Episode 7 – Integrated transport and decarbonisation – take flight towards a sustainable future, Paul Toyne Head of Sustainability (Group), Grimshaw Architects
Epsiode intro
Welcome to Season 2 of the Interchange podcast. Our guest today is Paul Toyne who is Head of Sustainability (Group) at Grimshaw Architects and recently has been elected to the Board of The British Aviation Group (BAG).
In this podcast, Paul shares:
his people centric definition of what integrated transport infrastructure is and the flow of goods and services
his recent appointment with BAG and the significant progress being made to decarbonise the aviation sector and the wider industry
his view the importance of considering the environment, nature and ecology when developing infrastructure.
The Interchange Podcast is produced in association with Arcadis and interviews leading changemakers and thinkers about how we can make integrated transport infrastructure happen. This season we are framing our discussions under 4 key themes: Place, Data and Digitisation, Energy and Environment.
The Interchange Podcast series is part of Interchange, which is a platform dedicated to transforming and modernising transport infrastructure networks through integration, decarbonisation, and digitisation.
Interchange culminates in a thought-provoking two-day major conference that will take place on 04/05 March 2025 at Manchester Central.
Click here to find out more and to register for our newsletter so you’re notified when our bookings go live.
Dr Paul Toyne
Dr Paul Toyne has a diverse background, having worked all over the world as an environmental campaigner, conservationist and sustainable built environment specialist. Within the fields of property and construction, he has held Group Sustainability and Environment Director roles at LendLease, WSP and Balfour Beatty. His project experience includes all elements of the built environment, from flagship buildings and developments to infrastructure. Paul is a London Sustainable Development Commissioner appointed by the Mayor of London in 2010 and a member of the UK Government Green Construction Board’s infrastructure working group. Paul has recently been elected recently has been elected to the Board of The British Aviation Group (BAG).
Resources and Links
About Interchange UK
The Interchange Podcast series is part of Interchange, which culminates around a two-day major event about rethinking transport infrastructure taking place in Manchester on 4/5 March 2025. If you’d like to attend you can book your place here.
Transcript
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
transport, airport, people, integrated, aviation, sector, transportation, decarbonize, good, terminal, grimshaw, infrastructure, working, aviation fuel, affordable, part, world, guess, sustainability, architects
SPEAKERS
Dr Paul Toyne, Ayo Abbas
Ayo Abbas 00:03
Hello and welcome to the first episode of season two of the Interchange podcast. This podcast is sponsored by Arcadis and hosted by me, Ayo Abbas. Interchange is about looking at how we can make integrated transport delivery happen and involves me interviewing some of the leading thinkers and changemakers in the sector to talk about what we can be doing to get things moving. This year, we are looking to frame our discussions on the four key themes which are place, data and digitisation energy and the environment. My guest today is Paul Toyne, who is the Sustainability Practice Leader at Grimshaw Architects. He has also recently joined the board of the British Aviation Group, which is also known as BAG. Today, we talk about Paul's definition of what he sees as integrated transport. We look at decarbonisation for the aviation sector, and what the wider industry can be doing around that. And we also look at the importance of considering the environment, nature and ecology when developing infrastructure and integrated transport. Anyway, hey, the interview. Enjoy. Hi, thanks so much for coming onto the show. Paul, can you introduce yourself and your role at Grimshaws and the British Aviation Group?
Paul Toyne 01:23
Yes, of course. Delighted to be with you. So my name is Paul Toyne. And I am the group sustainability leader for Grimshaw and Grimshaw are a global architectural and urban design practice. And we have studios in North America, UK, in Europe, across the Middle East, and Australia, New Zealand. So my role really is to help the practice or its strategy around how we push forward on sustainable and regenerative design influencing our clients to require that and push hard on that. And for the projects that we're doing, influence them so that our architects and designers think about some of the crucial aspects around sustainability projects designed so that's that's the day job. And then I have a number of things that I do, I guess, pro bono, which helps support the industry in general. So one of those is I'm actually an elected board member to the British aviation group. So that involves a three year stint. And I was elected on my my ticket, which was was voted in on was sustainability. And the British Aviation Group represents all aspects of the supply chain in aviation. And what we try and do is, is make sure that our membership and those businesses are the best they possibly can be to deliver services to the domestic market, and also to our export market. So working overseas on aviation projects,
Ayo Abbas 02:57
I was gonna say and also, Grimshaw, as a practice is known for I guess, large scale like rail and infrastructure quite a lot. Isn't aviation airports and things like that?
