Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Oxford Martin School.
My name is Jim Hall and this is the latest in what I have found to be enfolding series of
events on the topic of building back better lessons and opportunities from the Konbit pandemic.
And in the softer Noon's conversation, we're literally going to be talking about building, about infrastructure,
about the energy, transport, water, digital waste networks and the built environment more broadly upon which we all depend.
And infrastructure is getting a great deal of focus in this context of post-conflict recovery.
In fact, after disasters, infrastructure is often looked upon.
We might think about the New Deal, which led to the creation of the Hoover Dam and the Grand Coulee Dam.
post-War reconstruction across Europe and Japan and many parts of the world.
But this pandemic has been different because nothing has actually been destroyed on the country.
Public acceptance in particular, transport public transport systems, as has really been transformed.
And yet many of the people who we've had in these conversations in the in the Oxford Martin schools have spoken about a green recovery,
about how our recovery should be focussed on the huge goal of achieving net zero.
And meanwhile, there's the government's agenda of levelling up,
of dealing with geographical and social inequalities and the saving to discuss these topics.
We have Sir John Armitt. It will be hard to think of someone more qualified to talk about this.
John is chair of the National Infrastructure Commission.
He's been absolutely central to infrastructure in this country for many years as a contractor with Lang and Costain and deigning senior
client roles as chief executive or chair at Union Railways Network Rail and the celebrated role in the Olympic Delivery Authority.
He's also been on the Board of Transport for London.
Part of the airport's commission and was chair of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.
So welcome, Sir John. Thank you for joining us and welcome to all audiences.
For those of you who haven't been in these events before.
Let me remind you first that the event is being recorded and it will be available
later for you to look at again or pass on to people who may have missed the event.
And you can ask questions by putting them in the Q&A box and you can actually vote on questions as well.
And those votes will push the questions to the top of the list in front of me.
But before we get to the questions. So, John, over to you.
A lot is being expected of infrastructure, not least from our prime minister, who has a penchant for the ground project.
But can the infrastructure actually deliver on Kovik net zero and levelling out?
Well, thank you, Jim, and good evening, everyone.
I mean, clearly, these are the three topics covered and recovering the economy, recovering from coverage.
And the role of infrastructure, I think is probably, in a sense, the bigger challenge of expecting too much is the bigger challenge.
The point about infrastructure is that it takes time to plan.
It takes time to move on from concepts to the point where you go for planning consent and then take two or three years.
And so you've got a five year front end, probably for any significant project.
And of course, as we've seen with some projects, the 20 year front end before, actually the shovels go in the ground.
So when government has been saying to us in the last. Months.
Well, what would you recommend we get on with? Which is shovel ready?
It's not an easy question to answer, but the answer we have given is.
Well, actually, one of these things which you can't get on more quickly with is,
for example, the roll out of the infrastructure required for electric vehicles.
That's relatively low, low, relatively low skill at that.
And in many respects, because there's a lot of it's about digging trenches and the cheaper parts of that is actually putting in the cable.
And the connexion, the expensive part is the civil engineering front end in a in a in a similar way to that.
Of course, the roll out, which is already underway, a full fibre accelerating that is as much as possible,
is another way of doing something which can be got on with quickly.
And I never cease from saying to government, don't forget current expenditure.
And, you know, if you were to say to the public what irks the most about our infrastructure,
potholes would be fairly close to the top of the list and therefore releasing money as we recommend it.
Back in 2018, we recommended the government five hundred million a year for the next five years be push
towards local authorities to help them get on with the with road maintenance activity.
So those are the sort of things which you can get on with immediately postcode.
We've also been asked, of course,
to do work on behavioural changes arising out of Kovik and we're expected to do that work in the next six to nine months.
Arguably, that's too quick. That's too fast. Well, we actually have any really clear picture of what the world is postcode.
I mean, Jim mentioned the whole issue of the attitude towards public transport.
I mean,
I'm I'm chairman of National Express and we have our own views as to what pace we think people are going to come back to using public transport.
But Will, it's very difficult to to draw on just just what pace there will be a pick up of public transport.
Government has been very successful at telling us or not to get on public transport. And of course, they've now got to reverse that message.
And that will be interesting to see how successful that is.
I mean, zero carbon is clearly there, a very big part of it.
I think what's driving infrastructure investment actually, interestingly, is the whole zero carbon agenda.
It's a sort of virtuous circle in that sense that the big challenges in hydrogen and is
in energy and the sources of energy and nuclear is clearly still there on the agenda.
But no agreement whatsoever between governments and the private sector yet as
to how it's going to be paid for and how the risks are going to be allocated.
Heat is probably one of the biggest challenges of all. How are we going to address the question?
Is it hydrogen and wick?
And how long is it going to take us to get to the point where we know how we can produce hydrogen at any sort of economic rate?
