

“One tonne of fuel, on a well-to-wake basis, is equivalent to four tonnes of CO2,” Emmanuel explained. “So every time you save a tonne of fuel, that's four tonnes of CO2 that will never reach the atmosphere. Very significant. That's why we wake up every morning and go to work.”

One wing alone, he says, can make a remarkable difference. “One of these wings, going back to what I said earlier, 1.3 tonnes of fuel per day, four tonnes, five tonnes of CO2 saved per day. You take an average ship that sails about 200 days per year. One wing sail saves about 1,000 tonnes of CO2 per year.”

Over its lifetime the numbers become even more striking. “The durability of that system is a minimum of 25 years. Every time we deliver one of these, we know that it has the potential, if it is used, to save 25,000 tonnes of CO2.”

I asked him the obvious question: what about the carbon involved in actually manufacturing the thing?

“The scope one, two, three cost of actually making one of these is 500 tonnes,” he replied. “We emit 500, we save 25,000. We are happy with that.”

But perhaps the most important argument is not environmental at all. It is commercial. Shipping companies are businesses and ultimately technology tends to scale when it saves them money as well as carbon.

Emmanuel put it better than I could. “Our mission is to reduce emissions but the product we sell is payback. The more expensive fuel gets, the more it makes sense to install those systems.”

That may ultimately be what takes wind propulsion from an interesting technology to something we see on ships everywhere.

Listen to my full conversation with Emmanuel Schalit of OceanWings on the Net Hero Podcast. Download the episode wherever you get your podcasts and please subscribe.

 

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Geopolitical tensions, price shocks and the net zero transition are driving volatility. Our latest podcast explores how on-site generation could help businesses manage the changing market

With geopolitical tensions, price shocks and the transition to net zero reshaping the energy landscape, businesses are facing a new era of commercial energy volatility.

Can Wattstor’s combination of onsite renewables, battery storage and flexible energy tariffs help businesses navigate the uncertainty – and even turn volatility into an opportunity?

Listen to the latest podcast episode to find out.

 

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Britain's homes need better insulation so could drones, thermal cameras and AI to find out exactly where we're wasting heat and money?

I have always known my house probably leaks heat. It's old, poor insulation in the loft, none in the walls and with lots of windows, I suspect I would rather not know how much of the money I spend on heating simply disappears through the roof and walls.

Well with some clever tech, Lucy Lyons can now tell me.

She is the co-founder of Kestrix and on this week's show, she explained how they are using drones, thermal imaging and AI to effectively create a heat map of our homes. Think Google Maps, but instead of finding the quickest route to the pub, you're finding where your bloody heating bill is escaping.

And we need something like it because retrofitting Britain house by house is an enormous job.

“One of my favourite statistics is that in the UK alone, to reach net zero before 2050, we need to retrofit something like 1.8 homes every single minute,” Lucy told me.

“It’s ridiculous. It’s a massive undertaking. And so the question that we set out to solve was not just how do you figure out which home needs what. How do you do this in a way that’s really scalable and really empirical at the same time?”

Rather than sending somebody into every property, Kestrix can fly over an entire area and work out which homes need attention first.

“We’re going to fly the drones over, say, a thousand homes. And that’s going to help you figure out, okay, with the budget I have this year, which are the 250 that make the most sense to retrofit? What are the measures that each of those 250 need?”

That becomes particularly interesting when you can go back afterwards and see whether the work actually worked.

Kestrix did exactly that with housing provider Peabody and Lucy says the results showed an average bill saving of around £520 per home every year, alongside carbon savings of more than a tonne. But the cameras also spotted something else...

“There were indications of thermal bridging, which is kind of like heat loss essentially around the window lintels in about half the properties,” she explained. “It’s something to flag. There’s still unnecessary heat loss here and it might indicate that the home is less healthy than they thought.”

And this is what I liked about Lucy's argument. Forget lecturing people about carbon. Show me my house, show me where the heat is disappearing and tell me what fixing it will save.

