Episode 22: Engineers and the fight against climate change

On this episode of Engineering the Future, host Jerome James, P.Eng., speaks with Geoff Sheffrin, P.Eng., and why he believes engineers should be more invested in the fight against climate change. 

Transcript

[Start of recorded material 00:00:00]

Interviewer:      This episode of Engineering the Future is brought to you by the Personal, OSPE's Home and Auto Insurance partner. These past few months have shown us just how important it is to have someone in your corner. When it comes to home and auto insurance, The Personal can be that someone. If you would like to learn more about this exclusive program visit thepersonal.com/ospe.

Female:             This podcast is brought to you by OSPE, The Ontario [00:00:30] Society of Professional Engineers. The advocacy body for professional engineers and the engineering community in Ontario. 

Interviewer:      Welcome to Engineering the Future, a podcast presented by The Ontario Society of Professional Engineers. I am your host, Jerome James. Today I'm joined by Jeff Sheffrin, a professional engineer and a climate change activist. Jeff is actively advocating for engineers to [00:01:00] invest their time in fighting climate change and the climate crisis, and believes engineers should be a bigger part of this conversation. Welcome.

Jeff:                   Delighted to meet with you and delighted to have this opportunity to make another contribution on climate activism to the OSPE program. 

Interviewer:      Thank you so much. Let's dive right into it. Jeff, can you start by telling us a little bit more about yourself and your engineering career? 

Jeff:                   Love to do that. I graduated many years ago over in England [00:01:30] from a technological college which is now part of London University and I have two B. Sc. Engineering degrees. One in manufacturing engineering and the other one in mechanical engineering. I stayed on for a post-graduate year in human resources or human sciences, because I was very interested in that field. And for my career I first joined a large American company in the ceramics industry over in England. I [00:02:00] started as an industrial engineer, got fairly quickly promoted to becoming the maintenance superintendent. And after a few years I then was headhunted by the Great Mother, Unilever, the international food conglomerate and I joined them. And as the time unfolded I became somewhat of a specialist in a process food process which didn't exist in North America. So I was dispatched over to Canada to recreate a processing [00:02:30] plant to allow this product to be manufactured for sales and distribution. 

                          As that evolved I had several other responsibilities over the years in my career with Unilever, but then I joined a pharmaceutical company, a large privately held Canadian pharmaceutical company and continued my career there. And at the end of that I was also the president of one of the pharmaceutical's operating companies. So quite a diverse experience and in that career I've done just about [00:03:00] everything from a senior management perspective. I've been in charge of HR, sales, marketing, operations, logistics, I've even run the IT department. 

Interviewer:      Oh wow, so you're a business guru? 

Jeff:                   Well, I wouldn't say a business guru but I've had a lot of [dabbling? 00:03:13] experiences which have given me a lot of fun. 

Interviewer:      Nice. 

Jeff:                   So then – sorry I was just going to continue for a moment. Then at the end of that I finished up – one of my engineering heads from the Unilever days had opened up an engineering consulting practice [00:03:30] and I had joined him, then, as a partner. And we've been at that – he's been at it for over two decades and I've joined him about a decade and a half ago. And we do engineering project management in foods, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, those are our fields. 

Interviewer:      Nice. 

Jeff:                   I also do management consulting and strategic management consulting and that's been going on now for almost two decades. So that's an extensive nutshell of my career. 

Interviewer:      You're an expert in your field is what you're saying. [00:04:00] 

Jeff:                   Well, I've been around a bit, let's put it that way. 

Interviewer:      Nice. Let's pivot to the topic at hand, climate change and the climate crisis. This topic is becoming a bigger talking point throughout the world the last couple of years. People are becoming more alarmed every month it seems. 

Jeff:                   Yes. 

Interviewer:      When did this gain interest to [00:04:30] you and that conversation become more of the primary focus in your advocacy? 

Jeff:                   Well, I have to say the interest probably started from my strategic management thinking and activities and I would say I started this maybe close to two decades ago. But it wasn't the same profile then, right? It was in the background, it was climate, it was global warming, it didn't have the same impetus that it has today. I chose [00:05:00] this as a primary focus because it's become a crisis. It is rapidly becoming an emergency and it's going to become a disaster. So in the last three or four years I've stepped up my advocacy and when I had the opportunity with OSPE I've now ramped that up even further. And we'll talk about that in a second. 

Interviewer:      Nice. Can you kind of point to hints or where that [00:05:30] has been prevalent or evident that things are coming to a head and that we have to be more vigilant and act now to change things? 

Jeff:                   Well, really I think it's the emergence of more and more global disasters with more and more severity. Whether it's atmospheric river, heat domes, unprecedented flooding in parts of Europe which we haven't had before, it's just a host of things [00:06:00] which are happening on a larger scale and more frequently. 