And how do we then distribute it safely? Or are we going to go down the heat pump route to pump?
Sounds seductive, but not much use unless the home that they're being applied to is efficient.
The bulk of our housing stock is not efficient. So heat pumps not necessarily an immediate and easy answer to to heat.
And of course, improving the general efficiency of our housing stock has proved one of the most
difficult things politically to to achieve in recent years have been many failed starts.
And at the moment, the gains government's allocated some money to that, too.
Over the coming years, but getting public acceptance of people coming in and trampling all over your home in
order to make it more efficient is not particularly attractive to the public and not good.
They're not going to be willing to borrow lots of money to do it.
So that whole programme and how you take that programme forward with either public housing or private housing is a real, real challenge.
Back to electric vehicles. I think that is something which is interesting.
The government's made a very clear policy objective that to not allow the sale of petrol and diesel after 2030,
that will only be practically deliverable as a policy if, in fact,
the infrastructure is there to charge these vehicles and people are willing to buy them.
So, again, there is a need for delivery as opposed to policy and as attention inevitably that between how much
government has to inject some support into that and how much they can rely on the private sector to do it.
The whole issue of natural capital, of course, is part of that.
A zero carbon agenda and the use of natural capital for our infrastructure, our great, great capital is there is another debate on.
Coming up, I fear there's a risk that this is a very obvious and politically popular slogan,
but there will be a limit to the public patience as to how long they can wait to see any real action in that field.
We believe it requires more devolution of decision making and devolution of finance to enable that those decisions to be fulfilled at a local level.
That is something where there is, I think, still quite some quite a major question mark over that, the degree to which the government is willing,
if you like, to sort of release the reins and to be more trusting of city mayors and combined authorities in allocating resources.
The tendency still at the moment tends to be that they have to bid for the
financial resources necessary to level up using infrastructure as part of that.
So I think that's quite a long way to go on that whole devolution debate and infrastructure by itself isn't going to deliver levelling up.
There are other factors, particularly skills and training, which are going to need to be addressed in a significant way.
So there's a few introductory thoughts anyway. Thanks very much indeed for that, John.
And a number of points I'd I'd like to come back on.
First of all, in relation to the fact that the demand side shock with respect to public transport.
And you were all on the airports commission.
Do you think we're going to see a third runway at Heathrow and fat HST to a lot of the argument there was around?
Well, the justification was around capacity. On what sort of timescales do you see those that demand ramping back up?
I think the both very fascinating questions. I mean, as you say, when I was on the airport commission, we were looking at a continuous growth.
I mean, Heathrow itself runs at something like 98 percent capacity and it doesn't need very much to go wrong.
Heathrow before the wheels come off. And you could see a continued potential growth,
particularly with expansion of international markets requiring an improvement in the facilities at Heathrow.
Of course, the big challenge at Heathrow is that investment largely comes essentially does come from the private sector.
And so the you know, that is going to be a a group of pension funds and private sector owners of
Heathrow making the decision as to when they feel is the right time to make that,
to take that bet on investing sort of Circo fifteens 20 billion pounds as being the right time.
I personally I would say this is still a good bet to make in the long term.
But of course, this won't get finished until 2030, even if they press the button tomorrow.
So that sort of judgement, which has to be made in a commercial sense against some seeing what's happening.
I mean, if I were them, I suspect they're not going to make a decision in the next 12 months.
They'll wait for 12 to 18 months before they can see what's happening on the global markets in terms of the travelling expectation.
We don't personally continue to believe in cities. I continue to believe in people's desire to actually travel.
I read something this morning about virtual holidays and the fact that that's picked up as a market in the last in the last year.
I mean, at the end of the day, a virtual holiday is not going to give you the opportunity to go on your sightseeing trip and then go to the local
restaurants and do all the other things that we do when we go on on on holiday to get the full the full experience.
So. And with the growth of the growth of the economies in Asia particularly,
and the need and the expectation of people in the Asian economies to be able to travel
the world and then use the increased income and spend it in that discretionary way,
I would expect to continue. So in in that sort of medium to long term, I would think those markets are still going to come back.
Now, when it comes to rain in the UK, people are saying, well,
probably there might be a diminution in the number of executive journalists being made
that creates an interesting revenue stream challenge because like the aeroplanes,
more of the revenue comes from the sort of first class ticket or the front end of the aeroplane, which subsidises the back end of the aeroplane.
So if you see a drop off in executive travel, that's going to have an impact on on fares overall.
But I don't see, you know, maybe a 20 percent drop in executive travel, perhaps, where people will say,
well, do we really need to go on the train, go for that meeting face to face, or can we do it over Zoome?
Yes, we've all got used to zoom. We can see the advantages and disadvantages of Zoom.
Every boulder I'm on, everybody's can't wait for the moment when they actually get back to a proper probable beating as opposed to zoom board meeting.
