Sustainability on the road

Balfour Beatty Early Careers festival

This week, I had the privilege of taking a roadtrip with our Head of Science, Georgia to the Balfour Beatty Early Careers Festival, held at the iconic Victoria Warehouse in Manchester. As I look back on the day, I feel not only a sense of pride in representing Syntech, but also a deep sense of optimism about the future of engineering, infrastructure, and sustainability in the UK.

We drove up and back on Syntech ASB so the roadtrip was sustainable as well!

The event itself was buzzing with energy. Imagine hundreds of early careers professionals, apprentices, graduates, and those just taking their first steps into engineering gathered under one roof, curious, ambitious, and eager to learn. For me, that kind of environment is infectious. It’s a reminder that, while the challenges we face as an industry are immense, the talent and enthusiasm of the next generation are more than up to the task.

But why were there? At Syntech, our mission is clear: to deliver low-carbon, truly sustainable fuels and bring forward innovative solutions that can help accelerate the UK’s journey to net zero. We were invited to showcase this mission at the festival, and it was an opportunity we embraced wholeheartedly.

I think our stand had all the right elements, a used cooking oil tanker, a JCB, Derek the Orangutan and the 9 x British Truck Racing Champion Ryan Smith’s race helmet drew plenty in to see what we are all about.

What struck me most in conversations with young engineers and industry entrants was their genuine interest in sustainability. For them, climate change isn’t a distant concept or a line in a corporate strategy, it’s a reality that will shape their careers, their communities, and their lives.

They’re not asking “Why should we?” anymore; they’re asking “How do we?” And that subtle shift is powerful.

When I was starting out in my previous career, sustainability wasn’t even thought about to be honest but now it’s embedded at the core. Yesterday proved to me that the mindset has shifted. The early careers talent I met understand that sustainability isn’t just part of the job, it is the job.

Events like this don’t happen without leadership. I want to give a special thanks to Balfour Beatty for not only organising the festival but for ensuring that sustainability was placed front and centre. Too often in our industry, we hear about the tension between progress and sustainability, as if one must come at the cost of the other.

What Balfour Beatty showcased was the opposite: that progress and sustainability are inseparable, and that embedding green thinking into early careers is essential for building resilient infrastructure.

I was also hugely impressed by the work of Balfour Beatty Group Sustainability Director Joanna Gilroy (MBA) and Energy & Decarbonisation Manager Elisha Walters, whose leadership in this space is both practical and inspiring. They understand that embedding sustainability isn’t just about big declarations, it’s about making it real in the day-to-day conversations, projects, and career pathways of those entering the industry.

I spent the whole journey home trying to work what bits of Jo’s presentation I could get away with plagiarising, she gave a 20 minute sustainability masterclass that was formidable to say the least.

Their efforts are setting the stage for a generation of engineers who won’t see climate responsibility as a separate track, but as the standard way of doing business.

As we spoke to groups of apprentices and graduates, I found myself reflecting on my own early career experiences. When I started, the industry was still very traditional in its approach.

Conversations about fuel revolved around cost and efficiency, rarely around environmental impact. Sustainability, if it was mentioned at all, was viewed through the narrow lens of compliance rather than innovation.

Fast forward to today, and I see an industry that is evolving rapidly. At Syntech, our work on sustainable fuels is no longer a niche side project, it’s central to the national conversation about energy and infrastructure. But what excites me most is seeing young professionals treating sustainability not as an optional extra but as a non-negotiable foundation.

That fills me with hope. Because the truth is, the climate challenges we face require more than incremental change, they demand a complete rethinking of how we design, build, and power the future. And that rethinking is already happening in the minds of the engineers, scientists, and innovators who are just beginning their careers.

Leaving the festival, I couldn’t help but think about the road ahead. For Syntech Biofuel, our commitment remains firm: to scale up sustainable fuel solutions, forge partnerships that accelerate decarbonisation, and contribute to a cleaner, greener UK. But for me personally, the festival was a reminder of why this work matters beyond business goals.

It matters because the people I met yesterday, bright-eyed apprentices and passionate graduates, will be the ones carrying this work forward long after I’ve stepped aside. Our responsibility today is to give them the tools, the opportunities, and the collaborative platforms they need to succeed.

Collaboration really is the key word here. No single organisation, no matter how innovative, can solve climate change alone. But when infrastructure giants like Balfour Beatty bring sustainability to the forefront, and when companies like Syntech step up with practical solutions, and when the next generation embraces this as their cause, it’s then that momentum builds. It’s then that change happens.

So this weeks event left me both humbled and energised. Humbled, because the scale of the climate challenge is immense. Energised, because the commitment, talent, and creativity of the next generation gives me confidence that we can meet it.

To everyone I met at the Early Careers Festival, thank you. Your questions, curiosity, and determination reminded me why this work is worth doing, even on the hardest days. And to Balfour Beatty, Joanna Gilroy, and Elisha Walters, thank you for proving that sustainability isn’t just a theme to talk about, but a value to live by.

As I left Victoria Warehouse, I felt a renewed conviction that together, across companies, industries, and generations, we can tackle climate change and accelerate the transition to a cleaner, greener future.

Story by Syntech Biofuel