Physics world.
Things like climate change, for example.
We've not faced something of this scale before. We've got, um,
artificial intelligence is being developed at such a fast rate.
So these are science and technology problems that are so crucial to the
future of our societies. Uh, even things like nuclear weapons.
There are so many things we are facing today,
and I think that degree of separation between the people making the decisions
and then the scientists who are being consulted on the side is just making that
a lot harder to reach the real optimal solutions.
That was Ruhi Chitra,
an intern at UNESCO who will hear from soon in the podcast,
the International Year for Basic Sciences for Sustainable Development Run until
July, 2023. And in this episode,
we're going to explore how physicists and engineers can by returning to
first principles,
look at complex socio environmental issues through fresh eyes.
Later we'll hear about green energy transition and how engineering intersects
with social justice issues within the us. But first,
his ruhi Chitra.
I have a degree in physics, um,
which I finished two years ago from the University of Warwick,
and then I spent last year as the president of the International Association of
Physics Students. So that's IAPs, for those of you who don't know what that is.
It's an international organization with 90,000 members in over 70 countries.
And we run many events around the world.
So things like the International Conference for Physics students,
which takes place in different countries every year.
We have the Planks competition,
which is the physics league across numerous countries for kickass students.
So the IOP hosts,
the national preliminaries in the, uh, in UK and Ireland.
And then the winners of that go on to compete in the international finals.
So that's how it works.
So different countries send their teams of four to compete in the international
finals. So yeah, there are loads of interesting, um,
events and opportunities through that organization.
So if you are a student of physics or a related subject at university level,
I highly recommend giving you a look.
And then actually through that organization I discovered a lot about, um,
myself and what I wanted to do with my career.
So through that organization I discovered I really thrive in international
environments.
I realized that the big science decisions being made
today aren't generally being made by people with a science background or people
who have a solid understanding of these issues that made me want to fill that
gap.
And this year I've spent the year studying a master's in international
relations. So it is slightly unrelated,
but then I'm planning to go into this decision making about science.
So I'm shortly going to move to,
to Paris to do six months in the UN in unesco.
So I'll see if science policy is the place for me.
Why is it important for people to have an understanding of science if they are
in those positions of power, making those decisions.
Artificial intelligence, climate change, nuclear weapons,
these problems are the biggest challenges facing us today.
When I went to a talk at the UN by at the UN
FCCC where they were giving a talk on climate change,
and I just noticed that sometimes some of the science, um,
knowledge was just being told slightly inaccurately.
And that's because the people making the decisions about science,
who were giving these talks were not from a science background.
So it's, it is just this,
there's a slight lack of understanding can lead to further issues.
It can lead to different priorities when making decisions.
And since these are such crucial issues,
I want the best chance for us to solve them. Um,
another thing is just this trust in evidence-based decision making
with science background, that is something that becomes intrinsic to you. Um,
that's,
that's one of the main things you gain from studying science is this trust in
the scientific method in science and evidence.
And often that's what's lacking.
And really to make effective decisions that really do what you want them to
do, you have to use evidence.
And you've been involved in the year of basic sciences for sustainable
development. We.
Were involved in many exciting initiatives around the world in things to do with
physics and science outreach.
So one of them was the international year of basic Sciences for sustainable
development, and we were on the International advisory committee for that.
So I went to a lot of the high level meetings about it and um,
I went to the opening ceremony in Paris and it was a very,
very exciting thing to be involved with.
So the essential idea is that in our push
for sustainable development,
we need to make sure that we don't forget the basic sciences.
So this is a big push to remember that basic sciences are really
at the heart of everything. Um, these are the building blocks of our society,
and you can't,
we can't make the best science developments and we can't
have the best hope of solving these problems without including the basic
sciences because in general,
the basic sciences, when they're being funded, um,
you don't necessarily know what the applications are going to be.
It's very different to the kind of science that automatically gets funding the
kind where you know,
what the application will be and it will be used for this purpose and that will
be useful. So that will get funding.
But often these basic sciences are very easy to overlook because you don't know
what the funding will lead to. You don't know how long it will take.
It might take some time. It's a long investment sometimes,
but then the things that you can get out of it are just revolutionary.
They can change absolutely everything because these are, like I said,
the building blocks of our society.
