okay good afternoon everyone I'm Peter Edwards I'm the vice principal for regional engagement here at the University of Aberdeen and it's my very great pleasure to to welcome you to this second session um and in a moment we'll be hearing from our guest speaker uh who's giving the plenary Martin McCormack but before we do I just want to warn everyone that the next session is going to be interactive as you've already heard we would ask you please if you have a mobile device to go to www.slido.com and it was up there a moment ago there we go when you go to that site you'll need to enter those numbers 3266 zero one five and that will unlock the poll that you'll be asked to respond to during Martin's presentation so the session that we're going into for the remainder of this afternoon is focused on possibly one of the most significant agendas for us in the northeast of Scotland namely the energy transition and we'll be hearing from Martin as I said about the energy transition shortly and then we'll move into a panel discussion with a really from my perspective a really exciting group of panelists that bring a variety of perspectives on the energy transition so that we can discuss the role of innovation in delivering the energy transition and really securing the economic future of of the northeast of Scotland so let me just before I get him up on stage let me just introduce our our guest speaker Martin McCormack as you will have heard Martin is the director of CC us and and hydrogen for energy transition zone limited um Martin has over 30 years experience in the energy sector he's also an alumnus of the University of Leeds as am I and I discovered earlier today that Martin and I were actually both at Leeds at the same time but we never we we didn't meet them um as we move forward in this session I think it's really important that we all keep in mind as I said the role of energy transition for us in the northeast of Scotland I've been privileged over the last few months to be involved with others in helping develop the new Regional economic strategy for the Northeast and I think suffice to say that the energy transition is absolutely at the heart of that new economic strategy so what we're talking about today I think is of the utmost relevance so I'd like to welcome Martin up onto the stage Martin will speak for around 25 minutes and as I said please be ready to respond to his his provocations and questions foreign [Applause] yeah thank you Pete thanks very much just before we came up Pete said he's going to say something about me that I didn't know so I was a bit to be honest quite worried about that so that was okay so a good afternoon ladies and gentlemen it's genuinely a pleasure uh to be at this prestigious event a thank you to the principal and to all the staff at University of Aberdeen and uh you know some of you probably take this wonderful venue for granted but what a fantastic place it is it's a it's a venue that I actually got a close relationship with from previous work in BP but not here to talk about that um I'm here to hopefully provide an overview of this northeast Scotland energy transition opportunity that Pete's already alluded to and hopefully put the put the case for why this is going to be really important to the region going forward and maybe get to the point somewhere in the future just like we've been identified as the European oil and gas capital of Europe in the future maybe we can justify the tag of being the European European Net Zero low-carbon uh capital of Europe going forward I will potentially sometimes mention Aberdeen that is meant as Aberdeen and the region so for anyone in the in the Shire if I say City please take it as gospel I'm meaning Northeast Scotland so um with that I'll crack on so hopefully many of you in the room are familiar with energy transitions Zone and the company we're a not-for-profit organization we are set up to support the region and to help the region prepare for the future particularly around the energy transition opportunity we're funded by both the Scottish and UK governments and we also have private sector funding from opportunity Northeast and as Pete's alluded to we see our remit is to help the region to prepare for this really exciting opportunity that we have going forward in in terms of energy transition we're trying to do that by trying to do probably three things we're trying to attract new manufacturing opportunities that are going to be attracted by this pipeline of opportunity and the place and come back to that we're also trying to develop the skills necessary for the future and what we're pleased to talk about developmental skills for the future than here and also a lot of what we're talking about is pre-commercial technology and the role of innovation is going to be critical going forward so now it's time hopefully for you to do a little bit of the work so what I'd really like you and by the way it does get a bit more technical than this um so what I really would appreciate is if you could just practice with the technology and what do you feel is the most of famous achievement from the region the city I'm not maybe expecting too many votes for Aberdeen Angus given Pete's uh earlier presentation unfortunately but there may be one or two out there so if it's allowable I'm going to vote too how we do it wow thank you I didn't expect that answer but um there you go so there's hopefully a good a good start going forward but uh Abilene Angus did get a vote so I'm really pleased about that um interesting enough that those those came from chat gbt you may have seen my little comment at the start this is not all my work Gothenburg 1983 was my own contribution so just goes to show um you know how the human intelligence compares to artificial intelligence going forward so next question hopefully this slide is self-explanatory we are obligated every one of us to get to Net Zero by 2045 so do you think we can I'm not sure if it's taking the votes yet there we go I said I can vote can't I great split split split house that's not surprising I would guess we'll come back to that in fact maybe we'll explain that slightly now so this is a slide courtesy of um Grant Wilson Dr Grant Wilson at University of Birmingham it's a slide I think I don't see often enough when I go to energy transition um type events because it's showing the sheer scale of what we're trying to achieve when it comes to energy in in the UK so just to get your heads in red is electricity so that's currently what we're able to power through the existing electricity grid green is the current wind proportion of that so renewable portion there's probably some other renewable sources from there the black line is all the transport so many of us would have driven to to this event many of us probably didn't use an EV or a dare I say a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle um so that's the black um part of that blue is gas um something I'd like to just to draw your attention to is the shape of that particular curve gas is really how we