Welcome to 100 Climate Conversations. Thank you so much for joining us here today. I’d like to start by acknowledging the Traditional Custodians of the ancestral homelands on which we meet today, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We respect their Elders past and present and recognise their continuous connection to Country, never ceded. Today is number 97 of 100 conversations. The series presents 100 visionary Australians that are taking positive action to respond to the most critical issue of our time: climate change. We’re recording live today in the Boiler House of the Powerhouse museum. Before it was home to the museum, this was the Ultimo Power Station. It was built in 1899. It supplied coal-powered electricity to Sydney’s tram system right through into the 1960s. In the context of this architectural artefact, it’s, I think, perfect and fitting we’re shifting our focus towards a net zero future. My name’s Nate Byrne. I am your friendly morning ABC weather presenter on ABC’s News Breakfast. Jake Whitehead is a transport engineer and head of policy at the Electric Vehicle Council. His research includes understanding the potential of using electric vehicles as batteries on wheels, and transition policy for the electrification of public transport. Jake’s also a lead author on transport to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and a member of the University of California’s International Electric Vehicle Policy Council. I am personally very thrilled to have him here with us today, so please join me in welcoming Jake … You’re the kind of scientist that I really like. And I know engineers don’t always like to call themselves scientists first, but essentially you’re the kind of scientist that’s solving problems – not just figuring out what’s going on, but figuring out how to fix it, right? When did you blend that with your interest in climate?

So, I think from a young age I was always interested in our impact on the environment. As I went through university and understanding, particularly in terms of our impact on climate change, [as it] became, you know, more public, I wanted to make a contribution – some small contribution, but a contribution to being able to support a future where that impact would be less, and that, you know, future generations could live more sustainably. So, I started in this civil engineering space, which is very kind of, you know, steel and concrete and building roads. And I was fortunate in my third year of my degree to do an exchange program over in Sweden. Spent a whole year there. And it opened my eyes up to how there are different ways that we can run our society and, importantly, do things more sustainably. And particularly, I was interested in transport. This notion that every single one of us has to make a choice, effectively. Every day we get up with how to get from A to B. And that ability to work in a space where I might be able to influence that decision, and hopefully influence it in a way that more sustainable decisions about transport and maybe even more broadly in life could come about, was what drove me to really start focusing in on that area.

Everybody’s got to make that choice every day: how you’re going to get from wherever you are, wherever you start, to where you’ve got to get to next. It is a tricky decision and there are a lot of things that change what that decision might be. How much of an impact are those decisions actually having on the climate?

So, in the global context, transport has unfortunately been almost this forgotten sector. There’s been a lot of focus on energy, and understandably for many countries, the energy system has been the major or the largest contributor in terms of emissions. But in most countries, transport is second, and in many countries now transport is starting to eclipse energy. So, in the example of the US, transport is now the largest contributor in terms of emissions. So, whilst it’s been great that we’ve had that focus on energy and we’re starting to make some real progress in terms of decarbonising the energy system, we’ve still got a fair bit of work to do on the transport side. It’s not doom-and-gloom though, because I think that a lot of the solutions in transport already exist today. There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit and there’s, you know, I guess the enthusiasm amongst many people to want to have a more sustainable way to get from A to B. So, the willingness is there, but it’s about private industry, government and community working together to transition to that net zero transport future.

Okay, so let’s start with the glaringly obvious: that would be electric vehicles. Australia, much like the US, for many people having a car is just what you do. So, how is making that car electric versus conventional – how does that swing the climate story when it comes to transport?