Interviewer:      Yeah, it's definitely headline grabbing for sure, and especially the stuff that's coming out of the International Institute of Climate Change. 

Jeff:                   Yes. 

Interviewer:      Their reports are frightening and the timelines keep shrinking. 

Jeff:                   Yes, yeah. 

Interviewer:      Yes, please.

Jeff:                   Well, let me [00:06:30] talk a little bit about how I got started in this new higher level of advocacy. It actually started last fall when OSPE asked for some input on a couple of ENGtalks. So I threw my hat in the ring for two things, one on strategy, and one on corporate culture. And the reason for strategy is because I do that for a living, and corporate culture that's a hobby of mine. I've written a book on the subject. So you know, I got two ENGtalks on the OSPE website about [00:07:00] these issues.

Interviewer:      Right. 

Jeff:                   That process got me thinking about, well, I need to think about how can we engage the engineers more dynamically, more forcefully, more in the role of what they can do best to help the world. So they got me thinking about that – sorry, do you want – 

Interviewer:      Yeah, I was just going to say, did you – in your practice or conversations, do you find that there are types [00:07:30] of engineers or areas of engineering that lend itself better to responding to the climate crisis than others? 

Jeff:                   The answer to that, I think, is a bit of yes and no. First of all [having? 00:07:41] gone through all of the engineering professions and before this podcast I had a quick look through them, and I would say there is no professional engineering discipline which does not in some way have an opportunity to benefit the climate crisis. Right? Are there some more than others [00:08:00]? Yeah, you could say that. Certainly if you're an environmental engineer you're right in the thick of it. You know, but if you're an electrical engineer or an IT specialist or mechanical, all of us had an opportunity to controlling the climate crisis as it emerges on us – or as it emerges upon us. 

Interviewer:      And how do you think our mentalities have changed? should that be like a governing focus to engineers? Do they hold [00:08:30] a lot of the opportunity to change within their practice? Or should they be raising the alarm up the food ladder to management? Like, how can they make a difference in their everyday work environment? 

Jeff:                   Well, let me start off in a slightly different way on that one. I was thinking about engaging the engineers because [unintelligible 00:08:57] within engineering we may have some [00:09:00] deniers and we may have some compromised people that work for the fossil fuels industry and therefore it's not always easy being a professional engineer. But I think every one of us as a professional engineer has the opportunity to either advocate or do ourselves, or push things up the ladder. And also to make sure that as we do our engineering we've actually given a thought to the energy conservation piece of it. We don't just engineer something new. 

                          If I think about it in the big [00:09:30] picture, within the world today, everything we have in society somehow, somewhere has had the hand of an engineer in it. If it doesn't come from Mother Nature, somehow it's been engaged. So we're into everything. And the reason I've chosen the [competitively? 00:09:46] OSPE part is because OSPE is the advocacy arm that gets through to the governments and the decision makers. Now OSPE has approaching 20,000 members, so I've started writing some blogs in [00:10:00] order to get this process via this podcast and the blogs just trying to raise the profile and get engineers to think even more forcefully about the climate change. If I can get OSPE engaged there's over 80,000 professional engineers in Ontario. There's over 160,000 in Canada. If I look at North America there's a quarter of a million of us. 

                          Now I'm being way out to lunch here and being optimistic in saying, yeah, I'll reach them all. We won't. But it doesn't matter. The [00:10:30] point is we are here and we have the opportunity to make the difference because we have created so much of this world in terms of its infrastructure, we are well equipped to help move this crisis into a control position. 

Female:             We hope you're enjoying this episode so far. At OSPE we're here for you makings you're government, media and the public are listening to the voice of engineers. You can learn more at OSPE.on.ca. [00:11:00] 

Interviewer:      Yeah, and it's interesting that you've brought popup the scope of OSPE's potential influence because OSPE is in the beginning of changing their focus and being more focused in its advocacy efforts within the climate change space. 

Jeff:                   Yes. 

Interviewer:      What do you think are the next steps in gaining more engineering action regarding climate change? 

Jeff:                   Let me put that in the context of [00:11:30] the blogs I'm writing. The first one's been posted, the second one's supposed to have been posted this past few weeks. I've got the third, fourth and fifth blog already written. But let me just talk about them for a minute. These blogs aren't overly long, they're very high level, and they look individually at each of the green initiatives that we have at our disposal in the world to make green happen and get off fossil fuels. To keep it simple we have hydro, we have wind, we have solar energy, we have nuclear [00:12:00] whether it's regular or SMRs, and we have fusion processes. Right at the moment the globe has about 46 percent of its energy comes from these renewables. But the ratio of non-renewables, the fossils, is the other 60-odd percent, but when you look at how we use energy, in the world – this is from data that I've gathered, the data has changed a bit with the pandemic – but the globe uses, at the moment, 135,000 [00:12:30] terawatt hours of fossil energy. That is 135 times 10 to the power of 15 watts hours of energy. 