manage to heat our homes in Winter when obviously demands are at its greatest so just a couple of takeaways that's one the other is electrification is really important to how we get to Net Zero and I totally agree with that but the scale from reaching from that red line to nearly that by the way the purple line is the total put together to get from that red line to that purple line is a huge amount and particularly when we start to think about security supply and resilience type questions going forward so how are we doing in terms of our role to get to Net Zero well the answer is we're not going quick enough so I think people are familiar with the committee on climate change so that's the government independent group that provides guidance to the government's all governments as to policy or how they're doing in terms of their performance this is an interesting report just recently and it's back to power so if we can't decarbonize our power system by 2035 which is the UK government committee we really don't have much chance of getting to Net Zero 2045 in Scotland 2050 in the UK so committee on climate change is clearly saying it's possible but not at the pace of progress that we're currently seeing and Scotland as you know has got um has been is is obligated to get to net zero five years earlier than the UK and that's because we should be able to we it's it's more realistic to get to Net Zero in a place like Scotland 2045. unfortunately and we've got a Target to get to 75 percent by 2030 we're not on track now there's million mitigating factors in that particularly reserve powers being some of those but it just means we're not doing enough and we're not doing it quick enough I don't know if anyone went to the all energy conference a couple of weeks ago in Glasgow it was a great panel um I don't know if you have had the pleasure of seeing Chris Stark who is the chief executive of computer and climate change uh and he talked about this is a Sprint not a marathon he quoted a certain minister uh who will remain nameless who was referencing it relatively recently as more of a marathon so not only ministers I think need to take take into account that this is really important and we need to get into action but every one of us in this room today but particularly ministers for energy security and Net Zero so we really need to be in action so last question of the this session for you then I continue to do my work do you think that this region Aberdeen and Shire can indeed become a Net Zero Energy capital and this is hitting you cold and hopefully I I will be able to convince you afterwards but it doesn't look like I've got too much work to do which is great great thank you we will come back today do you mind just get in a rough shape of that graph so we can perhaps review how poorly I did later on when I asked the same question later great so um good start and you're not alone which is great we've got a couple of people who you may know who if they're in this room I think would have voted yes um certain ex first Minister and the current first minister so these are actual quotes from from them and I hope to be able to put the case for that argument over the next few minutes and I'm going to try and do it using um USP unique selling points or in this case us5ps because I'm going to be talking about five particular attributes of the region that I think are really good and that we all can control to a greater degree I've already referenced there are certain things out with our control I will come back towards that at the end but there's many things we do control and it starts at place and then I'm going to talk to you through the project pipeline that we have at a high level and I'll focus on hydrogen something I'm much more comfortable with and then we'll talk about the role of the supply chain and particularly the pivoting from a legacy oil and gas um area into energy transition people of course and then finally which is close to this particular we'll talk about technology and the potential that Innovation and Technology could can make in this space going forward so hopefully that makes sense we'll find out the place of Aberdeen these are attributes hopefully not familiar these are familiar to you we have got the tools and the capabilities and the infrastructure to relatively easy transition particularly to a large-scale offshore low-carbon energy production Basin of the future which is the direction that we're traveling so all of that Legacy oil and gas experience is directly relevant all that infrastructure or much of that infrastructure can be repurposed the quality of our universities and our further education College already is working in the right spaces etc etc I'll talk a bit more about the um the South Harbor and the energy transition zone just very briefly so we've invested 400 million pounds into the South Harbor a lovely fact I like to share is the port of Aberdeen is the longest serving Commercial Business in the UK I think that's full stop we're going to has got a long history as well but the port of Aberdeen has got a an even longer one I believe and it's growing and preparing for the future through the South Harbor deep water non-titled um Port we're trying to create a business environment which is going to attract new businesses towards us particularly around the energy transition opportunity going forward and skills and technology is very much part of that I will come back to the energy engine I'll try that again energy incubator and scale-up hub later in the talk p I may forget which pm on by the way is the project pipeline so this is a very busy slide I never apologize for it because I think it's so exciting so this is showing our current energy transition opportunities and our future energy traffic transition opportunities and by the way it's missing some information already this seems to go out of date quite quickly the uh turquoise I think color is Scott wind so you may be familiar with scotwinds uh 2020 [Music] 22 I think it was announced initially 25 gigawatts now 28 gigawatts 17 gigawatts of that is within 100 nautical miles of Aberdeen so it's the 60 percent of that huge opportunity going forward um not on the not on the slide is the intog The Innovation and targeted all of gas which is another five and a half gigawatts of offshore seabed licenses and the vast majority of that is within the geography of the northeast of Scotland so huge opportunities around offshore wind the blue areas I never know what to call them if I usually call them blobs but in a university environment that doesn't seem very technical so call them areas these are the first two storage sites that could be enabled by the acorn CCS project I'll come back to that briefly but we've got world-class carbon dioxide storage potentially the same geology or very similar geology that we've produced oil and gas so 24 gigatons of CO2 storage within a 50 kilometer radius of those two existing pipelines that can be repurposed so otherwise they would be decommissioned so we're hoping to put them to