Paul Toyne 03:05
Yes, yeah, no, we would be known as infrastructure architects, so and that that comprises of aviation, so terminal buildings, master planning of airport states, but it also goes through into the transportation sectors, particularly rail and Metro. And
Ayo Abbas 03:23
in terms of kind of what role can transport play in the kind of decarbonisation of the economy? I mean, how important do you think we are as a kind of sector.
03:33
So when you think about the built environment, you know, that's 39-40% of greenhouse gas emissions globally, you know, and what we know we need to do is collectively, all these sectors need to decarbonize. They're not all going to be able to decarbonise at the same rate, because there's certain you know, issues, technological issues and capacity issues, but they're all going to have to shift. And transporttransport is one of them. So that in the UK, for example, the power sector has done remarkably well. So you know, when you think about offshore wind, solar, flip over into renewable energy, reduction in reliance to coal and gas, and fossil fuels in general, we've we've powered that transition eight times faster than most of the other sectors. And so there's catch up to be played in transport, for example, in agriculture, and other sectors.
Ayo Abbas 04:29
So how did the power sector do that? What sort of things do they put in place, and that that could actually be shared to transport or you know,
04:38
so part of it, it's about it part of it, it's about the fiscal policies and incentives that you put in place, and how you attract that private finance. So you create certainty in the market. So if someone's going to provide or build facilities, say for example, offshore wind farms, then you strike a deal as to say, well, the future price of the energy that I'm going to be supplying to you is going to be x. And knowing that that gives you certainty around investing, and covering the costs for the planning, design and construction phase until you're into operational maintenance. And so, you know, these decisions take about 10 years from actually, you know, having the audit concept to delivery. And this is one of the things that we need to have or need to speed up a bit around some of the planning procedures that we have, clearly, we need to make sure we're making the right decision on governance is in place, and that if public spending and taxpayers money is being used, it's been the scrutiny is there to ensure that it delivers value for money.
Ayo Abbas 05:50
So, in terms of your roll up BAG, which is British Aviation Group, I mean, what can you know, what can I guess? What can the transport nodes learn to make a world class sustainable, integrated built environment? What what things? Should we be looking at what what things should we be adopting? Do you think that could be aviation or the wider? Yeah,
06:13
well, let's maybe let's unpack that a bit. Let's first of all start with aviation. So the biggest impacts that we have in our sector is actually the act of flying. So something like 90-95% of the sector's greenhouse gas emissions, is through flying. And why is that? It's good because we're burning aviation fuel, which comes from fossil fuels. And that's the big impact. There's other aspects in terms of water vapor and some contrails on how that then has an impact on on global warming. But let's just talk about the aviation fault, because what's been fascinating for me, and I, you know, I have worked in aviation for Grimshaw. I've worked at Balfour Beatty, and Terminal 2B, which is the Queen's terminal Queen Elizabeth terminal at Heathrow, funnily enough, a Grimshaw designed terminal, but actually built it. And that was one of one of my projects on my watch so to speak. And as a result of that, I've been part of the sustainability leadership team of icing who from things that they could to to decarbonize, and that was a good eight years ago, I think, from memory. So but having now step back, stepped into this role bag, what's really fascinating is to see the work that's been going on by airport owners, with aircraft, with with aircraft manufacturers, and fuel scientists to look at ways in which we can transition to low carbon aviation fuel. So that's something called sustainable aviation fuel, then, more popular, and in terms of probably understanding is the use of electric propulsion. So battery power, hydrogen is another possibility. And there's a huge amount of research and development that's going at a pace around the world, to decarbonize the sector, which is fabulous to see. So there is a zero jet fuel, I think, zero jet fuel, which has government support, has all the major R&D universities, together with, you know, companies like Rolls Royce, and Boeing. And now we're all working together, collaborating
Ayo Abbas 06:15
That's lovely, isn't it? That's what we need, isn't it?