So, the way I think about this problem is that there are effectively three different levers that we can pull in terms of decarbonising transport. The first is to avoid trips. So, working from home, that ability to Zoom and have team meetings – those are making a meaningful contribution to reducing emissions. But realistically, we can’t all just lock ourselves away in boxes and not have human-to-human interaction. So, that’s about 10% of the solution. For those trips that then can’t be avoided, we want to shift them. And shift them from private cars to public, active and shared transport. And so, that’s probably about 40% of the solution. But even when you do all of that, you’ve still got these trips that have to be taken in private vehicles. And in countries like the US and Australia, we’re not going to have this utopia overnight where everyone’s riding a bike – it’s just not going to happen. It’s not realistic in the time frame that we have to meet net zero. And so, this is where electric vehicles have a key role to play. They’re not the only solution, but in my assessment, they’re about 50% of the solution for decarbonising transport. So, we can’t ignore them. We have to embrace that shift and the opportunities that come with it. And one of my roles that the Electric Vehicle Council is to work as hard as I can to give everyone the opportunity to experience an electric vehicle. And when I say electric vehicle, not just a car, but a bus, a truck, bike – that whole spectrum of transport. Another opportunity that I think is really relevant to the Australian context is: we are almost wholly dependent on importing foreign oil to run our transport system. In an increasingly challenging global political environment, that is a major national security risk for us. And it’s not just me saying this. We have former Defence Force generals that have made an assessment that Australia is quite vulnerable from that perspective. If we don’t have that oil coming into the country, or refined fuel, how does the food get from the farm to your plate? How do you get to-and-from work? How do people get to-and-from hospitals and ambulances? Everything. When you step back and think, this is all reliant on importing this oil. Electric vehicles are powered by 100% Australian-made energy. Electric vehicles give us that opportunity to be able to have resilience because we can supply the very energy we need to run our transport system. And so, I think clearly with my background and the work I do, the climate impact and reducing that is a primary driver. But there are so many other opportunities and benefits of this transition that, even based on the economics alone, putting the environmental aspect aside, the opportunity is massive for Australia.

There are a couple of things we’re going to have to get into on that. But first of all, can you paint me a picture of how many EVs have we got. Let’s talk just cars specifically, because there are a heck of a lot of electric bikes out there all of a sudden – all these bike-sharing programs, which is great, and scooters and all the rest of it. Let’s just talk cars. How many have we got in Australia?

So, in Australia we’re sitting somewhere about 160,000 electric vehicles right now, but that’s out of close to 18 million cars. So, sales are looking relatively good, in the order of hopefully this year 9% of all new cars being electric, which is a small number. But it’s a big shift to where we were even a year or two ago, heading in the right direction. But the more concerning number is that 150,000 out of 18 million. We’ve really got to accelerate that transition because a new petrol car that sold today is likely to stick around for another 15, 20 years. It’s 2023 – 2050, you can do the math. We don’t have that much time to get to a point where we can only afford to sell new electric vehicles.

Year on year, the sales are jumping quite dramatically, aren’t they?

So, even if we look back to last year, we were sitting 2.5, just shy of 3%. So, we’re talking about a tripling in a year. There are a few different factors. Not, you know, I’m sure many different governments would like to claim sole responsibility for that. The truth is, some actions by government are certainly helping. But I also think general interest amongst the community has increased a lot. And that, I guess, fear that was propagated some years ago about: EVs are going to take your weekend away; you’re not going to be able to tow your boat; you’re not going to be able to live your normal life. We’ve moved largely beyond that. I won’t say completely. I mean, I’m from Queensland and there are still some folk up in parts of my state that say these things. But it’s nonsense. It’s clearly nonsense. The technology is at a state now where we can do many of the things that we do right now, and the reality is it’s moving so quickly that, in the next five years, it’s going to be hard-pressed to find an electric vehicle that doesn’t do all of the things that your petrol or diesel vehicle does right now – and most likely at a cheaper cost.

There are benefits to having a car-less society, right? Being able to do work from home or have smaller radiuses that you have to get around in. But is it the scope of your work to consider an overall shift away from cars as well as a shift towards EVs? And is public transport in your interest to push?