“If you understand the costs and the benefits of something, people are much more likely to buy in,” she said. “At the moment it’s like, ‘For the sake of the environment, you should really consider insulation.’ But okay, what about my house? What about my bills? No one can really answer that right now.”

...Maybe her drones and AI can.

Listen to my full conversation with Lucy on the Net Hero Podcast, download it wherever you get your podcasts and please subscribe.

 

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This episode it's all about human powered flight from what we produce everyday! 

 

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Well not literally - but is it time for us to use waste water much better as we face global water scarcity issues? Could this 'new water' help us tackle climate change?

 

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This week Academic Kirsty Denyer tells me how North Sea oil and gas workers are being left behind in the clean energy revolution!

 

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Loved this episode, I'm transported to mangrove forests where scientists have found incredible bacteria that can 'eat' plastic waste from the ocean..

This time, will the growth in solar globally need a bunch of robots to help us? Or is AI out to take our jobs?

This time I look at energy policy in Wales and explore if this model of energy devolution helps or hinders the net zero transition

This week Alec Taylor from charity Oceana tells me the risks from old oil rigs in the North Sea and the lessons to be learned for offshore wind

This week I explore the real growth in fusion, from concept to proven science its next big step is commercialisation  

This time a man on a mission to make colouring fabrics more sustainable 

Is the political and public backlash against net zero to be expected? This week I speak to the boss of Hitachi Energy in the UK about the cost of transition...

 

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Greenwashing is still rife but how much of it is down to incompetence? Marketing expert Helen Neal Neal explains it to me...

 

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Could the industrial cousin of cannabis be the building material of the future?

The film industry is spectacular...at creating waste! So how can we reduce the footprint of cinema studios?  

After 15 years Sumit revisted Hinkley where a new power station is finally coming to life, in this special episode I take a tour around the future of clean power

 

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With the current jet fuel crisis has the time come for more expansion of e-fuels? That's this week's topic...

The challenge to keep control on rising costs are a feature in 2026, once again, for businesses and the public sector. There are, however, sources of solutions in reach that can boost business sustainability, protect revenue and reduce risk. Get the latest insights and smarter actions to take with water and trade effluent by joining Future Net Zero and Cherie Guthrie, a Water Plus senior Key Account Manager with 13 years’ experience in business water - in this free 2026 podcast. Cherie outlines opportunities to explore, along with the real-world strategies businesses can take to help the bottom line and keep running costs down. Those taking-up smarter water strategies are seeing results, reducing utility costs and building operational resilience:

• 42.5% water saving, on average daily use, at a site after a proactive water management project with Water Plus that saw small efficiency devices installed. The saving was tracked in 2025 by a data logger installed on a water meter in a water audit and efficiency project involving 17 locations.
• A national operation with a data logger fitted to a water meter at a site was alerted to a rise of 400 litres per hour, preventing more than £12,000 in additional annual wholesaler charges. A follow-up visit arranged in February 2026 located an underground pipe leak, which was replaced and had lost 67,200 litres (67.2m3) in just 7 days.
• A saving of more than £350,000 delivered for another multi-site - after the proactive approach and close customer support of an Account Manager and Key Account Manager at Water Plus, who challenged wholesaler charges at a location. The cost reduction in 2025 was due to changes in site use. 
• Another business secured a water-saving across three of its sites that could have added more than £9,400 in extra wholesaler charges on its bill. Two leaks on underground pipework and a wall tap leak were located and repaired in autumn 2025, through the Advanced Services team at Water Plus.