work 24 gigatons by the way is something like 75 years of the total UK emissions as of 2020 CO2 emissions I'm talking about not all greenhouse gases so I'm going to break that down just a bit more detail onto hydrogen and this slide is a set of Flagship projects that are well underway in the region that we hope to be able to enable in the next two to five years going forward and it really does start with um Saint Fergus and carbon capture and what that can do in terms of potentially enabling large-scale blue hydrogen there's two colors or there's many colors of hydrogen the two I will talk about are blue which is where we're basically taking the feedstock which is methane natural gas and then we're reforming it we're splitting it into constituent Parts predominantly hydrogen and then CO2 is a byproduct is captured and then transferred and stored in that those geological stores I talked about it it's called a baited gas and the great thing I'll talk about this shortly great thing about hydrogen is it doesn't have any emissions when you use it at source so that enables large-scale blue hydrogen and that's what the acorn hydrogen Project's all about hopefully you've heard of it so this is based at St Fergus uh sterega and this is aiming at one particular Market that low carbon heat so that's that very um Peak and trough curve that I showed earlier one of the challenge of the most challenging probably part of the picture in terms of getting to Net Zero because of the scale the sheer scale scale of what what needs to be delivered 85 percent of the UK households are tied to Natural Gas probably the university some parts of it at least tied to the Natural Gas system that's 24 million homes by the way so it's not an insignificant task and as mentioned we can go from unabated natural gas which is what most of those houses are using to abated gas that's either blue hydrogen where the vast majority 90 of the co2s capture that source and stored and then when we use something like hydrogen in our in our homes the byproducts are heat and steam so it's not perfect but it's better than what we're doing and it can be done as you'll see in a second quite quickly also green hydrogen could be used for that purpose as well we have got a project called Aberdeen Vision it's an sgn project that's just finishing pre-feed which is identified the path for a dedicated hydrogen pipeline from Fergus down to the city of Aberdeen the work is also identified that over two summers we could convert all our homes that are currently on natural gas over to hydrogen and one of the main reasons we can do it over two summers so and one of the main reasons we can do that is because a lot of the infrastructure is also um it's also fit for hydrogen purpose the low pressure infrastructure so we have the opportunity to actually move quite fast in the City of Aberdeen if we're able to because this is a reserve power but also if the city commits to it and People's Choice is going to be very important in this and where better to do it than a you know to convert a city to hydrogen than a city that's already recognized as a leader in this space so we actually have hydrogen in the city it's working practically you may have seen the buses and people come to see us regularly to see what we've got most UK cities don't have what we have so we are a great position to grow from here so this is just two refueling stations and some of the experience of Transport in particular and the great work the city council in that pioneering and pilot work is now getting to the point where it can become become commercial through public pirate public private Partnerships why did I pick peas by the way public private Partnerships that's one been set up between BP and the city council and that's to get it from trial status to commercial going forward you may be familiar and I've talked about um pre-commercial so this is a very exciting project so they're looking to do a demonstrator off the coast of Aberdeen in the concaten Wind Farm 25 kilometers off southeast of Aberdeen so this is offshore green hydrogen production on a semi-submersible infrastructure or a floating substructure the pipeline comes ashore into the geography of the energy transition zone and there's another project in Aberdeen Bay the eowdc and they're looking to retrofit hydrogen so we've got potentially three hydrogen projects in the region it all sounds great doesn't it but it's actually not because it's really hard to actually establish a hydrogen economy because who's going to use it who's going to buy that hydrogen is the market ready for for hydrogen and the simple answer is not yet so we have established a group over the last two years to collaborate to work together and that was a theme I think that emerged from the first session the importance of commitment around collaboration work together to try and work on the common areas safety public awareness demand aggregation practical problems as well and it's a shame that Deb's left because James Hutton is a great example of that you heard about agriculture wanting to embrace or find out more about the role of hydrogen so we're helping all of these projects hopefully to get to final investment decisions and those three of those green hydrogen projects final investment decision is when projects actually get built contracts get awarded jobs are generated three of those hopefully happening this year and the region can generate at least a gigawatt of low carbon between blue and green and that work by the way was done before the Scotland leasing round so there's a surplus of power that could be power 2x as well so much more than a gigawatt of blue carbon hydrogen going forward one of the companies on on that group and these are all senior players so Bob Drummond for instance the CEO of hydroson is on this group is a great example of the third P if I'm counting correctly which is the pivot of the supply chain from a predominantly oil and gas background into low carbon opportunities in this case hydrogen so hydroson you may be aware of worn born and bred in Aberdeen is now a global player with a global footprint and has strategically shifted over the last seven years 2016 they started their work strategically shifted into the hydrogen space to the point where now eight percent of their revenue as of last year was from hydrogen work and due to grow to 25 by 2025. so a real opportunity for others to to go that route too and for any supply chain there may not be many in the room energy transition zone through courtesy of just transition funding from Scottish government has got some funding available for supply chain companies to to help them start make the capital investment required to to go after some of these renewable opportunities uh the fourth p and I've been told to hurry up is people um so these are two reports from rgu's energy transition Institute I've seen two or three pieces of work that give similar answers 90 of the skills predominantly in the oil and gas sector are transferable the first piece of work was UK wide