                          The offset is, electrically we only have 27,000 terawatt hours installed. That's a 5 to 1 ratio. If we want to go green, and get off fossils, we'll never get off fossils, because we need plastics, we need chemicals out of the fossil fuels. [00:13:00] There's various things that fossils will not go away from. But the vast proportion can. 

Interviewer:      Right we shouldn't – if we're – if those items will always need fossil fuels – 

Jeff:                   Yes, 

Interviewer:      - why should we waste our fossil fuels on just burning it for energy? For – 

Jeff:                   Because we don't have enough green, Jerome. The issue is if I look at 27,000 terawatt hours and the ratio, the IEA, the International Energy Agency has said, we need to install global electrical [00:13:30] capability by a magnitude of two and a half times. I disagree with them. I think it's three and a half times, or four times. It doesn't matter. It's one whole hell of a lot more than we've got. We need it now, right? And if I go back to things like nuclear there are people who say, uh-uh, no-no, even Germany which canned nuclear because of the Ukraine crisis is now saying, I think we might want to recommission our nukes. They're right. [00:14:00] 

                          It's important thing about nukes, and let me just detour on this for a SEC. 

Interviewer:      For sure. 

Jeff:                   Nuclear has a horrible reputation from a safety viewpoint. But the fact is if you dig into it, coal, as a fossil fuel energy provider creates 350 deaths per unit versus 1 death per unit from nuclear – 350 times. 

Interviewer:      That's a startling statistic. 

Jeff:                   And that number, that ratio of 350 [00:14:30] includes the discharges from Chernobyl, from Three Mile Island and also from Fukushima. So yeah, people get uptight about it and they get uptight about yeah, we've got to bury nuclear fuel. That's a problem. But then SMRs are coming on the horizon quick and fast. OPG here in Ontario is working on SMRs. We need small modular reactors. They can be built in a factory. They can be made a whole lot [00:15:00] easier from a safety perspective. We can transport them. 

Interviewer:      Yeah, that was going to be my next question. If you have identified certain technologies that you think are on the cusp of being shove-ready that – or we have – do we have the technology currently to tackle all of or energy needs?

Jeff:                   We do. 

Interviewer:      Is it a political will – 

Jeff:                   Yeah. 

Interviewer:      - is it a comfort thing? 

Jeff:                   You just got it. It's a political. 

Interviewer:      Yeah, fill me in, fill me in. [00:15:30] 

Jeff:                   Let me just get one step further on this. Because one of the others which we haven't yet mastered is fusion. Fusion technology is the energy technology of what the sun does. So [cross talking 00:15:41] 

Interviewer:      It's been in the news recently, right? 

Jeff:                   Well let me tell you what's been in the news. We've been working on fusion for about 70 years. Over the last decade or two we've been able to create milliseconds of fusion process. The big breakthrough that I think you're referring to is about two months ago, a [00:16:00] large laboratory in England created the fusion process and sustained it for five seconds. Five seconds sounds ridiculously small, but you're dealing with 800 billion degrees of temperature – 800 billion degrees of temperature. That will melt everything we possibly know. They have found through the tokamak process a way of containing that and they ran it for five seconds. We are decades away from fusion, but that's the Holy Grail. 

Interviewer:      Right. Right. How [00:16:30] do you think that current – the crisis in Ukraine is going to promote or hinder our efforts within the climate crisis with the sky-rocketing of oil prices hitting 1.50, fuel get to be hitting $2 a litre. What's that dynamic? How's that going to play into the [00:17:00] conversation? 

Jeff:                   It's – I think – it's horrible to say, the problems in Ukraine are actually going to help greening because all of a sudden around the world we realize that there are four or five geopolitical sources of fossil fuels and Russia is wringing our necks on this one. If we go electric we suddenly become independent. Because other than a bit of across border skirmish between two countries, nobody can hold electric power hostage over others. [00:17:30] 

Interviewer:      Right. 

Jeff:                   The other thing, to go back too nuclear. I don't know if you know, but currently there's – depending which report you look at – there are 437 active nuclear power plants across the world. Another report says there's 444. Doesn't matter. It's well over 400. They're active now. There are 150 being planned, and there are over 50 currently in construction. We can't get away from nuclear because wind and solar and tidal [00:18:00] isn't going to give us enough. The current biggest green energy we've got is hydroelectric the second biggest green energy we've got in the world is nuclear power. Those two amount to over 25 percent, almost 30 percent of the world's energy in renewables. 

Interviewer:      We can't get away from that baseload at the current state. 