But there will be choices which will now be created as a consequence of government.
So yes, there must be a risk of some drop off. How many people will work from home and not go back to the office?
Totally contradictory views being bandied around about that at the moment between different companies and what they think is going to happen.
I read the other day somebody who has been doing this since September and the interesting that they said
the worst thing is not having control of your staff and then choosing whether they come in Tuesday,
Thursday or Friday,
and if they are going to have a more working from home approach than it needs to be much more directed and controlled by the company to say.
Right, okay. Almost. But we had dress down Friday in the old days.
It's now going to be a work from home Friday because that having the whole mixture of some people in the office,
some people out of the office, doesn't necessarily work very well when it comes to meetings.
This other research being done, which shows that, in fact,
people are not in the office are less likely to be recognised, less likely to come up for promotion.
You need to be seen to be heard, as it were. And that could be another factor.
So a lot of uncertainties. But I'd be surprised if in the long term, we weren't back at somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of current views.
And just still, briefly on on the recovery, you mentioned the sorts of smaller scale things which can be a much shorter lead times.
There are always the ball band, the home insulation, the E.V. charging, fixing the leaks in the water distribution network.
I would add to that. Do you see any any evidence of that actually happening?
I mean, if it's if we're going to stimulate the economy, it needs to be happening now, doesn't it?
Yes. And of course, this is gets you into that very increasing trauma for us, I suppose, between government, the regulator and the utility sector.
And as a continued focus, of course, by the by the regulators and by government on lowest, lowest charge to the consumer,
lowest charge to the consumer, then can act as a constraint on some of the rate of investment or the nature of the investment.
I mean, there's a negotiation still to be had, for example, and finalised between governments and people like Openreach and and Virgin in
terms of how is the last 20 percent of fibre rollout going to be paid for?
And you know, what's gonna be the balance between private sector investment or government support for that last 20 percent?
The harder to reach places, I mean,
that they will compete with one another enormously to be the ones to put a fibre down in the high streets in the centre of town.
They're not going to compete violently to be the ones who takes it down to the to
the small industrial estates in the country with five users on the end of the cable,
which is going to cost, you know, under thousand pounds to cable that.
So there is that tension, which is going to need to be addressed to get that full rollout and therefore of addressing that tension sooner rather
than later is what's needed if we are going to get that extra that extra resource directed to particularly fibre.
The Eevee infrastructure, I think is a is a more complex question around what is going to be the nature of E.V. charging.
To what extent can people rely on slow charge?
To what extent do you actually need really rapid charge points that actually plays back into the motor vehicle itself?
Because some of the cheaper motor vehicles won't be able to take a superstar superfast charge anyway.
So you've got a again, a real need for collaboration and discussion, which I would argue requires more government leadership,
more willingness by governments get on the front foot and be seen to be more demanding and if necessary,
initially taking some risk before I can step back and say, right, we've got the ball rolling now.
We can leave it to the private sector to to continue road maintenance is pretty straightforward.
You know, I mean, it's just a case of money, you shovelling the money out the door, quite frankly.
But that comes back to the whole devolution.
I mean, what you see at the moment with road maintenance is it all happens in February or March as people sort of rush to get through their
budgets at the end of the financial year to make sure that it's spent because they can't be rolled over into the following year.
Let's some move on to Nazir, and you referred to it in many respects,
they let's say the very positive direction of travel and one might even say a success story in terms of electricity.
The more or less total removal of coal fired generation from from the great in this country, what was it, two months last summer without any coal?
A totally wrong on the grid for the first time since the 1980s.
But as the analysis found from the end, I, Sanie, demonstrated that I know a lot of this is down to plummeting cost of offshore wind,
which has been a fantastic example of how competition fuels innovation and gets prices down.
But the NYSE analysis showed that it does get more tricky as you get more and more wind onto the grid.
And you were questioning the extent to which new nuclear would be necessary and whether one can make do with hydrogen or other forms of storage.
Why do you think we should go on that? It is becoming more tricky now, isn't it?
That question with respect to the grid, I don't think it's changed. We.
We actually published a report earlier this week on the system operation.
And of course, interestingly, the regulator is seeking to separate the system operator out from national grid
to have the news recognising the importance of the system operator in all this.
And the point we make in our report this week is we we still believe that, in fact, for the consumer in 2050, maybe 2040,
the electricity should need to be no more expensive because you have got a very large reliance on renewables.
But what it will require is more investment in the distribution network systems, using using the sort of digital resources and the use of data.
So smarter and smarter systems in order to cope with the variances which are coming on due to renewables.
But we have moved away in our latest analysis from the fact that we think that you can't have
a highly renewable provision of electricity and that you at the moment we would still say.
Yes, get on it if you like, an order, one more nuclear power station.