2026 is a key year to plan and set in motion approaches to limit additional cost challenges from wholesaler price increases for water from April 2026. And saving water can help reduce future water scarcity risks, while reducing carbon emissions - as well as have in-year impacts to give a boost to budgets.   Ready to source more water, energy and risk reductions? Support is available to help organisations tackle rising costs and reduce operational risks:

• Explore free resources on smarter water management: water-plus.co.uk/better-ways-with-water
• Discuss partnership opportunities: hello@water-plus.co.uk
• Request water efficiency and resilience services: advancedservices@water-plus.co.uk

  Water Plus, a multi award-winner for its work helping customers save water, gain efficiencies, accelerate sustainability actions and reduce risks. It's the largest water retailer for businesses in the UK, providing a comprehensive range of services for more than 689,000 customer supply points across England and Scotland. These include billing and customer service, account management, meter reading, leak detection, additional water tracking and analysis technology, water saving site reviews and water efficiency device installation.   Individual wholesaler prices will vary depending on water usage and location of sites and will appear on water bills from 1st April, 2026. More details at: https://www.water-plus.co.uk/news/wholesaler-price-changes/   This is the featured podcast for Water Plus.

Wind turbines taller than skyscrapers powering whole a city? Is that the future of offshore green power... find out in this episode 

A dive on a coral reef had a profound effect on silicon valley wizz Tom Chi and he's now on a mission to change the negative narrative on net zero

 

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This time why hasn't Hydrogen taken off as the next great clean fuel? I chat to Steffen Hoffmann the MD of Bosch in the UK

 

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Is Geothermal power the secret sauce for net zero, as new science shows many more places could use heat from underground...

 

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In this episode I chat with Laura Elms from e-bike hire company Forest, about getting more women using cycles with confidence  

 

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In this episode I chat with Laura Elms from e-bike hire company Forest, about getting more women using cycles with confidence  

 

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This week I sat down with Kirsten Oliver from WSP to unpack what the latest Contracts for Difference auction means and why it matters

 

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In this episode Sumit speaks to Georg Rute from Gridraven a company using AI and the weather to improve the capacity of powerlines.

 

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This time I talk to Kate Schecter from World Neighbours on how we ensure developing nations at the forefront of climate change are part of the net zero effort

Are we doing enough to make sure our kids are learning in a cleaner, safer and more sustainable place?

 

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In this episode Sumit speaks to Georg Rute from Gridraven a company using AI and the weather to improve the capacity of powerlines.

 

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Which? Energy specialist Emily Seymour helps me breakdown if Labour's Warm Homes Plan will change things for the better

This time Sumit explore the world of robotics and how everything on every production line everywhere - is actually powered by fossil fuels but one company is out to change that

 

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Wale Aboyade from Sun King explains how plug and play solar is transforming energy access across Africa!

 

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As Britain gears up to rebuild the grid, roll out EV charging and accelerate infrastructure, how do we actually know where anything should go?

Is COP still worth it or is the whole net zero project starting to wobble? That's the topic for this week's chat with Lord Adair Turner

Is it time for floating wind? Or is it just an expensive impractical folly? That's this week's topic on the podcast

 

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Sustainable aviation fuel is finally stepping into the spotlight and this week’s Net Hero Podcast dives straight into the fight to clean up flying

 

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This week I speak to the boss of Octopus in the USA about AI, data demand and the tricky to navigate net zero world of state specific supply

This time around it's a warm welcome back to Dr Frederick Bertley from COSI and we tackle the thing that'll change climate forever - AI

 

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This episode the forgotten side of decarbonising - how to make 'sustainable' chemicals used in everyday items  

Is an SMR the key to unleashing wide scale clean power? Find out in this episode...

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Is an SMR the key to unleashing wide scale clean power? Find out in this episode...

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This week could you be binning a useful source of power each time you throw out your food waste?  

This time round Sumit speaks to Susan Taylor Martin of the BSI about the new net zero standard set to shake things up next year

 

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This episode I talk to Joe Kwiatkowski, a data scientist and energy specialist who can now tell you just how clean your power is day to day!

Solar is entering its prime says this week's guest on the Net Hero Podcast, so is it really the most important renewable power?

The Net Hero Podcast is back after the hot summer break and this time I explore what happens to disease spread as our climate shifts

 

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Dan Williams, CEO and CO-founder of measurable.energy, joins Sumit Bose to discuss the crucial aspects of energy strategies that are being overlooked

 

Estimate how much energy and carbon reductions and cost savings you could generate

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