In this follow-up to our last episode on navigating EHS through disruption, Host Angelique Dickson sits down with Alex Ferguson, CEO of Antea Group UK, to discuss Europe in greater depth.
In this follow-up to our last episode on navigating EHS through disruption, Host Angelique Dickson sits down with Alex Ferguson, CEO of Antea Group UK, to discuss Europe in greater depth. The discussion covers the significant changes driven by geopolitics and how governments and private sectors are responding to these changes, plus the evolving regulatory landscape.
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Guest Quotes
“ The energy transition in Europe is being accelerated by a need for energy security that 's underlying thing. That energy security comes in two ways. It’s security of supply of energy in terms of raw material to produce energy, but it's also security in terms of the impacts of bad actors.” - Alex
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Time Stamps
(00:11) Geopolitics and EHS: A European perspective
(01:05) Security concerns in energy transition
(01:55) Geopolitical impacts on energy supply
(04:13) Private sector innovations
(05:34) Regulatory challenges and adaptations
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Sponsor copy
Rethinking EHS is brought to you by the Inogen Alliance. Inogen Alliance is a global network of 70+ companies providing environment, health, safety and sustainability services working together to provide one point of contact to guide multinational organizations to meet their global commitments locally. Visit http://www.inogenalliance.com/ to learn more.
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Links
Angie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angeliquedickson/
Alex on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-ferguson-1a40b511/
[00:00:00] Welcome to our mini podcast with Rethinking EHS. I'm Angelique Dickson. I'm president of the Inogen Alliance. And with me today is Alex Ferguson, who's the CEO Antea Group UK. In the first uh, episode of our podcast, we started talking about energy transition and obviously it's a very big topic, so we decided to expand a little bit.
Alex, I understand you've been doing some research. You actually tapped into our peers, uh, across Europe. I did. I didn't just wing it. I've really actually spoken to real people across Europe, so it's a good start. Right. It's always good to tap into our colleagues around, uh, around the region. Right. And, okay, so I'm assuming we've got evolving trends.
We've got a changing landscape, and all of this is impacting energy transition and our usage. What are some highlights? The key thing here is this is very Europe focused, right? That was the brief, but it's obviously a very different trend in Eastern Europe as it is to western Europe. Benefits of this I am regarding the UK as part [00:01:00] of Europe.
We're talking geographically, not politically at all, that side of things before other people do the jokes. The energy transition in Europe is being accelerated by a need for energy security. That's the underlying thing. Then that energy security comes in two ways. It's curative supply of energy in terms of raw materials, ability to produce energy, et cetera, but it's also security in terms of the impact of bad actors would be the right way to put it.
By which I mean we have seen damage to cabling, damage to pipelines. We've also seen potential digital attacks, and we're not quite, you know, how these things all tied together are a big issue, but there's probably those two factors for security are the overarching things. So I'm assuming that's been a significant change in the last few years for the changing geopolitical situation.
I mean, that is a direct result of that. Is that fair to say? The war in Ukraine has, has, has driven those concerns into a reality in some [00:02:00] places and absolutely that physical source of energy, which won't Russia is, is on. So there's had to be away from that.
Cage in the trading relationship with the us, which was where we were, we were looking back to West for supply, um, LPG and other things. And now there's much more focus on Europe looking after itself and being able to generate and store its own power as well as transmit it and deal with all the changes that happened seasonally and, and all the other conditions that, that, that we're dealing with.
Okay. So, so obviously it was a forced change. So I'm curious then, are the individual countries responding with their own plans around transition, or is it more of a European wide strategy to look at that security piece? A bit of both. We're definitely seeing a lot of interactions. Um, uh, our colleagues in Germany, were talking about the [00:03:00] various pipelines and cable leaks that they've got.
I, I, I can't possibly remember the entire list for, they are backwards and forwards to Scandinavia and, um, the, uh, Latvia and Estonia and there's cables, um, pipelines are going different directions. There. We're talking about, um. Cabling view from the from France to Spain to Portugal, which is what had the recent outage.