So if you invest in things like quantum mechanics,
you get things like semiconductors, transistors, computers. So these are,
this are chain that starts with just investing in basic sciences. And yeah,
we wouldn't have any of the technology we have today without just investing in
those basic things. You don't know what you're gonna get from it,
but you'll get something amazing if you keep investing.
And for such huge challenges, challenges we're about to face now,
and we are facing,
this is our best chance of really finding solutions we'd never be able to find
without them. So often when you see, um,
regimes in certain countries that are only thinking in the short term or who
aren't thinking using evidence-based decision making,
it's often very easy to stop funding basic sciences.
And we can see that in lots of countries around the world.
But the benefits are so great that, um,
if a country chooses not to invest in these things, then they'll,
they will be left behind.
What does funding the basic sciences look like? Is it mostly about education?
It's education and research. So both things are very closely tied together.
So there are certain types of research, especially in basic sciences,
that industries don't have much incentive to,
to fund because if they don't know what the outcome is gonna be,
they're less likely to put many resources into it,
which is why things like governments are so crucial in funding those gaps.
Say things like general relativity,
if money wasn't given to just explore and try to understand the world,
we wouldn't have things like GPS, we wouldn't have so much today. So, um,
research and education are so closely tied because if the education isn't
good enough, then we're not gonna find the people to do the research.
They're not going to get inspired to do it. They're not going to,
they're gonna go do something else. And, um,
I've spoken to people from all over the world through the organization,
through ias, and clearly in countries,
particularly in Africa, in Latin America, in um,
certain regions in the world,
there's little emphasis in good physics education at school level.
Um, which means that students who want to study at university really struggle at
university because they don't have, they have really outdated education. Um,
yeah, someone from Costa Rica was telling me this,
that that's the exact problem they're facing.
Like unsatisfactory level of education at school means that, um,
people are generally poor in science and maths knowledge,
which means that university is just more difficult for them.
If there is less funding in infrastructure,
then the research can't be conducted.
Then there are a few people to teach the students.
And then it leads to situations where countries have to actually buy data and
things from other countries, which puts them in a really, really vulnerable,
vulnerable position because, um,
it's much less difficult to control the data to understand what's going on when
you're not doing it yourself.
How has it worked as a year?
There's the steering committee, they're the International Advisory committees,
things like that. So they're the ones who are coordinating everything.
They're the ones who got it ratified by the UN General Assembly and have
been organizing the publicity and coordinating different events around the
world. But then there have been so many different events around the world, um,
different initiatives, things from science outreach,
so tru to trust science and to understand that its value in
this world. So, so there are so many levels to this.
It's not just telling governments you need to fund,
it's also telling the public that you need to encourage your governments to
fund. Because in democracies that's how it works.
A physics organization that I was running, we,
we had funding just to run lots of physics events,
just making physics really visible and,
and showing how important these kind of sciences are.
So one that we funded last year was, um,
the International Physicist Tournament.
Another thing we were involved with was the International Day of Flight. Um,
so that's another outreach event, uh, which was,
which works similar to the international year of basic sciences for sustainable
development, which has an a central, um,
central body organizing everything.
And then many events going on around the world.
The International Day of Light emerged from the 2015 International year of light
of which physics world was a media partner,
longtime listeners may remember the special issue we produced that year.
And the film series,
which is still available on the physics world website and the YouTube channel
about how light-based technologies interact with culture across the world.
So it's held on the 16th of May every year,
and that is the anniversary of the first use of the laser.
And that kind of sums it up.
It's about showing how how develops in developments in light and
research in light can really shape and effect everyone's lives,
lives. So the laser has had so many impacts on things like, um,
medicine communications. So yeah, that, that's how it started. Um, and the,
the idea is that every year on the 16th of May,
there are so many outreach initiatives around the world to show how the latest
developments in light are so key to our lives.
So it is just that constant reminder that we need to give priority to the these
subjects and these funding because it's easy to overlook,
but it is so crucial to everything.
You've mentioned Africa and Costa Rica and closer to home,
do you look at the UK and think this is a, a problem here?
Having seen other countries,
I can say that we are in a much more privileged position.
There are opportunities we don't have to leave the country to get opportunities,
um, as opposed to friends in other regions of the world. Um,
especially friends from different African regions and Latin American regions
where they're the best minds.
