Interview with Prof Sarah Sharples by Climate Perspectives magazine
One of the key people involved in the fight to address climate change is professor Sarah Sharples, chief scientific adviser for the Department for Transport. Andy Walker caught up with her to find out about what she does and her thoughts on a range of issues.
Like many people, including myself, Sarah Sharples first got interested in science and technology as a result of a BBC television programme. “When I was young, I always watched Tomorrow’s World, a programme that talked about future science and innovation and technology,” she tells me. “I remember technologies like the compact disc, which has now become obsolete, being demonstrated along with many communications technologies and tools that would change the way we lived and that first got me interested in science. The other thing that inspired me, of course, were the teachers in my school. I was really lucky to have a number who were really enthusiastic about science and technology and provided me with the basic education in chemistry and physics that I still use to this very day,” she says.
I asked her whether she could recall the first moment when she first became aware of climate change as an issue. “It was when I was a teenager and there was information on the news about the ozone layer. At the time, this was something that was understood as a specific scientific phenomenon but wasn’t really equated with the long-term impact of climate change. People thought that if we all just stopped using aerosol cans then the impact on the ozone layer would be addressed and everything would be fine. It’s only been around five years ago, when there started to be much more publicity around the long-term changes that were being evidenced around climate change, that the issue moved forward in people’s consciousness,” says Sharples.
No such thing as a typical week
As a leading figure in the nation’s efforts to address the effects of climate change, Sharples has to connect with many people, including experts, in her day-to-day work. So, what’s a typical day or week like in her role? “As the chief scientific adviser, there is no such thing as a typical week,” she says. “I spend an awful lot of my time listening to different people. That could be chief scientific advisers in other government departments, working with them to make sure ensure that our advice is aligned and that we are looking at the whole system we need to consider when we are bringing new technology into transport. It might also be listening to my policy colleagues who will have particular challenges that they need to address about the options for future transport policy and advising them on how science and technology might help them. I also spend a lot of time going out to visit academia and industry, hearing about the work that they are doing, then making the connections and feeding that expertise back into the Department for Transport,” she says.
So, a busy role, but also a rewarding and collaborative one. When asked about the policy in decarbonising transport that she is most proud of, Sharples highlights an issue that is high on the agenda of many people, namely electric vehicles. “When I observe the work that my colleagues in the Department for Transport have done around having such a strong and firm commitment to the transition to electric vehicles, I think that is extremely powerful,” she says. “I’m able to see the impact that has on industry but also on academia, so we know that as we transition to electric propulsion more generally, whether it’s automotive vehicles or other modes of transport, we need advances in technology such as further developments in battery innovation. Having such a firm and clear commitment towards the transition to electric vehicles has been really helpful in energising that research in future battery technologies,” Sharples says.
Changing the transport system
Battery technology and the challenge of improving it is just one of the challenges facing Sharples and her colleagues at the Department for Transport. There are others too. “Two key challenges come to mind,” she tells me. “We need to change the transport system. It is currently undergoing a change that it has probably hasn’t seen on this scale for well over 100 years, if ever. Not only are we seeing fundamental changes in how we power and fuel our transport system and the associated technological changes that come with that, we are also seeing the introduction of autonomy into the system and so there are really important regulatory changes that need to happen to change the traditional models we have had. There’s a lot of joining the dots to be done, making sure all those moving parts fit together in the right way, in order to deliver our future transport system,” she explains.
In addition, Sharples is keen to stress the challenge of ensuring that the changes that are being introduced help everybody. “We know that the UK is a really diverse country and solutions that suit one part of the country, or one particular part of the population might not be the right solution for everyone, so making sure we understand user needs when it comes to transport and reflecting on those in the way in which we design future policies is really important,” she says.
So, a lot of change and a lot of dots to be joined up along the way. But what about the pace of change? Does Sharples think that progress is genuinely being made on decarbonising transport and is the process moving fast enough? She says there are really positive signs but is realistic enough to realise that more needs to be done too.
“In some areas we can see really positive evidence, for example in the take-up of electric vehicles and we are also seeing really great engagement from local authorities who are grappling with some of the challenges of decarbonisation and implementation of technology in their local settings, which is a great way to deliver change,” she says. “However, there clearly is more that we need to do if we are going to reverse the effects of climate change. We are doing lots of things that are helping us head in the right direction, but we need to be extremely mindful of the volume and quality of activity that is going to be needed for the next 20 years or more if we are going to address the effects of climate change,” Sharples admits.
