A blog from Nigel Fine, IET Chief Executive and Secretary, February 2022

We, as engineers and technicians, need to think long-term and question what we do to get behind sustainability and climate change and get engineering at the forefront.

I chair the Professional Engineering Committee which includes all the Chief Executives representing professional engineering in the UK and we have become more aligned in what we must achieve together as a profession – sustainability being one of our main areas of focus.  

While policymakers may make commitments about climate change, it’ll be engineers and technicians who will deliver the solutions. But how do we as a profession put sustainability at the heart of what we do?

If engineers and technicians are to play a vital role, we need to start by embedding sustainability into the way engineering is taught across higher and further education, as well as apprenticeships.

Making this core within the curriculum and using real-life examples that will be relevant to students at the end of their education will not only be setting up our future engineers and technicians to tackle climate change, but will have a beneficial impact across society.   

We know it’s not an easy task, in fact, it is a monumental one, and there are still many obstacles we need to overcome, for example in policy, politics, education and behaviour.

As official observers at COP26 last November, we know that some progress has been made to tackle climate change and the right steps have been put in place with the UK net zero strategy, but we need action through engineering solutions and behavioural change to ensure that these goals are met by 2050.

Our latest Engineering a Better World podcast episode discusses the UK’s 2050 net zero aim and how it will not happen without a skilled workforce.

Our host, John Elledge, talks to Siobhan Baillie MP, and Yvonne Baker and Dr Graham Herries, co-chairs of the IET’s Education and Skills Policy Panel, about how we can lead the way in delivering the skills required to make net zero happen.

We also aim to achieve net zero by 2030 at the IET, and we have set out clear goals in our Strategy 2030 to ensure we are leading by example in regards to sustainability.

We have achieved bronze accreditation with the Investors in the Environment - a national environmental accreditation scheme designed to help organisations reduce their impact on the environment – and are currently working towards silver accreditation.

We have also adopted a digital approach in many of our communications and events. While this has been accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, this will now be a long-term solution even when we return to our new normal.

Our new way of working, supported by increased digital capabilities, will help us to move towards a net-zero future – one of our 2030 goals.

We understand that digital solutions come with a risk and as cyber-attacks become increasingly complex and difficult to detect, cyber security has become a top priority.

The UK Cyber Security Council is a self-regulatory body for the security profession, championing professionalism within this area and they aim to increase awareness and promote excellence in the profession.

The IET was elected to lead on the development of the council, as part of an alliance with 16 cyber-security organisations and related bodies, following the 2018 public consultation led by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) which found overwhelming support for a new body for cyber security.

Climate change is a global issue – engineers and technicians work on projects that impact across borders and we seek to reduce emissions around the world.

We want our engineers and technicians to step up, wherever they located, and join our global technical networks, communities and panels to find ways of tackling one of the biggest issue we face as society today - climate change.

We all need to play our part and even at the IET, we are still learning about how we can become more sustainable and finding innovative ways to provide the solutions.

If you have any ideas on how we can become more sustainable as an institution or as a profession, please join the conversation on our new community’s platform EngX^TM.

Thank you

Nigel Fine

Chief Executive and Secretary