Really intelligent people I know have to move to Europe, for example,
to do research. Um, and you know,
Latin America's really missing out from that and Africa's really missing out
because they've invested in these people and they're not getting the benefits of
that.
Whereas Europe is really benefiting because they have the best minds from so
many more countries. So in that sense, the Britain and, um,
Ireland are in a good place saying that there are still obviously gonna be lots
of issues from the school level. There are just significantly fewer, uh,
females taking physics than males. And that continues into university.
And what I find really interesting is that this isn't universal in the world.
This is something that is a problem in in our region because if you
look at, um,
say the UN statistics on the proportion of
people studying STEM around the world in different regions,
it it's much higher for women in regions like Latin America in, in, um,
Asia, it, it is just a significantly higher proportion of women doing stem,
which is very interesting.
So it shows that this isn't a problem that cannot be solved.
Has that been your experience in physics as well?
So when I went into physics,
I did notice that I was very often the only woman in the room, even today.
So my course was 17% women,
but often there were spaces where I was the only one that was 20
males, one female. And I found that, um,
a conference I went to called the Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics
or the , um, really, really helped me, uh,
to change how I was thinking about that situation because I realized
during my whole first year that I'd never had a female lecturer before for
physics. I'd never interacted with a female physicist. Um,
as in I I I had probably with one, but that was it.
So I just realized that really warped my perception on what
a physicist is. And this is today I just, uh,
just finished my physics degree two years ago. So, um,
I had this really warped understanding throughout my first year of my degree.
I was finding that I had to prove myself a lot harder than other people to get
the same level of respect than males. And I realized during,
when I went to this conference, which is fantastic,
so I really recommend any female doing physics go to that conference.
I finally saw the most inspiring female physicists,
and I just realized that I had completely taken in this bias.
Um, so it,
so I had this bias against females as well as everyone else because that's how
it works in this society.
So I had this bias that women just weren't as good as physics at physics.
And going to that conference and seeing that that was just completely wrong,
really changed everything. And that gave me a lot more confidence in myself.
I did make, every female I knew applied to go to that conference as well.
So it was a very very inspiring conference for me.
And that was actually the conference that I discovered. I asked, uh,
one of the speakers said, if you ever get the chance,
you absolutely have to go to this international conference for physics students.
It will change your life. And yeah, it, it did actually, I had these biases.
So naturally everyone's gonna have these biases and this is in UK society,
so you know, it, it is everywhere, it's intrinsic. And um,
having initiatives like this is a really good way, at least it was for me to,
to chase that and to overcome it.
I know that there are lots of other initiatives like this. Um,
I've heard of Married Curious for example, as a day event between, um,
Oxford and Warwick and there are so many other things like this.
And I just wanna say that I really,
I really support those kind of things because they do make a huge difference.
Yeah,
it's really interesting how the global perspective really well,
I mean as you say, is changes your life, doesn't it?
In certain regions of the world, physics is seen as a really privileged subject.
So it is the kind of subject.
So I've got friends in the Dominican Republic that I met through my organization
and I was privileged enough to go and speak in their university as well, um,
in person.
So I got to meet lots of people studying physics and it just is
really difficult if there isn't much funding and support.
So some people had to work throughout their degrees and um,
there was such a high dropout rate for that. And their degrees are much longer.
Yeah, we are really lucky that it, it isn't as privileged as subject here.
There are so many benefits to our society, um,
in general and to individuals from studying physics.
You get not only problem solving skills,
but you get a really unique combination of different, different experiences.
You get this, um, appreciation of maths, for example, um,
because maths is the language of physics,
but you also get this appreciation of science,
which you wouldn't get from a a maths course. You get this, um,
this use, uh,
and competency with technology because there's a lot of programming in physics,
um, at school but also particularly at university level.
So there are so many things you get at a personal level and you get this
ability to be faced with a challenge and just want to dig right in because
you're so used to facing challenges that you are
uh, you know,
you can solve them because you're so used to solving difficult challenges.
But then from the societal level there are so many greater benefits.
Like I said, this um, increased,
this increased trust in evidence-based decision making, this um,
increased respect for science, for funding research, things like that.
There's so much you can gain from having good physics education.