Yes. So, I wear a couple of different hats as well. I have this problem where I kind of can’t focus on just one job. I have to have a few in parallel. In my role at the Electric Vehicle Council, we are very passionate about electrifying the entire public transport system and freight as well. So, we aren’t just focused on cars. But if we reflect back about those three levers, that second one of mode shift: simply having an electric bus available isn’t enough for people to get out of a car and get on the bus. Some people say it’s a pro, but there needs to be other mechanisms put in place. And so, I also am the CEO of a company called ODIN PASS, which runs a mobility as a service program. And what that means is, we offer subscriptions so that people can buy a bundle of transport services. And instead of this kind of traditional pay for every trip, you get unlimited access. So, what we’re trying to do is disrupt the market with a new business model and take away that deterrent that: Oh, well, if I have to take the bus, I’m going to have to pay for that; so, I’ll just get in the car because that’s free (when it’s not), but that’s what we think. You’ve paid for your transport subscription. You get unlimited access for a month. Sometimes we offer up to three months. You want to get the best bang for your buck. So, all of a sudden, the psychology is flipped, and you’re going to try and use that public shared active transport as much as possible. Now, I’m you know, I’m just running one little small thing on the side up in Queensland. There’s much more scope to expand and there’s other people right around the world working in that space. But it’s an example of the kind of disruption that we need to have in transport in order to encourage people – and give people a genuine alternative that’s affordable, sustainable and convenient.

I wonder doing it the way that you are, with this sort of golden pass for all of the transport options, does that let you dig in data-wise? Do some mining to figure out how people are doing it? Because you could actually be encouraging people not only to use public transport, but to use it a heck of a lot more. You could even be like getting people more exercise and stuff on the way through.

Yeah. So, of course everyone that signs up has to give us permission to collect that data. But it is very rich data in terms of the choices that people are making every day for transport. And I think we haven’t fully yet leveraged the opportunity there. But in our pipeline, you know, in the next one-to-two years, we want to have the ability to incentivise – actively incentivise. So, we’ve almost been in that kind of scientific observatory mode seeing: Okay, let’s throw this out into the market, see what happens for a couple of years. I think we’ve sold over $2 million worth of transport subscriptions to about 10,000 users; more than two million public transport trips booked. So, in the grand scheme of things, small but not insignificant. And we’ve learnt a lot about what people are doing under those settings. The next stage is, as you said, to actively pull different levers to say: Well, if you do this, you get some points, maybe you get to redeem those points for a discount on your gym membership or discount at the movies or, you know, all of that ability to encourage people. And I think different companies are very interested in supporting this, and not just traditional transport companies, because they see this is a captive market to be able to get their product or service in front of an audience that is motivated to earn points to get a benefit.

So, definitely room for expansion.

Yeah. I mean, that’s the plan. Not quite global domination just yet, but I’m hopeful that what we’ve been running up in South East Queensland has provided some insight for what’s possible across Australia, and that’s the next step. We’ll have to see if we make that. It’s not easy running a startup. It’s a challenging environment, and we’re trying to do this in a way that is not about huge profits. This is about providing equitable sustainable options to everyone. As an example, this idea that you set a fixed price for everyone, I think that’s fair. I don’t think it’s fair that if you can’t afford to live in inner-city Brisbane, Sydney or Melbourne, and you’re in the outer suburbs, you have to pay more for public transport. Of course, then, what’s the end result? Those people get in a car. It doesn’t make sense. Instead, with our approach, you set a fixed price. Everyone pays the same amount no matter where you live. And that equitable approach – you know, there’s magic happening behind the scenes to make the books balance in cross-subsidising – but ultimately that’s a good thing for society. We should want to encourage people that don’t live in the inner city, that live right across urban areas, to get out of cars. But price is a key aspect of that. And if it’s too expensive, people aren’t going to make that choice.

Say that idea really takes off, can we up the amount of people we chuck on our public transport significantly, or are we around the country running things roughly where they need to be to meet demand? Do you get what I’m –

Yeah. I understand what you’re saying. And the reality is, particularly coming out of COVID, use of public transport across Australia is quite low. It already by global standards wasn’t that great, but we’ve got a lot of spare capacity that can be filled. I think though, it’s not just about public transport. And so, it’s combining things like shared electric bikes and scooters so that you can conveniently get from your home to the bus or to the train; take that next journey, and then maybe at the other end, hop into a car share or a taxi or whatever. So, it’s that full ecosystem of transport options, but trying to package it together in a way that it’s more attractive than just taking the car.