Communications and improving diversity
Unsurprisingly, for someone whose key role is to ensure that science and engineering underpins policymaking, Sharples believes that improving the way that scientists and policy makers interact and communicate to foster a greater mutual understanding is crucial. “Thinking about how scientists can communicate their research in ways that are meaningful to policy makers is something that we can always improve,” she says. “It’s really hard sometimes to communicate outcomes that are quite uncertain and quite complex in a way that’s helpful. Thinking about how scientists and policy makers communicate is something we need to continue to work on,” says Sharples.
It’s clear from what she says and the way she says it that Sharples is an excellent communicator and one who inspires confidence. As one of the (still) too few women working in a prominent role in the science and engineering arena, she is also conscious of the importance of that fact and the need for the sector to do more to encourage diversity in its widest sense.
“The sector should be doing more to encourage diversity. I do still find myself in situations where I stand out because of my gender, but I think that we also need to consider the whole range of different backgrounds that we want to bring into helping us tackle the critical changes we have in the transport sector,” she says. “The reason for this is that we need to make sure that we are designing our technologies and systems for the people who will be using them, so making sure that we have diversity in its broadest sense in terms of those who work in this area – including people from a range of geographical settings, socio-economic backgrounds, ethnicities, disabilities, ages and experiences – to feed into all of the decisions we make is crucial,” she explains.
“We still see a systemic underrepresentation of women, those from black and minority ethnic backgrounds and those with disabilities within the transport system and it’s not unusual for me to be still outnumbered when I go to meetings. If we aren’t including women as representatives in our transport industry, we are missing out on 50% of the population and also 50% of diverse ideas of systems thinking and of different ways in which we can come up with solutions to tackle the problems we can see,” Sharples says.
“I do recognise the responsibility and the opportunity that I have by being the first women to take on the role of chief scientific adviser within the Department for Transport. I am really proud of the fact that I am in that position and I hope that I can encourage many others to believe that they too can take on senior positions in whatever sector they are working in,” she says.
We need inspirational people to speak out
Speaking of encouraging and inspiring, I ask Sharples who inspires her today and also her views on high-profile campaigners like Greta Thunberg, who are so visible internationally in the fight against climate change. “The people who inspire me are the young people who are about the age of my own teenage children, who despite the tough experiences of the past few years with the pandemic, have shown an activism, a willingness to challenge conventional ways of thinking and an enthusiasm for engaging in some of the really critical issues that we need to address. That is really inspiring,” she says.
“And also, having visible people, like Greta Thunberg, who can raise the profile of really important issues is something that makes a massive difference in taking forward some of the issues we have been discussing. The more we can encourage people to speak out on important issues, the better,” says Sharples.
The key question of course is whether society can address and ultimately resolve the key issues around decarbonisation and climate change in time. Can we really halt or even reverse the effects of climate change in the years ahead? “I would bow to the expertise of climate change specialists to make that judgement about whether the effects can be reversed,” says Sharples. “The most important contribution that transport can make is to reduce the 28% of emissions that we know are due to domestic transport. We need to focus on the role that transport can have and then let’s work with colleagues from other parts of the system to make sure that those combined efforts have the desired impact,” she says.
Working with colleagues and across departments and businesses is a crucial part of what Sharples does and she highlighted two current projects that she’s especially excited about. “We are working in conjunction with UK Research and Innovation to set up two collaborative funding hubs. The first is Building a Greener Future, looking at how we can bring together a range of different scientists to address some of the challenges we need to tackle around transport infrastructure, systems resilience and adaptation. The second is a clean maritime hub that will bring together experts looking at the particularly challenging area of decarbonising maritime. I’m really excited to observe how those competitions progress and see what types of consortia end up helping us tackle those really important challenges,” she explains.
So, can we decarbonise transport in the UK before 2050? Sharples’s reply to that question is quite clear. “I don’t think we’ve got any choice,” she says. “I think it’s really, really difficult and there are different solutions that will lead us towards the net zero pathway, but we have to look at how we travel, why we travel, when we travel and combine all of those different elements in the most effective way to address what is a legally binding target,” Sharples says.
This interview was carried out by Andy Walker, Binary Carbon – publisher of Climate Perspectives magazine.
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