On the back of the success of the international year of basic sciences
for sustainable development.
The United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed by consensus that there will
now be the international decade of sciences for sustainable development,
which will run between 2024 and 2033.
I wanted to know more about how physicists could get involved in the
technologies and engineering that might help us to achieve the UN's
sustainable development goals. The SDGs as they're known,
differ from the millennium development goals because they're universal and apply
to all countries ahead of her speaking at the IOP's publishing event,
environmental research 2023, I caught up with Destiny Knock.
I am an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Civil and
Environmental Engineering as well as engineering and public policy.
And my work has focused on energy justice and energy poverty as well as the
energy transition. I have two streams of work in energy.
One is focused on the residential side and the other is focused on the
generation buildout side. On the residential side,
we look at who is not consuming enough energy in order to be safe
and comfortable in their homes. So for example,
if someone is not consuming energy during a heat wave or a
deep freeze,
this could mean that they're putting themselves at risk of heat stroke or heat
illness and dehydration in the summer.
And if they're not using it during a deep freeze or when the temperatures start
to drop outside,
that could mean that they're putting themselves at risk of their pipes freezing
in their home or perhaps uh, getting hypothermia in their home.
So trying to find energy deficits in terms of who feels like
they can't afford their bills and instead of, you know, going into debt,
just don't use it, uh, is a big work on the residential side.
And then on the supply side slash generation side,
I have been looking at how the energy transition over the next 50
to a hundred years will impact different communities to do
more of a forward-looking analysis. Um, so for example,
in a recent paper, uh, it's go forth and Knock ,
which is a nice little acronym. Um, so in our go forth and not paper,
we were looking at different decarbonization plans and asking which one was
the best from an equity standpoint.
So now instead of just evaluating on the goal of reducing greenhouse
gas emissions, we also tied in air pollution emissions at the local level.
So looking specifically at particulate matter socks and NOx,
and then seeing where those emissions would be projected to be reduced and
where the remaining emissions would be projected to settle.
And so then we could actually see, you know, our uh,
minority communities getting those benefit reductions,
our low income communities getting those benefit reductions and which
decarbonization plan is the most equitable from an air pollution emission
reduction standpoint. And.
Is this all in the US that.
You're looking?
So the two things I mentioned are in the US I have done some work in Sub-Saharan
Africa, um, that actually kind of reduced a little bit during the pandemic,
unfortunately. 'cause you know,
it's really hard to keep doing work when you can't travel to places.
And I think that during the pandemic, uh,
it really came to light that a lot of people in the US were struggling. Uh,
during the pandemic it was reported that 20 million Americans were behind on
their bills and that the,
those unpaid bills amounted to $32 billion in debt for energy
utilities across the United States. And that's when, you know,
it really hit me that like even though the developing world in Africa,
you know,
you need to have development of actually building out the electricity system.
One thing that really hit me when I was reading those statistics from the
pandemic was that on our, in the US right,
in a place where you would assume that everybody has access to
electricity, some people really don't have access because it's not affordable.
And that's a hidden in equity that can be very hard to recognize because
nobody wants to stand up and say, Hey,
I'm poor and I'm freezing in my house and I'm worried that my kids are gonna
freeze to death. Right? Because you have, it's really hard to say that, right?
To admit that you need help.
And I remember when I was in grad school up in Massachusetts,
I lived in the oil-based heating house and we were really struggling and
we, you know,
used to cut off our heat when we would go to work so that we would just try to
keep that bill as low as possible. And at one point, you know,
the temperatures were dropping to below freezing and just talking with our
landlord, talking with each other,
we realized like we can't cut off the heat or else we would be liable for paying
the damage from all those frozen pipes. So we decided to keep it on. Well,
you know,
now we have this dichotomy of well we have to pay the electricity bill,
we have to pay our oil heating bill.
Well let's just pay the oil heating bill first, right?
And then our electricity got cut off and
when the electricity got cut off,
I learned the very hard fact that your thermostat won't kick on your heat when
there's no electricity in your house.
And that was something I like as a person who was an electrical engineer who
was studying the energy transition in grad school.
I felt extremely stupid in that moment, right? Because I'm just like,
I'm supposed to pay my electricity bills because this is what I do,
this is what I do for work and I'm over here struggling. Um,
and that's when, you know, I realized how vital it was.