Now, the idea of electrifying everything makes me very excited. Personally, I think everything should be electric. But when we sort of mentioned this already a little bit, when you said: The advantage of EVs is that it would be powered by all Australian electricity. Great. Not all Australian electricity is good for the environment.

No. It’s a good point and you can probably tell that Australian-made energy line – it might be targeted at certain folk just to get them thinking: Well, hang on a second, I’m buying this oil; where’s it coming from? You know, but in all seriousness, even based on Australia’s electricity grid today, if you plug in and charge an electric vehicle, and you look at the full lifecycle emissions – so building the vehicle and the battery, running the vehicle for, you know, let’s say 15 years, and then disposing and recycling of the components at the end of the life: that full lifecycle. An EV is about 30 to 50% better than an equivalent petrol or diesel car in Australia, and that’s today. The beauty is, you buy an electric vehicle today and every year that our grid gets cleaner, the emissions of the car go down. The problem is, you buy a petrol car today, the emissions stay the same or, in fact, probably get worse because the car gets less efficient because of all the moving parts. And so, this is where it’s a bit of a red herring that’s being put out that: Oh, well, why would I buy an electric vehicle today, because I’m just shifting from burning oil to burning coal? And the problem with that very simple line is that it kind of resonates. People think: Oh, yeah, like that kind of sounds wrong. But when you do the numbers and you actually do look at what’s happening, because electric vehicles are so efficient, even when running off that current grid that does involve coal and gas, the emissions are lower. And so, we’re better off from day one. But it’s not the end of the story. We know the grid is decarbonising. We want that to accelerate, and we need to get electric vehicles into the fleet in parallel.

So, the sooner we do it, the sooner we can get a benefit and then realise even greater benefits as we go forward. So, you’re the current head of policy at the Electric Vehicle Council. What do you see as the most pressing gaps or obstacles in policy that need to be addressed in order to accelerate getting EVs out there?

Yeah. Certainly, some state governments seem to have been going out of their way to do odd things which don’t seem to support the climate targets they’re putting in place. But we can choose to come back to that if we want to. But in the Australian context and what’s happening from a policy perspective, the key gap we have is a lack of something called a fuel efficiency standard. There’s been a bit of discussion because the Federal Government, since being elected last year, the new Federal Government has committed to bring in a fuel efficiency standard. It’s happening a little bit slower than I would have liked, but I’m hopeful that in the next few months we do see that standard come to fruition. That standard, in essence, forces car makers – foreign car makers, because they’re all made overseas; we don’t make cars here anymore, but international car makers – to bring more efficient vehicles into Australia. Almost every other major country in the world has this standard. The two outliers? Australia and Russia. That’s the company we keep in terms of how far behind we are in that policy space. But again, as I said, I’m hopeful that the current Federal Government will bring that policy into play. And what that will ultimately mean is, in the coming years we’ll get a greater supply of more affordable electric vehicles across a wide range of vehicle types. And that’s ultimately what we need. Australians like different types of cars and, ultimately, they need to be affordable so that every Australian can make that shift.

Is part of it that people are resistant to letting go of what’s always been a good and reliable way of doing business?

I think it’s hard to generalise across the community. There are different segments, and there is certainly part of the community that find it difficult at the moment to understand what an electric vehicle means for them. And that just means we need to work harder to paint that picture for them, because it’s not that it doesn’t exist. It’s not that it’s not technically feasible. It’s just that they haven’t seen what that means for them. But I think in the work that’s being done by ourselves and others, time and time again it shows that the majority of the community is supportive of wanting to have a cleaner future – and not just for climate, but for those other potential benefits. You know, some people are madly resistant to this idea that we’ll continue to burn carcinogenic fuel and fill our communities with pollution that is linked to children having a lower lung capacity by the age of eight. You know, asthma, literally lung cancer – that’s the transport system that we’re living in right now. And so, there’s a big movement in Australia to shift away just on that basis alone. I think there isn’t a one size fits all, but ultimately every Australian needs to have that picture painted for them so that they can understand what it means and have a realistic option put to them.