Still a question mark over whether you'll need anything more beyond tinkly and, say, a Sizewell.
And of course, at current rates of which that is I mean, if you worry about brownouts and say,
well, we've got to have that sort of traditional baseload facility with nuclear.
Then again, things are moving too slowly.
They haven't got to them got a financial basis and a commercial basis going ahead with another nuclear power station at the moment.
EDF clearly not going to make a costs and the programme is overrunning Hinkley.
Not surprisingly, and if you look at the history of nuclear power, that's been the case for the last 25, 30 years.
So I think, you know, potentially you might finish up,
coming back to what you have to have green hydrogen combined cycle power stations as being your your basic,
you know, your backup baseload in the way that we've had gas fired power stations as a quick turn on, turn off, back up in the past.
So might we be looking at that in the future rather than nuclear?
That that brings you back to what pace? So we developing our understanding of the best way to produce hydrogen.
Yeah. And then on the demand side, you you mentioned heat and buildings and the and the behaviour,
all the resistance and yet the sheer logistical difficulty of doing what needs to be done at scale in people's homes.
Any thoughts on what what needs to be done to actually crack crack? Well, as as we suggested in the first place,
move on the large scale Housing Association owned public housing side because that's where you can't get repetitions.
Big challenge with the private sector is how do you know,
how does anybody walk down the high streets as a as a provider and persuade
sort of sixty percent of the homes in that particular street in Casey Grove,
let's call it, that they should actually spend more money on making their homes more efficient.
People move home on average every seven years or so.
So their willingness to invest in and what essentially is maybe the lost investment, unless it's going to make it easier to sell.
At the end of the day, it didn't work at all under the green under the green incentive of a few years ago.
And I think there is still a major challenge in public trust as to how you get the public to feel that they are being sold,
something which that is where they can trust the supplier or the installer or the energy
company at the end of the day that this is going to be in that in their benefit.
And the smart metering has not helped. That's not been a successful rollout so far.
And in the same way, as, you know, you don't have compulsion on smart metres in the water sector.
So that continues to be a bit of a hit to miss.
I mean, I think perhaps, you know, my own view is at the end of the day, the compulsion around metering and smart metering, it will become necessary.
The. How do you get. I mean, companies, you know, everybody every company I'm involved in or every organisation,
I'm sure Oxford University, everybody's drawing up their green strategies and saying,
well, we're going to be carbon zero by 2040, 2050, and we're not going to use so much energy in our buildings and so on.
That, again, it's easy to say, much more difficult to do or require behavioural change will require incentives.
And it's the easiest thing is to look at new buildings.
But in 2050, probably in buildings which we haven't built today will not for more than 20 percent of
the most of the stock of buildings which are around in 2050 with commercial buildings,
hospitals or will private homes. So we've still got how do we retrofit and how do we deal with the 80 percent of buildings that
are going to be as they are today and we're going to have to be retrofitted in some way?
Well, there's going to have to be a behavioural change by us as occupiers in the way
that we that we use those buildings if we're going to actually reduce demand,
as opposed to only focussing on how do we change our supply mechanisms.
Yeah, well, you're right. There's a great deal of thinking going on about that and Oxford University, which, as you will recognise,
there is an organisation with a diverse building stock, let's say a levelling out.
I actually I suppose that is surprising,
possibly a disproportionate amount of the discussion around levelling out ease in relation to infrastructure transport for the north,
for example, how much driving infrastructure can actually do when.
How important is it for levelling out?
Well, where there's a discussion going on at the moment as to whether or not we might do a piece of work on that and try and understand that better.
And in which in what ways can infrastructure be most effectively used to do that?
You know, it's easy to imagine know the extremes, isn't it, that well, if if there's a city sitting there which doesn't have a real connexion,
there's not a decent road connexions, then investors aren't going to make their way there.
On the other hand, if you're talking about marginal improvements. To what extent does that help?
And of course, it's we get into the much wider debate now anyway about, well, you know,
to what extent is infrastructure improving the quality of life rather than just improving the economic cost benefit analysis approach?
And when we did our analysis of Raelynn investments in the North, for example, recently for the government,
and finished up recommending more investment at the cities which are close together rather than the cities which are a long way apart.
That was partly a debate around the use of the rail network, not just for getting to him from work,
but for access to social activities, social amenity, as well as just well, are there going to be more commuters going between A and B.
But interestingly, when you look at that, I mean, if you look at the northeast or the northwest,
70 per cent of people who get on a train are making that journey locally.
They are not making that journey to London.
And in fact, some analysis shows only 10 per cent of journalism made between the northeast, northwest and down to London.
The majority of journeys are actually made between cities in those regions.
And therefore, the argument which we propounded to government is that in the short term, medium term,
you are better off making those infrastructure improvements to benefit those northern Midland, Midland cities.