And then I think during the pandemic,
one thing that surfaced for me was that I'm not the only one that is,
that was struggling, right?
And I think I'm fortunate now to where I have a job where, you know,
I don't necessarily struggle all the time, but you know,
building on that lived experience that I had, getting my lights cut off,
you know, not being able to heat my house,
being really afraid of those pipes freezing.
'cause that was the whole thing we were trying to avoid in the first place. Um,
people, it sucks, right? And when the,
when you don't use energy,
the utility thinks that you're super energy efficient.
Like I can't tell you how,
you know many bills we got that say you're using less than all your neighbors.
Good job on energy efficiency, good job to you. And we were just like,
you know, like, you know, like we are really mad at y'all like leave us alone.
Like, you know, we are struggling over here. We don't want your good job,
pat on the back. We want to, we wanna be warm in our house.
I wanna take off my jacket and not have to wear my boots to the bathroom.
You know? And um, I think that that is a,
a hidden a a hidden form of poverty that's really hard to recognize.
But so how are you finding that in the data? How are you finding those?
Because if they can't see it, how do you see it in the data?
So, so this is again on our residential energy side. Um,
if you wanna see the paper, it's Kong et al. Um,
and we actually have Huen et al now and Kang et al .
So you have three papers on it now. Um,
so for the data there's widely available, um,
smart meter or sometimes people call it AMI,
advanced metering infrastructure data where they actually record
the household energy usage, um, at the second level.
So what we do is we actually look across the daily level, um,
for different households and then we will tie that to temperature and
your demographics. Uh, mostly income though at this stage.
And so when we are looking at temperature now we can see for a utilities
region who is using energy in terms of the
outdoor temperature, right? So I don't actually have any thermostat information.
So I can see, okay, you know, Andrew's in a house,
he is living in this region of the United States and when the outdoor
temperature reaches 70 degrees outside, I see his AC kick on,
right? And that's like a, a response I can see in this graph.
And then I can say, okay, well I see in the winter, you know,
when when it gets below 50 degrees I see his heating system kick on.
Now the key thing is to not leave it there,
but then to look at the different demographics and um,
economic factors. So now we also separate it by income. So you know,
if you and I are in this high income group, we can say okay,
our baseline for high income people in the region is that on average
all these high income households are kicking on their air conditioners at about
70 degrees outside. That's the first outdoor temperature at which the system,
you know, kicks on.
Then if I look at the low income groups and I say, huh, that's interesting.
On average everybody in our lowest income group and in our study the lowest
income group are those that make less than $15,000 a year. Um,
that's actually less than working a full-time minimum wage job in the
United States. So if you work full-time, minimum wage,
the average minimum wage for the US, you would make $15,080 a year. Um,
so now these are people making less than $15,000 a year. So on average,
you know,
we might see that those communities are waiting until it's maybe 75 degrees
outside to kick on their, um, air conditioning unit.
So we would say that this is five degrees of energy limiting behavior because
we would expect that if everyone lives in the same region,
that it would start to feel hot around the same time. Um,
and actually there is evidence from a study in, uh,
from a study outs out of the University of Michigan where they actually say that
typically most households actually keep their thermostats set to around the same
amount, um, within like two or three degrees.
So the fact that in our Arizona study, in our, and in our Chicago study,
we were seeing three to seven degrees of difference in terms of the outdoor
temperature when they kick on.
And then in our Chicago study we were seeing between six to 10 degrees of
difference in the winter between when people would start to use their heat that
then signifies that this is a inequity. I think it's also, you know,
you have to know what to separate it because people have asked me,
well how do you know it's income? How do you know that this is inequity?
And we had to test a lot of variables. We tested race,
we tested income, we tested household size, household age,
AC efficiency for the region we had, and it always came back to income,
right? And that's what makes us believe that, you know,
the finances are what's really driving this inequity.
And when you also think about like low income communities versus high income
communities,
typically low income communities live in older houses with worse insulation.
So that means that on top of this disparity in terms of when they turn on
their air conditioning and heating system,
it also most likely feels colder or hotter in their house because their
installation isn't as, isn't as high quality. Hmm.
Okay. So what do we do.
