Energy Manager
Eden Project

Matt H

00:00:03 Matt H, Energy Manager. I basically look after all of the energy on site. So it’s looking after our gas supplies, our oil supplies, all our renewable energies on site, also looking after water consumption. Just trying to make sure that we’re not wasting any energy, and trying to make sure that we’re doing our best to reduce our carbon footprint and be a more sustainable organisation, basically. I did a three year renewable energy degree. As part of my dissertation I did Energy Management in Business.

00:00:44 Came out with quite a good grade from that, and just as I was coming out of college this job came up, and I think because the Energy Management role has a few different sides to it, a lot of it is about communication, and before I was at University I was involved in some marketing and PR, so I got quite a lot of experience in how to communicate things to people. And then obviously the degree side of things gave me the real technological side of things.

00:01:10 I think the most difficult point along the way was probably actually being young, being sort of 14 to 16, battling at school with – with a learning disability, and having to sort of scrap your way through, really and fight your own battles, when no one else supported you or believed you. Because I didn’t know at the time what was going on. I knew that I had potential, but was just incredibly angry and frustrated that no one else kind of saw that. I think when you’re younger you feel school’s the only option, and when I discovered that it wasn’t, it was a huge sense of relief, kind of that sense of – Oh it’ll be OK, I’m not gonna – not gonna end up on the Dole for the rest of my life, so –

00:02:01 I think I’d been subconsciously formulating a plan since I started in media. ‘Cause I was getting bored with traditional communication, you know, magazine adverts, television adverts. I just felt they were a bit impersonal. And I came back and started working for a Sales Agency actually, Advertising Sales. And I worked there for about six months until I’d just had enough, and then left and started another business – doing media guerrilla marketing, basically, so. We made quite a good amount of money initially, and then 9/11 happened, and the media market went crashing down, and so I took the money and went to go and live in New Zealand basically.

00:02:42 The original plan was that I would live out there for good, and never come back. But – I stayed there for a month, and then I met – who’s now my future wife. We then stayed for two years, and decided that actually we quite wanted to come home.

00:03:11 On of the biggest turning points was getting a good grade in my degree, actually. I think subconsciously, it was always a bit of a niggle, with me, that maybe I thought that I was stupid, or I thought that I wasn’t academic. So then when I came out of my degree course and I got a First, it made me think – actually, you know, you’re all right at that. And that ticked a box that hadn’t been ticked before, so – I almost felt like I’d ticked all the boxes then.

00:03:45 I’ve definitely found now what I really like, yeah, hundred percent. Getting the job here, and now having a long term sense of security, doing a job that I really enjoy. My wife’s now seven and a half months pregnant, so I’ve got my whole future ahead of me all like nicely planned out. I’ve done my travelling, I’ve done my rebellious phase, now I’m ready for the future, I suppose.

00:04:14 ENDS