There are levers that can be pulled very very easily, and governments don’t mind pulling them when they want to push people in a very certain direction. I’m thinking availability and pricing. What are the settings here? Are they right? What needs to happen?

So, we’ve talked about getting the supply, which is the availability with a fuel efficiency standard. A number of states did have incentives for electric vehicles. Unfortunately, Victoria has taken away theirs and now the New South Wales Labor Government has also quite suddenly decided to take away their incentives as well. It’s a concerning development I think, because I worry that some of them think: You know, oh, we’ve tripled sales in one year, so job done; no more work required. Realistically, when you look across the world, most markets have needed some kind of support to get to 25 to 30% of sales. Before that point, you need to have incentives to help drive the market, and that’s not purely a cost to government. Yes, government is making an investment to move the needle, but you’re getting that return of lower pollution, lower emissions, cheaper fuel costs – you know, it’s somewhere in the order of 50 to 90% cheaper to run an electric vehicle compared to a petrol or diesel option. So, all of those benefits come back. And again, I hope that there is some realisation across Australian governments that we’re not there yet. We have more work to be done. There’s plenty of opportunity. It’s not too late. We can still do this in a way that achieves net zero. But the window is closing, and so the more we delay – and certainly reverse course and even try and introduce things like extra taxes on EVs – that’s not going to accelerate the transition.

I guess along with that availability and pricing, there’s been a concern held by some at least that Australia’s not suited to EVs in the same way other countries might be. What are the considerations that these car manufacturers need to think about specifically for Australia?

So, we are a big country. There’s no denying that. Whilst the majority of the population lives on the coast, there are people that live in very remote areas and so no one should be left behind. Everyone should have a genuine option that’s suitable to them. It’s a combination of two things: it’s not just the cars that come in; it’s the availability of the infrastructure. And so, you need the vehicles that have a decent driving range. And at the moment, the average is sitting about 400 km. The vehicle that I drove down here yesterday is 400 km. That is appearing like a bit of a sweet spot for the market right now of what people are kind of happy to accept. But also, you know, the more driving range, the higher the cost. So, there’s a trade-off there. But ultimately, there will be other, you know, use cases in remote parts of Australia where you’re going to need more driving range and the infrastructure to help support that. And that’s why I say we’re not there yet, but I think we can see the solution. It’s not like some other sectors, like even if we stick with transport – aviation, for example. I mean, one of the reasons I drove down here is because I thought it was quite hypocritical to jump in a plane, come here and then talk about what I’m doing on sustainable transport, and then get on a plane again. How about I use the electric vehicle that I have and charge it with renewables? It’s a little bit longer. But the reality is, aviation is emissions-intensive and the options to decarbonise aviation are not immediately clear. That’s not the case with land transport: cars, buses, trucks. The solutions are obvious. We just need to act and put that in place. And as I said, it’s a combination of having the right vehicles with the infrastructure.

Being a science nerd, I always like to know about what’s coming down the pipeline in terms of innovations, because there’s always new science. If you’ve ever looked into battery science, it always blows my mind. They always come out with some new hyper dense battery. What’s coming down the pipeline that might change the picture for us here in Australia when it comes to EVs?