About it?
I think that this is one area where a lot of physicists can come in because
using the laws of thermodynamics to, you know,
inform our building codes to inform our installation requirements. You know,
I think that that's really important.
It's something that I see in the news of, you know,
what's the installation requirement?
I was reading this news article from North Carolina the other day that said
that, um,
developers were saying the new installation standards would make houses
unaffordable, like new houses unaffordable. And in my opinion, I'm like,
no, that's not, that's not what we want.
We want a quality house that you can buy and afford
to live in, right?
So saying that we are going to not put insulation in because of the upfront
cost to me,
then now you're putting the burden on all these houses and all these families
who may think that they're getting a quality house to live in to support their
family,
but now they're freezing in their home or they're at risk of heat illness in
their home because they don't have quality installation.
And I think that using um,
this information to inform our building codes,
to inform our housing standards and to inform like, you know,
what is the quality of life that we want people to be able to meet,
I think can be a big thing for us moving forward.
So you've moved from being an electrical engineer to doing this? Why?
I am very financially driven.
So when I was looking at schools for my undergrad,
I actually wanted to be a high school math teacher.
I was going to save the world one high schooler at a time. Um,
but then when I got my acceptance letter,
I didn't get a scholarship to teach to, to be a math teacher,
to to be a secondary education major. And my dad told me, he's an engineer,
he's an electrical engineer, he said, you know,
you probably could get a scholarship for engineering. And I said, okay, that's,
I guess that's what I'm gonna do. Um, and , so, so then, um,
he's an electrical engineer and I looked at all the engineerings and I was like,
well, if I want the scholarship, I just have to pick one.
So then I just picked electrical engineering. 'cause I, in my mind, you know,
um, I still wanted to be a high school math teacher.
Like that was like where my heart was, um, at that time.
And so then I said, well, you know, if I'm going to do electrical engineering,
I might as well pick something I think will have really good job security.
And everybody has a phone. So I don't think that's going away anytime soon.
So as an electrical engineer, they'll probably need more of those in the future.
Um,
so I actually double majored in electrical engineering and math education for
four and a half years in my undergrad.
And it was only when I went to teach in the secondary schools that I was like,
this is not for me. , I felt like a glorified babysitter.
We really don't value our teachers. Um, and you know,
the, the challenge of being a high school teacher is that you know, the kids,
some kids just don't wanna be there. I think I was also,
maybe the universe was setting me up to fail.
'cause I was trying to teach algebra two to students that were still in algebra
one and I was like,
that no child left behind act that we have in the US was really not benefiting
our students because they did not, they're not, they weren't gonna learn it,
right? Um,
so that's when I shifted gears to try to figure out what do I even
like in electrical engineering?
What can I be passionate enough about to make this a career?
Um, so then I did a study abroad. I went to Malawi,
Africa and I was there to teach in the schools, but it was really,
um,
I think the thing that really like got my heart was that they had to end school
early enough so that the kids could walk home from school because they didn't
have street lights because they didn't have lights at the school.
And so that was something that I was like, okay,
like if I develop electricity systems,
like I can still be really tied to education. And I think that electricity,
it can be that great equalizer, you know, online classes, knowledge sharing,
books, sharing, um, instead of doing book drives, right?
Like you can send a ton of eBooks very quickly across the internet.
So that was when I started to fall in love with the
engineering side. Um,
but I think throughout my four years of undergrad I kind of felt like an
outsider because I was good at it. 'cause I'm good at math and I like math,
but then it's like, okay, what do I love?
So then I did the study abroad and I I did that and I came back and I started
taking more classes on like power systems engineering.
And I was just telling people, well, you know, we,
they already had wind turbines over there. They already had lights,
they just weren't working. So who plans it? And somebody's like, oh,
well that's more of like an industrial engineer. So I said, okay,
I gotta like do industrial engineering. And then they said,
well you also gotta get knowledge and energy policy as okay.
So I did a master's in leadership for sustainable development,
trying to get more of like an understanding of like sustainability policies.
And then I did my PhD in industrial engineering with a focus on
building models for electricity planning and electricity policies.
And then after all of that , I, um,
then I moved into this role as a professor.
So actually I did combine engineering and teaching, um,
and my research and now I focus on,
I still focus on sustainability overall.
