Ian Fells: Power to the people

Aug 21 2009 By Alastair Gilmour, The Journal

IAN Fells, emeritus professor of energy conversion at Newcastle University, is pleased with his Wikipedia entry. He checks it from time to time; it’s accurate, but he has no idea who wrote it.

"It’s strange, very mysterious," he says. "If I give a lecture somewhere, the chairman refers to Wikipedia to introduce me. Google me and you’ll get 150,000 references. I like to think I’ve kept the flag flying for the North East."

Ian’s is a highly-recognisable voice on radio and television – with more than 600 programmes to his credit – and he has published some 200 papers on a variety of topics from rocket combustion to fuel cells, energy economics, environmental protection and energy policy.

"I’m still involved in energy activity," he says. "I run a small consultancy with my four sons which I’m told is unusual.

"They now get on better than they did – money focuses the mind. I’m providing energy policy advice for the Conservative Party. There’s no hope of Labour getting it right – probably the Conservatives as well. There’s a great debate about wind farms and nuclear power.

" I’ve long been a supporter of nuclear power and at last the Government seems to be coming round, but we’re going to need some new power stations over the next 10 years, otherwise the lights will go out. We’ve got to sort climate change out now; in the next decade we’ll reach crisis.

"Actually, I made a drama-documentary for the BBC in 2004 called What If The Lights Go Out? which was a worrying thing to make. The actor who played the part of the energy minister was so good I’d have sacked the energy minister and employed him. Do you know we’ve had 10 energy ministers in 10 years?"

Ian’s honours are mightily impressive. He was made a CBE in 2000, he is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, was president of the Institute of Energy (now the Energy Institute) for 1978-79, received the Michael Faraday medal from the Royal Society, and was awarded the Melchett medal from the Energy Institute and the John Collier medal of the Institution of Chemical Engineers in 1999.

"I’m a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh but you really need to have very strong links with Scotland," he says. "My great-grandmother came from Cromarty and they said, ‘That’ll do’.

"I was director of funding for the Centre For Life in Newcastle when it first started out in 1995. I’m really very proud of getting that built and all the stem-cell work that has been done has been very important. I also founded the New And Renewable Energy Centre (NaREC) at Blyth and was chairman of the company. There were just holes in the ground then – a lot of academics don’t do much of that, those two things are very good for the North East.

"Another thing I’m really proud of is doing Take Nobody’s Word For It on television in the late 80s with Carol Vorderman – who nobody had heard of. We needed a girl who knew about science and engineering and it was the wife of the producer who suggested her. She was super at it.

"We made two, 10-part series and did things like explosions which was great fun. I interviewed Mrs Thatcher in her kitchen in Number 10 with some experiment about how to make bread. She turned out to be frighteningly good at experiments."

Ian jokes that when something has blown up or when people are killed, he’s invariably invited on to the likes of Radio 4’s Today programme to explain and comment.

He says: "I did 26 interviews in one day, the day after Chernobyl, largely as nobody from the Government wanted to talk about it. John Humphrys has never been unpleasant to me. He’s just trying to get at the truth of the matter and I’ve never found him pressuring.

"The interesting thing about doing the Today programme is about me sitting in a studio and being told to forget the 2.5 million people sitting at home – you can be provoked into saying something ill-considered. I much prefer doing it at the Newcastle studios anyway. It’s good for the North East, everything is very London-centric and the fact that they’re keen to have people from this part of the world is very good. And, it’s good for the universities – from a recruitment point of view and for students there’s a lot of pluses involved.

"When I meet people who were my students 20 or 30 years later I find they’re managing directors and running their own companies, it’s a very satisfactory state of affairs."

Ian retired from Newcastle University 10 years ago "to do all the things I wanted to do". He is a former director of the trustees of the Northern Sinfonia Orchestra.

"We should nurture people who are prominent in the North East," he says. "Gateshead is a great example – they’ve done a tremendous job with public art and sculpture trails, not forgetting the Sage and the Millennium Bridge. And it was a good decision by the Newcastle- Gateshead Initiative to develop Culture 10 to replace the Capital of Culture. The North East is certainly a very different place to the one I came to in 1962 from Yorkshire, what with two universities in Newcastle, one in Sunderland, Durham and Teesside – and the Open University is very strong."

It’s on energy matters that Ian lights up most and his thoughts are so obviously well-considered it’s a wonder we haven’t taken up every one of them. He values nuclear power as an energy source but believes a balanced portfolio is sensible. "The thing about windpower is that it’s been heavily over-sold," he says. "It’s very expensive and it doesn’t provide that much else. There has to be a back-up by gas and coal power for the days when the wind doesn’t blow, so it’s not as clean as it’s made out to be. Build wind farms by all means but let’s not get carried away. For the Government to put all its eggs in one wind basket is very foolish and an expensive thing to do.

"I’m impressed by the Severn Barrage; we can build them all up the west coast – in the Solway Firth, Morecambe Bay and the Rivers Dee and Mersey using proven technology that will generate 12% of UK energy – which is more than wind power will ever do at a great deal less cost.

"Wind power provides about 1.5% of our electricity with a subsidy of about £1bn on your electricity bill. This equates to a £30bn subsidy – you could build six nuclear power stations for that. Tidal power stations can last 100 years. In France there’s one that’s been there for 40 years and they haven’t even had to change a turbine.

"If I were prime minister I’d say this country is a very good tidal site, second-best in the world – and we’ll be building the casings on Tyneside and Teesside." Which all goes to prove you don’t need wind-power to fly the North East flag.

-- Tables

Professor Ian Fells on influence

What, in your opinion, is influence?

Influence is the power to get one’s own way.

Is influence the same as power?

See above.

Who or what have you been most influenced by?

Sir Arthur Eddington, astrophysicist and writer of many books explaining science such as relativity.

Who or what has most benefited from your influence?

My research students.

To be influential you must ...

Have a clear sense of purpose.