Yep. So we’ve already seen quite a big shift in battery technology, and even if you look in the past 18 months, we’re seeing a shift away from the nickel- and cobalt-based technologies where there have been concerns with – not so much in Australia, because we actually have nickel and cobalt, but in other countries that are reliant on minerals out of Africa and South America with human rights concerns, valid human rights concerns. There’s been a desire to think: Well, how can we have a battery that isn’t reliant on those minerals as much? And so, we’ve seen that happen. But increasingly, I think, in the next 10 years the lithium iron technology will remain dominant, but we will get to a point where probably that average of 400 km will shift more towards kind of your 600–700. And with that won’t be just the longer driving range. But one of the things that I’m most excited about is this concept of batteries on wheels, because the reality is this battery is full of energy. That energy could be used to drive the car from A to B. Can also be used to run your house. Can also be used to run the grid. So, you know, the 18 million cars in Australia, if they were all electric vehicles and had a relatively modest driving range of like 300 km, the total battery capacity of that fleet would be enough to run the entire country, all of Australia, for 24 hours, including meeting our average transport. Now, I’m not saying that we will have a future that will be 100% powered by EVs. But increasingly, there’s a lot of work going on right now to see, well, if we’ve got these EVs and they’re only being driven 30–40 km a day, which is about the average that an Australian vehicle is driven – not just electric vehicles, but all vehicles on average are about 30–40 km – you are then talking about hundreds of kilometres of spare capacity that we could tap into to help increase the uptake of renewables, provide that grid stability and, for the individual who owns the EV, have a return. They can sell that battery storage to the grid and actually get paid to plug in.

Sounds to me like a brilliant and very elegant solution to some of the problems we’ve got when it comes to renewable energy and that need to have storage and reliable storage. But it also sounds to me like the sort of thing that certain energy companies might want to lobby against.

I think what we’re actually seeing is that energy companies are starting – particularly electricity companies see EVs as a windfall for them. We’re spending somewhere in the order of $40 billion every year on that imported oil. If you make the shift to EVs, this pool of $40 billion – and that’s just for cars, that doesn’t talk about trucks and everything else – that $40 billion-plus pool of money is up for grabs. And electricity companies are thinking: Well, this is an interesting space to work in. So, we’re seeing electricity companies in Australia now offer leases on electric vehicles. They’ll install charging infrastructure. They’ll do deals with car makers so that if you buy a certain EV, you get a special plan for your home. Some of them, they give you free electricity during the day if you buy an electric vehicle and sign up to their plan. So, I think maybe a few years ago there was kind of some hesitation – not quite clear what it meant for the market. But now firmly, again, the opportunity is recognised and some of those players are now moving to capture that opportunity.

Now there is something that we’ve kind of been skirting around a little bit – well, I’ve been skirting around a little bit. Another big technology that’s been knocking at the door for a very long time: hydrogen. And there are some – well, there’s a specific manufacturer who’s very much put their money behind hydrogen. What do you reckon, realistically?

I will either be proven right or wrong in 10 years. But my prediction is that in 10 years we will look back, and we will reflect that we have unfortunately wasted a significant amount of money on trying to use hydrogen in land transport when the economics simply do not stack-up. With a hydrogen vehicle, you’re talking about generally three, sometimes four times the upfront cost. And then the fuel cost is, best-case scenario, at parity with diesel, but generally about double diesel. So, if you’re paying more upfront for your vehicle and you’re paying more for fuel, what’s in it for you? With an electric vehicle granted at the moment, generally you pay a bit more upfront, but the running costs are much cheaper. So, you get that return on the investment. It’s like solar, you know – you buy the solar panels, you pay upfront and then they’re paid off over a few years because you don’t have to pay the electricity to the company because you’re producing it off your roof. It’s the same thing with EVs, and that’s why the majority of the market has made that decision. I would say these one or two standouts genuinely don’t see hydrogen as a solution. They will tell you black and blue: It’s the solution. It is 100% a red herring, again, to continue to sell the vehicles that they have invested in that they are pumping out by the millions right now, and they’re making a bonanza. They want to keep milking that for as long as they can. And hydrogen is a really convenient thing. Because hydrogen, you know, it’s a gas. We like gas. We think: That’s something familiar. And, you know, you can fill it up in your vehicle and, yeah, it sounds about right. But I think if you went to the average Australian and you said: But would you be willing to pay $3 per litre for that, and would you be willing to pay $200,000 for a ute – a hydrogen ute? I don’t think so.

Hydrogen also feels futuristic and clean and only produces water. But I do – I’m reading between the lines. You do see a future for it in the mix? You said specifically road transport.