That seems you know, there are other factors which are equally important and skills is certainly one of them.
And that's a whole extra debate system.
But one of the roadblocks in this country at the moment, we are effective in creating skills bridges, for example,
from one one set of skills to another, which are needed tomorrow, which can't be taught any longer today.
And how we do that,
whether young people coming out of school have sufficient encouragement to go into further education as a fund as opposed to advanced education,
which frankly, I don't think is is working at the moment to the degree that it should.
That starts back in schools. It doesn't start at 18.
You've got actually got to be getting people into that mentality when they're 10 and 12, not when they're 16 and 18 and it's too late.
So I think Skills is a is a massive debate. And I, I have a personal view, which is that, in fact,
government gets too involved almost in this and industry needs to actually be far more engaged in this in the way that they they are in Germany,
where you get a much more collaborative approach between local governments,
between industry and between the educators as to how best to get the balance between those
who've got a university education and those who've got a technical application or education.
But it's you know, that's a big challenge for investors and people wanting to start up new businesses.
Oh, come. We've got a number of questions coming up.
Now, which I'll I'll come to it in a moment. But.
Looking at the shopping list, we've just talked about that the next question.
Looking at the same old say that the state of the public finances is how much of this is is affordable?
How should we prioritise? Well, I think the interesting thing there, of course, is that so much of this is private sector investment.
Public sector investment in infrastructure is only in one, three, three and a half ways.
I was I would suggest there's there's road and rail, which is the bulk of it at the moment.
It's sort of Circo somewhere between twenty three. Twenty five billion a year goes into public expenditure, into infrastructure.
Most of that is road and rail. A small amount goes into flood management and flood control.
And there is obviously that which goes to support private sector programmes such as digital, essentially apeace.
And and so the government is in fact, I think, announced a total of about two point three billion in one way or another,
either in supporting battery manufacturer in research or in supporting the rollout of the infrastructure.
But two point three billion over the next five years is, you know,
two percent of what's going on, the total budget of government spend on infrastructure.
But the much bigger investment is being made by the private sector, whether it's in energy,
which is massive, as big at least as transport investment, telecoms and water.
All of which are in private sector hands. So their ability to invest is driven by the regulatory regime and the settlements which are reached.
And what's the working cost of capital and all these sort of erudite arguments which go on within that sphere.
But government does have a role to play. And we've argued this in terms of better regulation.
We have argued that, in fact,
government should be more directive and broader in its direction to the regulator because the regulator essentially responds to government direction.
So there is an opportunity for government to to influence that.
But in terms of public expenditure at the moment,
it's one point to bear on point two percent of GDP is what the government roughly says to us is the fiscal remit.
Now, that could potentially be increased by a couple of a couple of points going's going forward.
I think what's interesting is the way we seem to be in a bit of a Keynesian moment at the moment, not just in the UK,
but around the world in responding to to cover it, particularly need to get economies going again.
And so we're seeing bigger. We're seeing more government, not less government.
And you can see in the programmes, whether in Europe or in America or in the UK,
the temptation for government to at the moment take the brakes off and to be willing to put more financial stimulus into economies.
Some part of that will be through through infrastructure.
But of course, inevitably, there will be those who say, well, it's all very well, but sooner or later it's going to have to be paid for.
So you're going to get the money back.
But in the next 12 months, one can see there's probably more pressure on releasing money rather than clawing it back.
Do you think the government and the privatised utilities are getting value for money from the construction sector?
It doesn't have a great reputation for productivity.
The Olympics were delivered on time, on time under your leadership. But Crossrail is is not such a great story.
And perhaps this links to your point around skills as well. All we do, we have a sufficiently skilled up construction sector.
No, we probably don't. But I would argue my arguments, having been a contractor and having been a client and everything in between.
What happens in an industry is driven by client. And the degree to which the client is demanding of its supply chain,
the degree to which a client is demanding of the quality degree to which client sets the standards that it expects to achieve,
is what potentially is going to drive innovation and is going to drive price competition more than anything else.
So I would say the people who can drive a better supply chain from the construction industry at the end of the day,
whether it's in the quality of the product or the materials which are being used.
I mean, I was in a debate a couple of days ago where I mean, we were talking about.
About this. And I said, well, you know, if if you want less embedded carbon in your buildings,
you're not gonna get that simply because somebody sits there thinking what might be a good idea?
If I came up with a project, a product which was less embedded carbon, you're more likely to get it.
If more clients are saying to the designers and the designers, to the contractors and the material suppliers, I require this standard in future.
I require this level of embedded carbon to be, you know, from reduced from X to Y over the next five years.
Now, how do we work together in a collaborative way between client, designer, supplier,
contractor to actually achieve those improved efficiencies and those improved
quality of materials and less carbon in the materials which are being used?
Just sitting back and hoping it's gonna happen? It won't happen. There have to be real incentives and real real challenges.