08:32
It's amazing. It really is. I mean, it's almost, it's what you would, you would hope was happening. And it is, you know, you know, and so it's amazing. It really is. It's fantastic. And so that's, I'm really quite hopeful that we are going to see a trend at work, probably quite a transformational change. But what's interesting with that, is that what's the implication for the airport owner? And how do we have to redesign or reconfigure our terminals now appears, which is the pier so whether they're planes stack up and people go on and off the plane, etc? What do we do if we're going to be fueling planes with with, with different types of fuel? What's the impact on how it's stored? Are planes going to change in their size? Are we going to see short Hopper flights, which have electric propulsion that can take you from, say, London to Dundee, for example? Yes, so there's a lot of innovation, there's a lot of uncertainty if you'd like it, but in a positive way. So we what we have to do is start to think about how we future proof the investment that we're making now so that we can repurpose our terminals and our our airports, and that includes all the other aspects of transportation so so that you actually increase the opportunity for public transport to serve the needs of the airport and how do we facilitate that? So how can we put it all together so that we've got aircraft that can fly in the future having very limited are low environmental impacts, how can we have passengers going to and from an airport and an airport is seen as a destination. So you actually go there and enjoy that experience rather than think of it as the most stressful thing you've ever done and your holiday? Possible, possibly. But I think there's an also the other aspect, particularly when you talk about aviation is to think about an airport as a community asset, because there's local people who live around there, and how can they benefit? They might benefit from working there. But is there any other kind of community services that that airport cannot actually offer? So I think there's that's the kind of direction thinking that's starting to happen. So going back to bag, tremendous amount of work going on around sustainable aviation fuel in general. And then the other element is how we provide the services to the airport state to help decarbonize that, and then you have to think about how you power an airport, and it's estate, how do you heat it? What are the options? Sometimes these airports can be quite large. So it's I think,
Ayo Abbas 11:14
it's in a way, isn't it? Like you think of like the size of Heathrow? It's a mini city in itself? Right? Yeah. Huge. Yeah. They played with all of the all of the facilities that you'd expect, isn't it? It's the energy that the invite, you know, there's lots to think about. And yeah,
Paul Toyne 11:31
exactly. So how do people get around? And even even on the air side, the the buses that the transportation you get, how can that be low carbon? Carbon is part of the agenda? How can we reimagine the estate so that we can bring in some form of, of nature, you know, carbon sequestration happens through glow, grasses and, and vegetation, such as shrubs and trees, and whatever. So can we start to be thinking about how we can use the right kind of vegetation, vegetation also can help reduce noise can also absorb smells and such later, there's lots of ways we can bring nature based solutions in. And of course, key to it all. And this isn't just about aviation, this is about all our infrastructure transport. So we need to make it resilience. So we're talking about when those big challenges about reducing our current climate, current carbon emissions, that are causing climate change, but we have to accept that understand, we are already living in a world where we have extreme weather events, which are stimulated and driven by our human activity. And that's not going to go away, it's actually going to get worse. So how does our transportation, it needs to keep working at a time when our cities and everything else is being disrupted? So we need our infrastructure to be resilient. So it needs to be able to cope in terms of drought, heat, stress, high levels of precipitation, depending on where you are in the world could be wind and various other things. So because then transportation is absolutely critical for us, because if we don't have transportation, we're paralyzed, aren't we, so we won't have the flow of goods and services. So when we look at this whole integrated piece, we have to be thinking about, not just about maximizing it for own mobility under today's conditions, but thinking about what the future world and that infrastructure is going to have to cope with. And design for that and adapt for that. So
Ayo Abbas 13:36
