‘The voice of engineering’ to be heard in policy debates

Presenting in the day’s first session as part of a webinar staged by IHEEM on 14 April in conjunction with HEFMA and the Carbon & Energy Fund (CEF), at which the three organisations launched their A Healthcare Engineering Roadmap for Delivering Net Zero Carbon document (see also pages 27-30), Dr Nick Starkey, Director of Policy at the Royal Academy of Engineering ( the ‘Academy’), discussed some of the ways that the engineering community, across its many disciplines, is looking to play its part in the UK’s drive to meet demanding Net Zero Carbon targets. He also highlighted areas where the Academy feels efforts will need to be considerably ‘stepped and scaled up’ to reach the required goals. HEJ editor, Jonathan Baillie, reports.

Dr Starkey’s webinar presentation followed an opening address by Dame Sue Ion, a Fellow of both the Royal Academy of Engineering and The Royal Society (see pages 19-24), and formed the second ‘half’ of a session titled ‘Decarbonising the NHS in the Context of National Policy’. Dame Sue had looked at the substantial challenges the UK faces in meeting demanding Net Zero carbon emission targets over the next two decades and beyond.

Thanking her for presentation, IHEEM CEO, Pete Sellars, said she had given a ‘fantastic start’ to the webinar, leaving attendees in no doubt as to the size of the challenge across all industries. He said: “This challenge will impact on everyone. We in the NHS and the wider healthcare sector have a huge part to play, and I am delighted that IHEEM is now supporting the work of the Royal Academy of Engineering looking at what the Academy can do from a policy context.” It was thus, he said, ‘his great pleasure’ to hand over to Dr Nick Starkey. He said by way of introduction: “Nick joined the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2018 from the Department of Business, Energy and Industry, where he was a Deputy Director in the Science and Research Directorate, and is now the Policy Lead at the Academy.”