I mean, I'm a supplier. I'm far more interesting offering more returns to my supplier chain.
In order to get my work under budget and on time than I am,
it's in writing endless contracts which set out all the penalties that I'm going to apply to them if they fail,
because their intellect will then go into making sure that they don't pay those penalties.
Dreaming up all sorts of reasons why it's my fault. Therefore, put the projects like or overrun on the programme.
So I'd much rather be sitting down with them and saying, why do we need to do next to make sure that we still come in under the budget?
That I can afford and we still come in on the time that I require. That's what we did at the Olympics.
But I think there needs to be a lot more of that approach within the industry to get the
improvements that are required rather than the confrontational approach that the UK,
particularly more so than any other country almost has had for the last 200 years.
That reference to materials, low carbon materials now speaks to a couple of the questions we've got here from Harriet Moggridge and Stephanie Burrow.
And we know that steel and cement as some of the tough nut to crack in terms of decarbonising.
I mean, how much of that do you think can be done with its savings on materials substitution,
or to what extent are we just going to have to rely on carbon capture and storage that still works in cement works playing?
Interesting question, Zain. In in recent years, I think the Chinese have put up a something like a 40 storey building in Superfriends.
Demonstrating that timber is a structural material can be used on a building.
That sort of scale. On the other hand, here, as a consequence of Grenfell and fire regulations or fire standards going forward,
we've almost probably got into sharp reverse gear when it comes to using timber as a material in buildings.
So if you want to actually use timber as an alternative to steel and concrete,
then we've got to really get our heads around how we do that in a way which removes that fear of fire in buildings and makes buildings safe.
And you get into a very tricky debate then about what's more important, the building or the person.
Should we actually worry about the building burning down at the end of the day,
or should we worry about the means of escape and egress, the way in which if that ultimate problem doesn't rise?
And in fact, more people have died as a consequence of fires in homes than they have in high rise buildings.
So, you know, there are a lot of tricky issues around that area of substitution.
Steel, of course. Do you produce it from. And you produce it from a steelworks which relies on coal to fire the furnaces or to use electric car.
Do you use to use them recycled materials?
Now, recycled materials at the moment cost more to produce a tonne of steel than it does if you use coal.
And you've got that debate going on at the moment about whether or not we should have a new coal mine in
this country under the under the sea in order to to fire up our steel mills in Stockport and elsewhere.
I mean, these are these are real.
You know, the end of the day, these are almost binary choices which somebody has to make as to which way they want to go.
Do you want to say, well, we'll have another coal mine because then we don't have to import it from somewhere else?
No, the costs of importing the carbon, which is generated by that.
Well, OK. No, we don't want to do that. But if you don't want to do that, then you've got to be prepared to make ORFEUS Steel.
And so you could argue there's a public debate. There's often, I think, in all of these areas of public debate to be had,
which isn't hard as to public understanding of what the choices are, public understanding of.
Do I want to spend a bit more? Do I want to be charged a bit? Or in order to have a, if you like,
a salve my green conscience that in fact we are we are having the right effects or now on our climate change challenges.
I mean, when we were doing the Olympics, we were in discussion again with the cement manufacturers about how they could reduce the carbon,
if you like, the carbon output of their works and in producing their cement.
And that came back to what alternative fuels which could be used in in that regard.
And again, I think you have to set these challenges, Devons,
if you if you get large scale setting challenges where large scale plants acting together are actually willing to set these challenges,
then you'll get the technological innovation which is required to come up with come up with some of these solutions.
There's a question here about water, which we haven't talked about a great deal yet.
The NASA did a study on on the water, the resilience of water supplies.
And the question here is around that national wars have great.
But perhaps you could just surmise, Forest, what what you think needs.
Think needs to be done in terms of the resilience of water supplies?
Well, there are two options kicking around. And what's interesting is, since our report is that there has been an increase, I think,
in cooperation between water companies in terms of work, working together, combining their resources,
combining know sort of accepting risk across two or three water companies rather than across just one to say,
well, you know, if we need to make a significant investment, for example,
in a new reservoir or if we need to look at how we can efficiently move water between us and support
one another in terms of when we've got peaks and peaks of demand and how how best we can come,
can we devise cost efficient pumping systems which move water between one water morseu catchment area and another?
I mean, there is more happening is what I would say.
And I think it's encouraging to see that the water companies are working together more today than they were five years ago.
But that's that's what's required.
I mean, to have a whole national water grid I think is still questionable in terms of can that be done in an efficient way?
It will be. The cost of water is very heavy. Moving water and pumping water around the country is not going to be cheap.
But Opas, I mean, come Skane back to work. Can we reduce demand as opposed to just thinking we've got to meet supply and increase supply all the time?