But I think that when I was doing my PhD,
I realized that a lot of people focus on environmental sustainability.
But when I've talked to communities both in the US and in Africa,
the thing that really hinders whether or not people believe in the energy
transition in my opinion is do they believe it will make a better life for them?
And that's when I think that we kind leave behind the social sustainability
side. And that has been my focus. So I still feel like I'm sustainability,
even though I think a lot of times I get labeled as, you know, the, um,
DEI, diversity, equity inclusion or the, uh,
social justice or equity or equality. I mean,
to me that's all under the branch of social sustainability.
I teach an economic decision making class. Um,
but I have included people impact assessments in it. And um,
sometimes students say,
well why are we learning all this stuff about social justice?
This isn't a social justice class. And I tell 'em,
if you think engineers made their profession because they thought a car would be
cool, then you are kidding yourselves because cars were made because horses are
inefficient and they wanted to be able to go farther,
they wanted to be able to better their lives.
Like that is the point of engineering. And I think that, you know,
as now we are tweaking things that mostly have been created, right?
Like, you know, you could argue that Uber isn't necessarily new.
It's a taxi that you can call from your phone, right? Like a toaster isn't new,
it's a really tiny oven that only works for bread , right? I mean,
but like after a certain point, right? You're just like, okay,
well like let's make sure that the students don't lose sight of what the point
of engineering was, right? Like people didn't call themselves engineers,
they call themselves problem solvers.
And that's I think sometimes what students lose when they're just doing math and
just doing like rote memorization or quick problem solving and things like that.
You have an audience of people who are interested in physics and who are
physicists. Anything you wanna say to them?
So I just wanna say that I think that the world in our work,
especially in the energy transition, needs more trade off analyses.
I think a lot of times the energy transition can boil down to
a few metrics that people look up. How many wind turbines did we deploy?
How much renewable did we deploy?
Or how many greenhouse gas emissions did we reduce?
And I think that there is a lot of topics that physicists can get
involved in. Um, and I just wanna make sure that we don't lose sight of that.
So, you know,
it's not just about how many electrons we have flowing through the system,
but also like how many electrons do people need to create a certain
quality of life?
And I think that that to me is one of the biggest things missing in our current
energy discussions.
When I have talked to people about some of my work on the residential side of
looking at these energy deficits,
one comment that I get sometimes is I don't wanna pay people to over consume
energy. And I am like,
what does over consuming even mean?
We don't have a threshold for if you have this appliance,
this appliance and this appliance,
here's how much energy you should use on a regular basis in order to heat
your home, right? But actually,
if you look at where energy poverty started,
there's a Brenda Boardman book that was published in 1991 and
the energy burden measure,
which or fuel poverty measure that people often talk about is, you know,
you shouldn't spend more than 10% of your income to adequately warm your home.
And she actually gave like, um, I think like a temperature range in there.
But now nowadays, when people talk about fuel poverty and energy burden,
often I just hear you shouldn't spend more than 10% of your income on your
energy bills and the part that they miss is to adequately warm your home
. Right? And that's the part that like I really think, you know,
physicists could be really good at helping with broader community could be
really good at helping with of what energy amount do you need to adequately warm
your home to adequately cool your home given climate change, right?
And then let's think about the energy system that we need to build and what
it will look like. Um, so that adequate warmth and adequate cooling.
I just feel like as we're talking about electrification,
we're talking about bringing that more electric cars into our homes and charging
them from our homes.
We're talking about changing out all of our natural gas appliances,
all of our oil appliances,
and even now people are struggling to pay their energy bills.
And we just wanna make sure that when we are setting standards,
we actually know that those standards are going to be adequate, uh,
for people to live a high quality life.
You can hear more from Destiny at Environmental Research 2023,
a virtual event series from the IOP,
which runs from the 16th of October to the 23rd of November. This year,
destiny is talking about air pollution.
I'd like to thank Ruhi and Destiny for talking to me for this episode of the
Physics World Stories podcast.
And I hope that we've been able to show that physics and engineering are not
just about abstract ideas for serving an elite group and they really can make
a concrete difference to people's lives and address inequities around the world.
Thank you very much for listening,
and we'll be back next month with something else from this wonderful world of
physics.
Physics world.