what would you say kind of transport integrated transport looking like by 2035? In your ideal world? so transport has to be seen as an enabler? Yeah, otherwise, people won't use it. So we need it needs to be an attractive proposition. And it needs to service the needs of people or businesses that require transport those goods and services. So an integrated approach would be I guess, you know, theoretically, let's think so. We've got an integrated transport hub, what could that comprise of? Typically, you'll probably be in a city or adjacent to a city because it's, it's at an airport. And that would what we'd like to see is the is the interconnection that you could then have between rail and rail goes into high speed rail or intercity could go into Metro could be a tram. And then we're into transport rail, but of course, it is a form of it and the bus and then your interview, again, access cycling and active sign such as walking, so mobility. So in 2035, whatever. What we really want is to have a population that, when required can be mobile, and it's great a quality of Life improvement people's people have lived people's lives because they're using it. And for that to happen, it needs to be accessible, it needs to be inclusive, so it can attract all passenger types. And this needs to be affordable. And it needs to connect you to the places you need to go that That A to B
Paul Toyne 15:22
Exactly. And so wouldn't it be a joy? I mean, you know, I would, you know, we've got some great great transport systems that we have, particularly in the UK. But we also have vast swathes of our population that do not have good transport infrastructure. And that actually is, is act as a barrier, and it creates disadvantage. And it also creates vulnerability, these communities that are cut off and don't have good transport links. So we need to, we need to understand that we, you know that affordability also needs to mean that we need to balance it off with the requirement to actually understand it in some parts of the United Kingdom, we may have to pay more so that other people can find it affordable. So we have to, we have to weigh things up. But that's what I would be hoping I'd be hoping that it is a first class service, everybody really enjoys it is affordable. And it just helps our improves our quality of life.
Ayo Abbas 16:29
what are the kind of enablers and the blockers you see, kind of making your kind of vision happen? What do you what do you see is? How can we start happening now?
Paul Toyne 16:37
Well, I think one of the enablers is really people's perception of transportation. And in some ways, it can also be a blocker. So we know that we need to have efficient, reliable, affordable transportation. And one of the benefits of having that is the economy of scale. If you like, if we can get more people using public transport, it's actually a good thing. It reduces the environmental pressure takes people off alternative forms of transport, we need to get people off using cars, but we need to give them credible opportunities. So if the public perception is there is reliable, efficient, affordable transportation, then they're more likely to use it. So we need to be able to provide that, and then they will use it. So if you look at what's happened again, just taking reference to the Elizabeth Line. Yeah, you know, we didn't have one we didn't have that connection between the east and west of our city in London. And guess what? Now footfall passenger uses, you know, it's through the roof. And as a as a passenger experience, the customer is absolutely delighted. So, so why, why isn't it happening everywhere? So I think there are some big kind of issues around that. So one is access to project finance, and making sure that we can drive investment into integrated transport solutions. But But then it's complicated. So land ownership, who owns the land in which you want to put the transport or you want to reconfigure figure it, what is the what is the planning process? What how would you get consent? How do we bring in the communities that are affected both positively and negatively by some of those decisions? So it's the it has to be done in a way that brings people along with it. And then we get into our politics. Question is, who funds it? How do you make an attractive proposition? So how do you bring in private finance with public money and create an opportunity that actually, you know, when you think about it, there's always this over, it takes too long to build. And it's over. It's always over budget. But I think if we can, if we can link integrated transport solutions to people's needs, and that goes beyond just the individual but society needs, and that includes the economic aspects around how we operate, our businesses, etc. I think there's there. There is such a driver there.
Ayo Abbas
On that note, thank you so much for coming onto the show, Paul.
Paul Toyne
No, delighted to be to be with you. I hope I've said something sensible, but
Ayo Abbas
I think you have. It's good. Thank you very much.
Paul Toyne
Wonderful.
Ayo Abbas
Thanks so much for listening. And don't forget, Interchange isn't just a podcast. It's also a two day conference that will be taking place at Manchester Central on the fourth and fifth of March 2025. The conference will bring together the key public and private sector infrastructure operators and their value chain to talk about new ideas to challenge the status quo and build strong relationships so we can have a shared approach to make integrated transport happen, head to www.interchange-uk.com. To find out more