And how can we get ourselves from using under 30 litres per person a day in our homes,
but down to sort of 80 litres a day with that sort of on the Olympics again?
We we reduce the flow of water in the shallows by 30 percent just by putting a valve in,
which makes sure the athletes got 30 percent less water and they might've thought
they up because behaviourally people don't actually notice that much difference.
And you can actually you can't actually get people used to using a lot less water than they might normally think they need.
So we have to put as much focus, I think, on how do we address how can we address the demand side in our production of paper,
of course, is one of the massive I mean, it's staggering when you see how much water gets used in the production of paper.
So, again, those technological challenges within the manufacturing sector, which need to be to be addressed as much as as much as in the domestic use.
But I think it's it's an area where, you know, I think it's what I'm seeing is is encouraging.
Whether it's fast enough is another question, but at least I think it is starting to move.
And just to have to answer the subquestion on Daniel's question as well.
What about that carbon footprint if I'm pumping water around the country?
Because that depends on where your electricity comes from and where a good way to decarbonising the power network and the attraction of them,
in a sense, if water transfers is you can to some extent, when the renewable electricity is available, you can modify your demand side.
You've also helped the goals. I got the costs of putting the network in, of course.
And if that's going to be in plastic pipes or whatever, then you know what?
What's the carbon footprint of the pipes that's going to be used?
Or can you actually make those movements, as has been suggested, for example, between seven and 10 times?
Can you actually move it between one water course and on the next?
Then you find the next minute you've got a biodiversity debate going on is to
what extent can you mix the water from this watercourse with that water cost?
Now you're going to affect the biodiversity of the with the system,
which is receiving water from somewhere where there's a different sort of geological makeup and so on, that the water is of a different type.
What effect impact does that have on the on on the on the on the on the nature
aspects like the folder in the floor and everything else of the receiving network.
So these are complicated, complicated issues, the periphery bright idea that somebody will turn around and say, well, that might be a bright idea.
But what about this consequence? What about that consequence? Now, there are a couple of questions around electric vehicle charging, both from,
I suppose, the point of view that and maybe in a town like Oxford with crowded streets.
We just struggle to see how exactly that's going to work. And there's a coordination problem here.
Is this best done in a devolved way or to what extent does there need to be national
leadership and indeed national standards to just sort out some of these really tricky,
very local issues? No, no. I was in a conversation before this one, actually one two conversations ago today where we were talking about standards,
not only the standards of the product, but also the standards.
And should there be almost a licence, the skills licence in terms of the people installing these systems and so on?
I mean, this was by somebody who who's actually go to Tesla. And so he was talking about his experience of having that vehicle and the charging.
I mean, yes, I think local planning has a lot to do with this local planning concept, local planning demand again.
So, you know. No, no, Mr. Waitrose, you can't have a new safe new sort of supermarket and a car park unless you are going to pay for the
installation of 20 percent of the car parking spaces or maybe 40 percent of the car parking spaces,
providing a charging opportunity for Evey's. To what extent local authorities are willing.
I mean, so look, many local authorities in London now,
the boroughs are actually you see more and more lampposts with charge points in them in London at the moment.
So I think local local government has a big role to play in the provision of charge points.
When I talk to the people on the charging side of this,
it's quite interesting because they will point out that not all cars are capable of taking superfast charge.
The cheaper cars don't have the battery technology in them to actually take a challenge in 15 minutes before they charge.
They actually rely more on a slower charging mechanism. Easy to deal with in terms of new housing.
But again, it requires legislation to say that every new home will have a charge point.
If it's got a garaged attached to that home in future.
But the normal number of people, of course, have vehicles where they're not parked in the garage.
They're parked on the streets one on one for a start. And I've not yet.
So if that conundrum listed what I might do if I had an electric road in the petrol car, I switch from diesel to petrol.
The next change is clearly going to be from petrol to electric. And how do I deal with that?
So I think this and it seems crazy not to have a single standard.
But then we've not succeeded in that with our electric with our mobile phones, have we?
And it's even worse with the mobile phone, because even if you buy it from the same supplier each time you buy one,
the charge cable from the old one doesn't fit the new one. So you cope for another 20 quid for a new cable.
So whether or not legislation and the introduction of standards will potentially what I think would be a good thing in in that regard.
But then it's not just, you know, it's not local.
I mean, you could argue that's international, because when you take your electric car off across Europe,
you generally want to see a single charging type of opportunity,
single type of cable connexion, whether you're in Italy or whether you're in Germany or whether you're in Poland.
So there are some big international questions around around that.
But at the end of the day, we're not people are going to be reluctant to buy these vehicles unless they can see that
these sort of opportunities for charging their vehicles without hassle are available.
When I listen to somebody on the radio the other day said that she'd driven from
the UK back and it only cost 19 pounds and electricity for her car using the app,
which told her where all the charge points still are at the moment, where there is no charge.