the second piece of work I will want to dwell on for if I can is the importance of this discussion to our people in the region so this is a specific piece of work again done by Paul deloon his team at at energy transition Institute we're starting with a baseline of 45 000 people already in the region that's 20 of the workforce is in energy 90 currently in oil and gas so that's how important this is to the region if we energy transition right we can grow to 54 000 people which is about 20 that's really embracing all of the energy transition opportunities if we don't get this right there is only one natural way that we know that oil and glasses gas is in Decline and we can drop that by a 40 figure so it's really important to us as a region that we really do look and embrace every opportunity that we can and as for the future Talent pipeline I think I've got the numbers right yes few I think I think the principal said it was over 20 000 I think 21s are roughly right so we have got a strong pipeline of opportunity how much how many of those are staying the region uh is obviously part of that I I think the University of Aberdeen figures would suggest it's around 40 percent how many of those know about this energy transition opportunity how many of those would potentially want to stay um to work in this region um questions may be for later and we have one other example of I think really good collaboration that I want to draw your attention to which is something that maybe some of you familiar I know some of some of obviously the members of the University staff will be so we've got a national energy skills accelerator this is a collaboration between both universities um skills development Scotland is creating a One-Stop shop for industry to come forward with their needs going forward and it's also to help some of the people currently work in oil and gas who wish to get into Renewables so a really good example of collaboration happening where maybe it wasn't happening naturally before maybe it was and final p looking over to my timekeeper is the technology potential and innovation these are 10 organizations with physical assets on the ground that I bet are working on energy transition I don't know for sure and by the way this is not an exhausted list so apologies if anyone is representing one of those entities in the room and one of them the new kid on the Block is the energy incubator scale up Hub in in the energy transition zone so this is going to bring business collaboration startup companies to the region we hope to work on energy transition challenges going forward we're very grateful to our founding Partners BP and Scottish Enterprise and of course we've got the Scottish government and the UK government money behind that so we really want that asset to be put to work as soon as possible it will be operational in just over a year's time so to conclude or getting close to conclude um it is now is the time for action no so Pete gave a great example of where action can happen Okay it took a long time but is it you what a great great uh success story you may have caught the World Meteorological organization's report last week and only report on their five-year prediction of the planet temperature and unfortunately there's a two-third chance that we're going to exceed the very key data point of 1.5 it doesn't mean the Journey's over but it is not a place we want to be we don't want to be hitting 1.5 degrees um uh warming since pre-industrial levels but it looks like that's where we are so now is the time that we get into action as a region we need to be in action because we need to be aware of the world around us we weren't successful in some some important UK decisions recently that has impacted our energy transition opportunity and we absolutely need to be aware of the international risks the inflation reduction act in particular in the U.S is is a fantastic example of when you can get policy right and I
mentioned two P's that we don't have control over policy and that drives Pace in this area the U.S through their inflation react reduction act have really got that one I think at the moment um pretty well understood so 400 billion pound of dollars in the energy space and we are already seeing evidence of companies preferentially moving there um over over the UK our own place our own policy and pace of policy is I would say slow I wish I could say stronger and more positive words we may want to come back to that I'm really getting close now so I'm going to finish up by just giving my own personal incessment my own personal assessment I didn't get permission from my boss to put this slide up all right so this is how I think we're doing on the things we can we can influence forget policy at the moment can't influence that I'm sure you can but it's a very hard process we can influence these five things I think we're in a really good shape I think we can dial up on a couple of areas people may not have the same views I'd be interested to see there's a dramatic difference but I would point to Innovation as an area I think back to those slide of 10 at least 10 organizations with physical assets on the ground in the region I think we all including us now as as a new player I think we could do more much more I think we could take advantage of examples like Pete's work and then the skills work and our own work in the hydrogen space to say can we be dialing up our Collective effort around energy transition maybe again another one to talk about in the panel last question really pushed my lap now so you have to do this quick I want to get into trouble no so if I've done a bad job this number goes down Pete so I'm really worried here please vote openly that was me trying to lead the uh the witness I haven't said that I am voting positively myself I don't know I don't maybe write the numbers down people I don't know if I've done any good there but anyway um to conclude I do think personally we have got a massive opportunity in this region uh to to embrace energy transition and to sort of make the same sort of impact that if you are involved in the oil and gas sector and forgive me I've got 30 years of that in my history uh subsea was born in this region why because there was challenges offshore decommissioning now we are becoming leaders already in decommissioning facilities all over the world if we get behind energy transition particularly offshore low-carbon energy production I personally believe someone up here will be talking about our Global success story in 20 or 30 years time I'm done [Applause] sorry for right now that's okay so thank you Martin uh just to let Martin know and put him out of his misery I think you just shaved it I think the second pull you got slightly mirror yes slightly thank you but thank you to Martin for that I think um in the interest of time you've probably got enough time for a couple of questions at this point and then we'll move into the panel and I'm sure we'll have other questions then so any questions from the floor particularly points of clarification