Welcome to another week of Shaken Not Burned! 

This week, we’re stepping away from net zero targets and reporting frameworks to ask a more urgent question: what does it take to scale real-world climate solutions fast?

Joining us is Nick Wirth, aerodynamicist, engineer, and former Formula One principal turned cleantech entrepreneur. Today, he’s applying high-performance engineering to supermarkets, trucks, and buildings through Wirth Research, saving clients energy costs and cutting emissions with every installation.

We often assume sustainability is about sacrifice, spending more, slowing down, or complying with rules. But as Nick shows, it can be the opposite. With the right tech, smart retrofits, and a relentless focus on performance, you can cut emissions, improve comfort, and grow margins.

In this episode, we explore what happens when you treat climate action like an engineering challenge, not just a moral imperative. Nick walks us through his journey from designing wind-tunnel-free F1 cars to developing AirDoor and EcoBlade, technologies which are now being used across the UK retail sector to cut heating and cooling loads by up to 70%.

Nick’s story is a powerful reminder that many of the answers we need already exist. What’s missing isn’t innovation but implementation at scale.

The good news is that the business case is stronger than ever. The challenge now is moving fast enough, and thinking big enough, to match the moment.

Listen in, and find out what it looks like when a Formula One mindset meets a broken energy system – and decides to rebuild it.

Felicia and Nick explore why sustainability must be ROI-positive to scale, how overlooked retrofits could unlock the mass adoption of heat pumps, what supermarkets taught Nick about behavioural economics and invisible design, how to get engineers, executives, and regulators speaking the same language and why high performance matters, not just in sport but in systems change.

Reading materials:

• Reinventing Fire: energy efficiency as a "fourth fuel" and a lever for whole-system transformation.

• Data‑driven heat pump retrofit analysis in residential buildings: real‑world heat pump retrofits and annual CO₂ emission reductions of 18-39 %, offering compelling evidence for business case formation.

• Assessing innovation in the nascent value chains of climate‑mitigating technologies: A peer‑reviewed analysis of how early investments across technology value chains enable clean‑tech commercialisation including critical insights into markets beyond end‑products.

• Technology Adoption and Deployment - Financial Related Risks: highlights why estimating ROI is vital for tech investments, especially in uncertain market conditions. Discusses strategies for navigating regulatory risk, stakeholder expectations, and building organisational alignment toward successful deployment.

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