That’s right. And so, you know, I have been one of a few people that have been quite vocal about some of the waste of public funds on hydrogen in specific applications. But at the same time, there is genuine need for hydrogen in our transition to net zero. Hydrogen can be used to produce different synthetic fuels that will be very important for that aviation and heavy shipping, you know: cargo ships and that type. But outside of transport, hydrogen has other applications, which is where I think the focus should be. So, if you think steel and cement, those two industries globally combined produce as much emissions as the entire transport sector. Steel and cement has a pathway to being decarbonised using hydrogen. So, if we are going to produce hydrogen, noting that it’s expensive – it uses a lot of energy, it uses a lot of water, so these are scarce resources – we want to treat it as a precious resource. We need to direct it to the applications that definitely need it. Cars, buses, trucks – they are not the priority. And anything that is directed that way, in my view, is either misguided or purposeful to delay the inevitable transition to EVs.

What’s new in public transport? I mean, other than, I guess, electric scooters and bikes are pretty big and huge. What’s the next big thing that’s coming?

Yes. So, up in Brisbane we’re quite fortunate to be having a deployment in the next, I guess, 18 months of a fleet of what they call bi-articulated fully electric buses. So, they look like a tram, but they actually drive on rubber tyres. Some people call them trackless trams and there are all different names. But at the end of the day, you’re talking about a very large vehicle, like 25 metres-long that has a high capacity: 150-plus people. But the flexibility of not having to rip up entire roads to put down rail lines. And so, this is an example of where electrification has made a step change in how we can think about movement in public transport. Ten years ago, that kind of thing wouldn’t be possible. But it’s possible today because the battery technology is enabling a vehicle of that size to run without overhead wires, without the need for, you know, frictionless rail lines, and the benefit of flexibility that you can effectively drive it almost anywhere you can turn it. Basically, that turning becomes the limitation, but that’s it.

See that’s a thing that goes in my head, right. With like your ability, perhaps with everybody’s permission, to see how people are using transport, and then with a transport system that’s flexible when you can say: Well, nobody’s using this route. So, we could actually probably change that. And you don’t have to rip up roads. You’re not stuck to a decision that was made by a government 15, 20, 80, 100 years ago. That sounds like the perfect kind of mix of tech and getting things right.

That’s right. And also, transport isn’t static. It changes. And there’s that interweave between where people live and work and the transport between them. That evolves over time, so you need solutions that are flexible. You need that approach that you can continue to update and change over time. And we want to do that as sustainably as possible because also, you know, there’s a lot of steel and concrete that goes into building some of this infrastructure. The last thing you want to be doing is ripping it out 20 years later.

Where do you think we’re going in terms of solving transport’s impact on climate? Is this something that’s going to be done soon? Done quickly? Is it low-hanging fruit enough that you might actually be unemployed within two years?

I wish that I would be unemployed in two years, in all seriousness. I think if we make the right decisions today, by 2030 we can be in a very strong trajectory. The challenge with transport is it’s a slow-moving beast. And so, because of those long timeframes, it highlights the importance of making decisions today so that we can do it in a timely fashion before this kind of deadline looming of net zero by 2050. So, the solutions are here. We know what we need to do. We have time. But we have to act now. And if we do it, yep, Jake can be unemployed in a couple of years’ time. We won’t have everything solved by 2030, but we’ll be a hell of a long way down that pathway.

I hope you have the opportunity to turn your head to the next problem.

There’ll be something else for sure.

Of course. Jake, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you.

Jake Whitehead. To follow the program online you can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And visit the 100 Climate Conversations exhibition or join us for a live recording, go to 100climateconversations.com.

This is a significant new project for the museum and the records of these conversations will form a new climate change archive preserved for future generations in the Powerhouse collection of over 500,000 objects that tell the stories of our time. It is particularly important to First Nations peoples to preserve conversations like this, building on the oral histories and traditions of passing down our knowledges, sciences and innovations which we know allowed our Countries to thrive for tens of thousands of years.