or questions yep one there thank you very much Martin a great presentation I was looking at the end of the scorecard um you got the supply chain in in yellow right and what's your your position on the supply Chain's ability to actually deliver the deployment of all this uh transition if we think that we have to have I don't know enough vessels rigs to do the commissioning win from deployment CC us at the same time is it possible for another Scotland supply chain to do so yeah I think so I I scored it yellow because the uncertainty over the timeline for projects so I'm an engineer so we we build things right you know you can only build things when you've got fire you know good business cases behind it the uncertainty on the timeline for even offshore wind which is going to happen is quite significant so to engage a supply chain on something that's quite still hard to describe in terms of when when will there be real work when will contracts be awarded when will I need to recruit people that's why I scored it um a little bit on the low side um I hope that answers the question okay anyone else yeah I think we've got one here see what you can't see can you all right can I just follow up that question and answer very same question come up all energy in Glasgow two years ago and we came to a catch 22 argument whereby supply chain won't follow through on the commitments of Net Zero Etc because we're waiting for policy decisions to consent uh the licenses Etc and then investors won't provide the cash available for Supply chains to be productive about it so something has to break the Catch-22 so any comments on that yeah so at the macro level I think it is happening so I mentioned the inflation reduction Act there are major Investments happening in the US in all aspects of low carbon here I mentioned three projects are going to make final investment decisions small scale stuff um that's why I think it's a bit frustrating that we can't point now to real work there's still uncertainty UK government has made an improved place in terms of track two for for CCS we really do need ccs to happen in Scotland it enables so much not only just emitting or abating some of the emissions that we're currently doing so there's been progress on on that but unfortunately we've got a government that is taking a very cautious relatively cautious approach a fair approach but very cautious versus a government that's basically allowing industry to decide if it wants to take take the BET and invest in the uh in the low carbon future going forward so not a great answer but okay as I said I think in the interest of time will any other questions can be asked during the panel discussion so I'd like to invite the other panel members please to join us on the stage [Applause] all right okay so um unconsciously you know who I am and and you you've met Martin but I'm going to now intro invite the other panel members to introduce themselves so Jenny hello everybody I'm uh I'm hoping you can hear me yes you can I'm Jenny stunning I'm the external relations director at offshore energies UK and some of you may know us better as oil and gas UK OG UK and we are the leading trade Association for an integrated energy industry and we have 400 members from operators in the oil and gas sector to integrated operators who also operate in offshore wind hydrogen and carbon capture and Storage thank you Richard hi I'm Richard Nielsen I'm Center Director of the national decommissioning Center and for those who haven't come across us we're a partnership between the University of Aberdeen and the NetZero Technology Center um decreasing is also part of the energy transition but we're also spreading out into other areas of energy transition and have a recent partner obviously renewable energy catapult um amongst other things and we were quite into discipline we're doing everything from behind the financial side of things through what's best the environment offshore um right through some tech development and more recently a large project looking at cross-sectoral decision-making and funded by the Scottish government thank you Richard and finally Daria hi everyone my name is Daria shapavalova and I'm wearing two hats today I'm the co-director of the Aberdeen University Center for Energy law where we do research on how we can use law regulation and policy and to facilitate just transition to make sure that law does not stunt a energy transition but equally does not green light and risky technologies that can bring social or environmental harm and I'm also the coordinator of the Jazz transition lab which is an interdisciplinary research group at the University and we bring researchers from law social science geography geoscience economics to look at just transition in the region and in other places around the world we are doing evidence-based research participatory research to look at how we can deliver a transition and which distributes opportunities and challenges in a fairer way great thank you so so that's who we are so I promised you quite a very panel and hopefully you know you you can see what I meant so I'm going to start us off with one of Martin's peas of his many peas he was put in his presentation and the one I'm going to focus on is the technology and Innovation potential and I think Martin highlighted the importance of that for us to deliver the energy transition in the region so I'd just like to ask the panel members and I'm going to start with start with Richard what concrete steps do we need to take to actually realize that potential okay so I think when I was when Martin slicer up I mean he put up kind of 10 potential clusters for for Innovation I think one of the things we need to make sure we do is to coordinate because one of the problems don't great so I'll say that I was straight all all great for for doing things I guess the the potential problem we've got is to use a p word again um is that we could either we we replicate work if we're not coordinated or we have potentially very very good Technologies which drop between um stools because we don't pick them up and I think the other thing is not just to have Innovation as as being technology but I think there's there's Innovation across contracts and profit possible regulation as well okay thank you Jenny so I would agree with that and I would add if I take it up a level we have such a great history and a great legacy in this region particularly for Innovation and entrepreneurialism in oil and gas I would like to see a spirit of entrepreneurialism and Innovation adopted and picked through to the energy transition as we go um and for me I'm going to borrow Chris Stark we need to be more sprinty that's a real concrete step we need to inject Pace but also pick up that matter if I stick with my running running analogy Pace some Sprints but also we need to think Marathon long-term strategy to set a framework to give people the confidence to invest quickly in technology and innovation okay thank you Daria thank you I agree with Richard and mujani but I think we also