Jeff:                   No. So to me we need more of those. To build a hydroelectric dam or to build a nuclear power station, these are expensive and [00:18:30] time consuming. But SMRs and more solar panels, more wind, etcetera, all of these things are very doable. And we need to get on with it. And getting back to the Ukraine crisis, more and more of our global leadership is saying, we've got to be electric. We've got to get off fossils so the momentum has built and the Ukraine crisis, as bad as everything is to do with that, that's one of the very few silver [00:19:00] linings that I see. 

Interviewer:      I feel like you heard it here first that connecting the atrocities that are happening overseas to the climate crisis. Any last thoughts – how – 

Jeff:                   Let me talk about another little piece of it which is one of my pet hobby horses. 

Interviewer:      Sure. 

Jeff:                   We've had COP 26. And Greta Thunberg says blah, blah, blah yeah. COP 26 gave us a few more things. Nothing [00:19:30] came out of COP 26 that actually has teeth in it, but we did make a little bit or progress. But let me put it this way around. How [unintelligible 00:19:36] 2030, 2040, 2050, even 2060, Mother Nature doesn't care. Mother Nature doesn't have a calendar. Mother Nature's not looking at her clock saying, 2030, yeah, I can wait. That's not happening. The arctic icecap is melting. The good news, the only bit of good news, as it melts it's not [00:20:00] raising ocean levels because it's an icecap sitting on water. The bad news is, as we melt centuries-old ice we're releasing trapped methane that's been there for centuries. It's making our situation worse. 

                          The other part of it is Greenland and the Antarctic, the ice is on land. When that melts, oceans are going to rise. So we had another problem coming up there. And the problem that we have is, that [00:20:30] while Mother Nature doesn't care, my prediction is before 2030 the current wind storms, atmospheric river, floods, heat dome, wildfires, they will escalate. And they will start escalating exponentially. And I think by 2030 our crisis will have become an emergency and maybe bordering on a global disaster. That's my prediction. 

Interviewer:      Does it take a global disaster for the world to react? [00:21:00] 

Jeff:                   Let me come onto that one because you just raised another point for me. The issue here is very simple. If you go back over the last hundred years, there have been two occasions when the globe has marshaled its resources collectively. One of them is for WW II. The other one is for the pandemic. For the pandemic I've got different numbers on this because it depends what I read, but we spent 12, 24, 30 trillion dollars fighting the pandemic [00:21:30]. Why? Because the global leadership decided every country needs to print the money and make this happen. The good news in that is, the ratio of our global debt to GDP is just maintaining the balance so we have GDP generated that in theory we can pay down the debt. 

Interviewer:      Right. 

Jeff:                   So, can we make global climate crisis a controllable event? We need $40 trillion. Add for to the 240 trillion [00:22:00] that are already the global debt, yeah that's a big number. But heck, if the climate crisis is biting our backsides, we'd better do something. And our political leadership is great at COP 25 and then they're back home doing what they usually do, blah, blah, blah. You know, it's not happening. It's not happening fast enough. 

Interviewer:      Is there any good news? 

Jeff:                   Yeah. We know what to do. And we're the [00:22:30] engineers and we can make it happen. We need to get on with it. 

Interviewer:      Absolutely. 

Jeff:                   Sorry, Jerome. 

Interviewer:      What could – 

Jeff:                   I'm on my hobby horse. 

Interviewer:      What could your average citizen do to help the situation? 

Jeff:                   Be aware and think about what you're doing. You know, don't go down to the grocery store and then three hours later go down to the drugstore. You know, think about what you're doing. Think about where you're driving, think about what you're driving. We need electrical infrastructure to go to more EVs. We need enough lithium mining going [00:23:00] to get EV batteries made. That's going to be a challenge. We don't have the electrical infrastructure to support horrendously widespread use of EVs. We've got to go there. Every individual can do little things. Recycle. Don't abuse things. Turn your thermostat down a degree. All of these things look trivial, but every little bit of trivial thing, every little trivial thing helps. There's 7.8 billion people on the planet. If everyone can do a little bit we [00:23:30] make progress. But we really need big initiatives. 

Interviewer:      Thank you so much, Jeff, for raising the alarm and the awareness today. I feel like we've touched on a lot of great topics – 

Jeff:                   [Cross talking 00:23:43] that. 

Interviewer:      - that will help getting the juices flowing to our listeners and hopefully more people actively searching for solutions to the climate crisis. 

Interviewer:      I love it Jerome, I'm delighted to have been here. Thank you so much for being a generous host and helping [00:24:00] me rant and rave about what we need to do. 

Interviewer:      My pleasure. Jeff Sheffrin is a professional engineering who is advocating for more action to fight the climate crisis. He has written pieces for OSPE's blog society notes and has hosted an ENGtalk both of which can be found on OSPE's website. 

                          I am your host, Jerome James. You have been listening to Engineering the Future. Thanks for listening. [00:24:30]. 

Female:             From all of us at OSPE, the The Ontario Society of Professional Engineers, thanks for listening. Please be sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. 

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