And that's probably focused minds on how that works. There's a lot of energy sharing, but there's also a real focus on being able to generate your own energy and to store your own energy as well. And I think that's leading to. Some innovations we haven't forgotten about climate change and climate mitigation and carbon either.
You know, it's still there. We've still got a lot of regulation and a lot of regulation force and commitments to net zero again, have not been forgotten. You know, they are there, they're still enshrined in law in many places, and they're also enshrined in the principles of the people within the businesses operating in those regions.
[00:04:00] So we, we are seeing the, the old drivers haven't gone away. There's probably, the new drivers are focusing, mines a little. Interesting. Okay. So that's what the governments are doing based on demand, what they need to just keep their countries going. I'm curious about the private sector, right? So we do a lot of our work with private companies.
What kinda impact are you seeing? I mean, I think about, you know, data centers, huge trend and expansion of data centers. Uh, obviously very huge energy users, especially with ai. How is that affecting business in Europe and either the changes or no changes? I guess it's driving innovation for sure. Yeah.
There's more talk about small modular nuclear reactors than there's ever been. Whether that becomes an immediate reality, probably not, but it's, it's a real focus. You know, the, the main use of those prior to now has been to power submarines. Now we're looking at routes to how we use them to power data center parks.
And so that's starting, that's a mainstream discussion now and I didn't think I'd see that in my working [00:05:00] career. You know, it's really moved that sort of conversation forward as an example, different routes to storage of, of, um. Using green energy to create hydrogen to be stored, to be used at times when you can't get as much green energy.
Setting up wind farms, solar farms that are in locations where you can leave it by cable. All of those things are driven by the private sector demand. It's not, it's not government really that's driving it, not least of much of the much of the European landscape, private sector businesses. Our energy companies.
Interesting. So I'm curious, and this is my last question in our, in our mini podcast here, are the regulations keeping up with this? Like are there new regulations? Especially, I'm thinking about that energy independence or diversification. I know the climate, you just said that our private sector is driving a lot of the, but what about regulations?
Yeah, it's probably, it's probably tax in two directions. We we're maintaining in Europe, some pretty full on carbon legislation and [00:06:00] energy conservation and other ra, a whole range of regulations about clean energy and that's expensive. Some clients are making the decision to leave Europe. You know, they're moving their, we're talking about the high energy businesses, the pharmaceuticals, the concrete manufacturers.
We're seeing some of those, some of those businesses lead, lead Europe, and they're making decisions not to expand their plants or to disinvest them, which is leading to EHS work, because when you do that, you've gotta deal with the permitting and you've gotta deal with the environmental legacy of your usage.
So we're seeing that decision on, we're. Some pausing of, uh, of, of regulation that has its own implications. Some ways that's taking, uh, ridiculed pressure off of people that wanna develop energy networks. Otherwise it's leading to a little bit of indecision and they are not allowing people to move forward because the legislation changes aren't keeping up.
With the need to move into pivot. So that's a challenge, and [00:07:00] that's in many countries. And then in other places, such as Germany as an obvious example, they've got a new government. And then the response from, you know, this, you know, the, the podcast is meant to be relatively timeless, but for the purposes of this, um, they don't quite know what the implications are yet because the new law's only been in close to nine days and they haven't quite digested it yet.
But that, by that I mean, it's. The regulation's moving and it's pivoting and it's changing and it, and prime sector businesses are good at dealing with that. They're working around it, they're interacting with each other. We are learning from each other, and they're coming to consultants for advice about how to do it.
So it's an interesting world right now. It's not all bad. It's not all good. Alex, thank you. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Your insights are, are really valuable and very, very interesting, so thank you very much. Thank you. As ever. They are really mine. I'm just relying on really clever people from other countries to tell me stuff, but that's sort of what we do, right?
Clever people is always good to have in your toolbox. For sure. Yeah, [00:08:00] absolutely. Thank you, Angie. With that, we'll wrap up this, uh, mini podcast. Please feel free to check out our website@inalliance.com for more information on energy transition and lots of other interesting topics. Thanks so much. I.