need to focus on social Innovation as well and and to maybe shift the focus a little bit from only looking at the region as a supply side but looking at how we can bring societies on board here to transform our Energy Systems our energy markets to alleviate energy poverty here in the region which is so energy resource Rich how do we Empower our communities in the Northeast to contribute to the energy transition how do we make sure that there is social license for the energy transition projects as well so I think there's a lot of work to be done in this social space to engage with wider communities as well great so that's three really interesting responses so I'm not going to come to you as the person who posed the question pose the question so your response um well I think coordination is the easiest one to tick off um we've I've shared two examples a very formal example for the NASA and then a less formal one and by the way we got involved that hydrogen ambition because we were siled so I think we can we should be able to after today kick off the coordination I do agree with the spirits of Entrepreneurship and my point my ad was going to be something similar support be aware of be interested in Innovative projects ERM dolphin or dolphin hydrogen fantastic project on our doorstep it's combining two of the you know two of the future Technologies floating wind and hydrogen um so I would just encourage us to support these technology projects these leading projects as we go forward find out about them I can help and many can help make those connections I'll just add that okay what about what about Daria's point about um I talk about the City of Aberdeen decarbonizing through hydrogen and some of the learnings that the UK are finding in particular about the evidence built around hydrogen is how not to do some of this work this was a 20 trial in northwest of England where people were forced to participate if you take an example an sgn h100 project in Fife so this is going to be 300 homes on hydrogen next year I think they're signing up independently so they are basically being willing willingly part of the story going forward I think the city is a great place to really build on that social side of things because we have got a tolerance for hydrogen um in the city which is great so we're open to this new way of um Heating and powering our homes but we do need to be very um mindful of the choice component going forward okay thank you and so I'm going to ask the panel one more question from me and then I'm going to be coming to the audience just to give you a a warning um so my next question really is is something that I pick up a lot in in my day job um because I spend a lot of time talking to to the business Community across across the energy sector and one of the things I hear a lot is is the perceived challenge of of business and universities working together um to work on some of these really major challenges and I guess I just like panel members to give us the thoughts on what they feel those challenges are and how we might overcome some of them so I'll start with Jim it's a really interesting question particularly here in a university today and probably because some of those difficult conversations have been had with our members um I would say one of the challenges would be or let me flip that round and make it an opportunity rather than a challenge to be open-minded it kind of links to what I was saying before and I think it will be difficult for business and University to work together on the energy transition if we shut off if I can be controversial for a second shut off for example and say I do not want to talk to a fossil fuel company let's put that out there because many of the companies that are household names for oil and gas are now integrated energy companies and they are the companies that we want to work with in partnership with to drive the energy transition and those are the kind of companies I think have a good history of working with brilliant academic institutions like the University of Aberdeen previously and I would like to see that tradition continuing as we move through the energy transition so for me broad-mindedness open-mindedness and a willingness to work with companies who are perhaps more difficult to work with when you think about their social reputation to pick up on on what Daria was saying okay thank you I can see Richard was smiling while you're talking so I'm going to come back to Richard next well I must I've actually found working with companies has been good um but but I think one of the key things is both parties understanding each other's drivers and so so the universities or the institution understanding what drives the company what their motivation is and trying to understand that and likewise there's always a perception with industry that universities are slow and actually we've quite often found the Opposites true that quite often we've been ready to do something and the industry has been slow but I think that there are it's trying to work out where the drivers are and what the motivations are and also having the right language so um I I've come across colleagues who will go in and pitch a project to a company and say I'm going to use a multi-layer perceptron and the company goes what and and it's they're actually addressing the problem of the company but the language is is so I think there's something in there about um both parties understand each other and having a common language which works thank you Dania um I agree with Jenny that there needs to be more open-mindedness we we are facing it every day the just transition lab because we are doing quite a lot of multi-stakeholder work and I think University here has a very unique and strong role to be this forum for a more a more neutral forum for building social consensus to have Rich discussions and it's not as scary as it sounds and I hope that there will also be more open-mindedness on on part of the companies to work with broader pool of stakeholders including climate ngos as well so we had an event um last March where we started inviting people and suddenly everyone said yes and it was around energy transition and just transition and I think at some point everyone started panicking a bit because our list of invites had certain energy and oil and gas companies but also Friends of the earth Scotland and trade unions and city council and the North Sea transition Authority and I as an organizer was getting quite nervous I thought we might end up with a fist fight we might end up with paint being sprayed all over the university building but we had a very productive day we had very rich conversations there were some difficult conversations and some challenging questions asked but in the end we had very good feedback we had quite a lot of points on which people agreed and there were some points which we did not agree on and we took it away after a very respectful debate great thank you Martin yeah I spent my last eight years in in one of those oil and gas companies in BP in