So at the moment, you have got energy companies making energy available for your TV at no charge.
Now, the energy companies themselves say we're only doing this as an introduction.
Most we've got your hopes there will obviously start. We'll start charging you.
But again, we're going to be looking for competition, of course, in terms of that charge.
But electric vehicles are going to be setting aside whether the petrol cost on the electricity cost become the same at the end of the day.
The it's got to be a very complex world, I think, or very simple world.
So will the manufacturer of cars only take place where there is a battery factory next door?
Or are we going to be shipping batteries halfway around the world as we do at the moment?
Or do we actually need to make sure that this is a single facility which makes the car the battery is going to be the most important part of the car.
It's where the value will be. The shell will become cheaper and cheaper.
And the and in a sense, do you even own the vehicle in the future or do you just simply rent the vehicle?
Because what you're really doing is renting the battery. And so does the whole concept of vehicle ownership change as we change to electric vehicles?
The garages will go out of business to a certain extent because there'll be no maintenance or very limited maintenance
compared with what there is today on a conventional internal combustion vehicle with gearboxes and complicated engines.
You know, the electric car is much, much simpler, much fewer things to go wrong.
Fewer things to change. So it changes the whole dynamic of ownership, potentially.
But fascinating, fascinating area. And I I suppose at the end of the day, one can't help but believe this will be like the mobile phone technology.
All of a sudden there will be a tipping point at which this will just become will become the norm.
John, we're almost out of time. But I wanted to end before we finish.
Ask you about the National Infrastructure Commission itself.
I know you were instrumental in making the case for the NASA to come into existence.
It's been around for about five years now.
You've had a first national infrastructure assessment, a belated government national infrastructure strategy.
You argued for it with a view to taking a longer term perspective.
depoliticising as far as is possible infrastructure decision making.
To what extent do you think the National Infrastructure Commission has is achieve those goals you originally had?
And what more really needs to be done?
Yeah, I think again, at this conversation this morning where I said that I thought what was interesting about the politicalization,
because the model that we have is not the model I suggested.
And the model I suggested actually was one where there was more cross-party debate within parliament
leading to national policy statements and then therefore getting that greater sort of cross-party cohesion.
The model we have doesn't do that. I mean, the decisions are made by the government of the day.
Having said that, whenever I talk to opposition spokesman in infrastructure,
there really isn't that much argument about that, about the sense of direction as it is more about money.
Maybe the money made available. To what extent does government get involved?
But but in terms of what we should be doing, there isn't a great debate.
And I think that's partly because another debate has overtaken the other debate, which has overtaken, of course, is the zero carbon debate.
So I think what we've now got is where there is cross-party support and cross-party recognition.
Public support is that at the end of the day. Zero carbon climate change has created a level of agreement which is enabling
the infrastructure to then become the enabler itself of achieving that goal,
of achieving that zero carbon. So then it's back to what are the technologies and what are the choices of
technologies and how do we actually get ourselves into that zero carbon space,
which I think has enabled some of the some of which have been potentially
arguments in the past to come away from the infrastructure debates themselves.
I think the bigger infrastructure debate will continue to be around resilience.
And how do you actually ensure that you get that investment for the future, which lays a cost on today's taxpayer or today's consumer?
And so that whole regulatory debate. And how do we know?
To my mind,
it does require an even greater opening up of the debate and the discussion with the public and a more honest debate with the public about,
well, are we going to sort of try to get along simply by focussing on the lowest charge for the next three years?
Or are we willing to talk about what the cost of some of these choices are for the next 30 years, not just the next three years?
But I think we're in a reasonably feel we've got off to a reasonable start.
And I think the concept of the National Infrastructure Commission seems to be reasonably well accepted and established.
Might be my famous last words. But but overall, I think government and politicians recognise that there is some benefit,
particularly in having somebody else other than themselves who is prepared to ask or put forward
some sort of challenging solutions which they don't necessarily want to put forward themselves.
But, you know, the role of theodicy, in effect, is to be the the dark lady in the room,
if you like, who ask the question that nobody else wants to ask or opposes the solution.
Other people don't really want to grapple with that in mind, the consequences.
And I think there's a role for us in being that sort of spur for for new ideas and for pushing for new solutions.
Well, John, thank you so much for coming to talk in the Oxford Martin School this evening.
It's been a incredibly wide ranging conversation which has taken us from some of
the biggest challenges which we face as a as a society and indeed of the planet.
I'm down to some really pretty techie local details.
So very impressive. Thank you very much indeed for that.
And just one final reminder to our audience that the next talk in our series is Professor Sady Crease.
[INAUDIBLE] be talking about emerging technologies and systemic risks.
So I hope that you'll be able to join us for that. And thank you again to Sir John, to our audience.
And I wish you all a very good evening. Thank you very much. Thank you to the audience.