technology and I'm just going to build on Richard's point in fact we worked on some of this collaboration is a contact sport um and I think one from an industry perspective we're too quick to generalize a problem rather than actually sit down and explain the problem and continue to work with the solution provider so it really needs to be a contact sport we need to be as committed to the solution as the solution provider so I I just we should do more and when we do it we need to do it really with commitment behind it I think that's what I would add to that okay thank you so questions from the floor for the panel yep I think this was the first one of the year if you could just say who who you are please just to I I is this working okay hi um I am a PhD researcher in the department of geography and environment so my question is for Martin so he talked about collaboration is there collaboration being done with the community and understanding what the community's needs are in terms of hydrogen and ccos and what's kind of the process in that and how do you plan to take their needs on board thank you yes so a good question so um there's I mentioned projects that are happening the Aberdeen hydrogen Hub as a for instance um they've just finished a public consultation process as part of their planning uh so there's some structured planning processes um there is evidence building going on that's one of the the main drivers for the UK government uh leaving the decision about how do we decarbonize heat until 2026 because they want to produce a lot of evidence and CCS I think is an area that I don't think is well understood and and I know projects like storyga or companies like storygo who are and shell and harbor energy on on acorns are really working on building awareness and sharing the information and letting the public make their own minds up about is this a good thing or is it not not a good thing I do think there's not a lot of people the public knowledge and some of these areas is is low I think there's a real opportunity to get into schools and start education on that the very basic level but we all have a job to do to to better describe what does energy transition mean what does just transition mean and what do these Technologies mean so work yeah work is hap work does happen in that space it tends to be on a project by project basis through the formal planning and consenting process I don't know if anyone wants to add it yeah Jenny if I can I mean it's not a direct one about formal consultation and planning but you do raise such an interesting question about the lack of detailed understanding across most of the British public about where their energy comes from because we did some polling work on it Adobe UK to really work out what people thought and how they understood energy and most people we found conflated energy with electricity so a lot of people have a good understanding of and how a lot of their electricity could come from renewable sources but when it came to the challenge that Martin outlined in terms of gas and heating and transport that that they really hadn't thought about so for us part of that kind of bringing people with us the social piece that we talked about in transition key to that is to help people understand more about where their energy comes from and how we can take practical steps necessary steps like carbon capture projects um to to achieve those Net Zero aims and part of that we found as well is how we talk about energy and often technical experts talk in acronyms and in really difficult to understand language and I think part of that learning for us as an industry as an integrated energy industry is to to do better about how we engage with the public and how we talk about energy and and also to be proud about what we're doing and we talked about the region and the Region's impact and our possibilities to do brilliant things in Innovation we should be proud of that and unable and confident to talk publicly about that to bring communities along with us when it comes to perhaps more difficult to understand or get your head around Concepts like carbon capture projects okay I think there was another one over here hi um just a follow-up to the two panel questions at the start is this on yeah it's on yeah um I agree the role of innovation needs more coordination it's more open dialogue with business but also needs cash um and I think going back to Martin's slide at the end of all the 10 entities that are doing different things and some are jigs on together and some are overlapping for the UK to come close to what the US is doing we need I have a lot of cash and my example was to go back to the 70s and 80s when all the big oil companies proactively put you know trillions of dollars into the UK to build the infrastructure so how my question is is how can we replicate that sort of proactive investment to deal with the supply chain issues that Martin said by trying to exercise all together provide a bigger voice to business to get more cash in because it's not going to come in in handfuls from the UK government so it has as they come from like corporate investment so my question is how could you do that okay great who wants to go first Jenny you bought up my voice by the end of this um I totally agree with you the bulk of the cash to transition to Net Zero will come from private companies and the easiest thing government can and should be doing is setting a long-term framework so companies can plan about their investment decisions because businesses don't make investment decisions shock to everybody here on parliamentaries life cycles businesses make investment decisions over 10 15 20 years and they need the confidence that government's not going to change the rules halfway through the game otherwise they won't invest anyone else want to come in on that matter yes I mean um another reason we should collaborate there's many reasons is um I think one very good bit of policy Regional is the just transition fund 500 million it's not a lot of money but 500 million pounds can go a long way particularly if it's wealth focused and again building on that collaboration where we pick the pick the bets that we think the region really needs to go after so what is the equivalent of subsea for energy transition that the region gets after so I do think there's some hope and I do applaud the Scottish government for for making that part of what they are committed to which is to help this region to have a just a transition so there's a pot of money that the region I think it's it's a gift for us to to make the most of so I think that would help a bit um and I think projects you know it's to the point industry when they see things are happening um they get behind it okay I think there was another one over there from the Divinity Department I would like to follow the point made by Jenny about us not being afraid of initiating difficult or potentially difficult conversations I'm wondering where are our Qatari partners right we have a campus in Qatar we have this links between our University and the local foundations and the government isn't there any chance of bringing those Partners to this conversation to the mutual benefit of of both sides so that's probably one for me to answer because as a representative of the senior management team on the stage um I think I think that's a really really interesting question and I think what you perhaps couldn't see was the fact that the principal was over there smiling and nodding while you were asking the question I I think what I can say without giving perhaps too much away is that we are thinking of running an energy transition event with our partners in Qatar later this year to begin exactly those conversations so that's an incredibly timely question thank you Tavis thanks Pete um the cabinet secretary for Net Zero and just transitioned Mario McAllen on Monday made an interesting comment that the greatest challenge facing the Northeast around Net Zero is a cultural one more so than a technical one I wonder what she meant by that do you want to start a soft area sorry [Laughter] because I work with him I know all the answers um I haven't been to that event but I have seen pictures and it looked very interesting and it's nice to see interest of the new cabinet secretary in the region um I think I will maybe answer with reference to the recent report that we published in the just transition lab so we have scoured literature newspaper clippings report research articles looking at how the oil and gas industry has shaped the region from the economic and social standpoint because there's been quite a lot said on how the oil and gas industry has helped the UK as a country or Scotland but not a lot on on the region itself and there's a copy I think one more left just there and we have found that there's been um there's been quite a lot of benefits to the region from the oil and gas industry very clear ones in terms of employment in terms of average earnings in terms of infrastructure transport airport You Name It We have also quite clearly that as Jenny mentioned there's a sense of Pride and a sense of you know we have built this we are pioneers in the North Sea which is today getting a bit stunted by you know comments and villainization of the industry as well we have also found a lot of challenges and that are associated with the oil price shocks with the slack or forward long-term planning for transition maybe we're moving a bit too slow and on the energy transition to to really go from being an oil Capital to being a net zero Capital as well and there are clear trends of the Northeast being a bit too slow to uptake this discourse on Net Zero on climate change more skepticism in the region on these issues and as well which is just ingrained in the society so I think there's just a lot of work to do both by us as the university as Educators by the industry by the industry Association to really bring that zero to the people great thank you yes so um good good question I was just thinking I would I would answer this thing I've got no contribute then last week at the conference um decommissioned conference there was discussion around transfer of skills um so opito did some really nice work around what they call the passport for skills password and the idea was to be a skills possible which is then allowed to transfer across into the the offshore neural sector and actually that's being blocked at the moment by not sure Renewables the equivalent torpito Frost Renewables so so we've actually got a culture problem between this is Renewables this is oil and gas this is something else this is something else and actually coming back to Cooperative collaboration collaboration and coordination side of things there needs to be a kind of breakdown of some of that antagonism almost between different sectors because I think if we don't we'll end up with people who are got great skills in oil and gas who can't transfer across because they're or they're gonna have to do massive retraining to do something they could have done anyway so I think I think there is something culturally not just within Society but I think between the sectors which can be broken down and just as I was talking about collaboration between you know the multiple sectors in terms of the Innovation side thing so I think I think that different energy sectors need to kind of break down that culture difference and look at energy as a whole because if we don't look at engines as a whole we're going to do a little bit of this a little bit of that and nothing's going to be coordinated okay I'm very conscious that I've been given the wind up signal uh so so we better bring things to a close I think I think um this is probably a conversation that could go on for for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening but um I'd hope that we can carry it on in the in the networking session later so I hope you'll join with me now in thanking Martin and the other panel members thanks and panel members will now leave the stage and I'd like to invite the principal Professor George Boyne to come back and join us thanks to all of you for joining us this afternoon for this celebration of our foundational purpose and celebration of research with impact it seems entirely appropriate that we complete our Celebration by recognizing the achievements of some of our PhD students because these are the people with the bright ideas that will be breaking the paradigms and bringing us new developments in thinking in conceptualization in theory in technology in the years ahead that will help us to get to the destinations that you've been discussing today and especially that one we've just heard about about becoming the Net Zero capital of Europe I do Wonder whoever whether the idea of a single capital is a little outdated we collaborate around the world with Curtin in Perth Australia in Qatar thanks for the question about Qatar in Calgary where we're working with other experts on energy transition so rather than seeing ourselves as a capital I think we could more usefully see ourselves as a nude at the middle of a Global Network where we're all working together to make the transition happen let's move now then to the prizes that we're going to award first of all the three-minute thesis winner and I'm delighted to announce that the winner of our three-minute thesis competition which celebrates the research conducted by PhD students the winner of our competition by the way goes on to compete at National level this year we have a double winner of our judge's choice and People's Choice who is Nicola rice from the School of Engineering [Applause] next I'm coming to our images of research winners I'm not going to announce three winners for the images of research competition which challenges PhD students to present their research in an eye-catching image and short description in second place rifky wijinarco from the school of geosciences [Applause] we have two more to to award in first place in this category Berea Fatima from the school of social sciences and our final
2023-06-06