GHGT-17 Future Leaders Forum: Leading the Charge for a Sustainable Future

Building on the success of the first future leaders panel at GHGT-16 in Lyon, 2022, this year’s Future Leaders Forum ‘Young Voices in CCUS: Leading the Charge for a Sustainable Future’ was introduced by Abdul’Aziz Aliyu (IEAGHG) and chaired by Alex Cruz (Baker Hughes) and comprised:  Shafira Anandita, a PhD student in chemical engineering from Singapore; Luz Angela Serrano Herrera, a chemical engineer at Techint E&C from Buenos Aires; Tanya Srivastava, Senior CCS advisor at CEMEX and pursuing a doctorate at Delft; Aisha Ibrahim, an early career researcher PhD at the University of Sheffield and advisor to the Nigerian Petroleum Regulatory Authority; Katia Piscina, PhD student at Heriot-Watt University with a masters in Climate mathematical modelling from Exeter University; Ariel Plantz, PhD student at the University of Texas, Austin and Tristan Cloarec, CO₂ and process innovation senior engineer at Lhoist, Belgium. Of these Sharifa, Luz, Tanya and Tristan were students from the 2024 IEAGHG Summer School in Darwin, Australia.

Education was a strong theme and there was consensus that ignorance is not bliss and that education on climate change and mitigation technologies needs to be implemented from elementary level and continue through to tertiary levels and beyond. Katia, when asked ‘what drove you to use your mathematics background, especially in climate change?’ responded I’ve always been interested in maths and moved into CCS to be part of the solution to climate change, although I wish I had had more teaching at a younger age on the causes and impacts of climate change. Education is an area I see myself contributing towards.  On further education Shafira explained how in Indonesia at undergraduate level there is a lack of synergy between academia, government and industry. Giving some solutions Sharifa thought that knowledge exchange could take the form of site visits, visiting lecturers and medium to long-term opportunities including scholarships.

Moving on to skills and human capital Tanya shared from her experience that hiring is not easy. It takes around 6-7 years of development to get a project off the ground and there is a big gap in skills and human capital throughout. It’s also important to get the message out to young people that CCS is part of the solution and a worthy career to join.

Regional geographies matter and Luz stated that regarding the regional picture, CCUS will look different from region to region. In Latin America utilisation will play a larger role, we don’t yet have policy for storage or the assessments. Brazil has just passed the first legislation. Our energy matrix is different with no coal, plenty of hydropower and renewables. Expect to be an exporter of synthetic fuels of the future e.g. SAF. I have dreams to work as an engineer on some utilisation projects, I am optimistic, even though developing countries are often the last to get technologies. Tristan added by contract in SE Asia its really about technology selection, fitting the appropriate technology to the area.

Aisha spoke from her experience that emerging economies such as Nigeria are looking to industrialise and decarbonise. There is little incentive at present, with some regulations around the practice of flaring. But hampered by limited funding and a lack of climate education. There is plenty of work to do around creating a regulatory framework, turning strategies into policies and building capacity through scholarships and other programs. ‘We need a just and equitable transition, Africa is the fastest growing population and it has a lot of issues to deal with’ says Aisha, ‘we rely on rain-fed agriculture and we will feel the effects of climate change’.  

Even in a country like the US, Arial feels that there is more to do, she set out how the US are one of the most supportive governments in the world regarding CCS with the BIL and 45Q tax credits, but further incentives are needed to make it profitable. She would also like to see a requirement that government funded projects have to share data, so that we can all accelerate our learnings. Shafira agreed and stated that data driven informed decisions are critical and the biggest challenge is data accessibility. More open-source data would help greatly in this area. We need to work together to achieve our goals.

In answering questions from the room, many thanked the young professionals for their contribution and asked about their dreams for the future, all panellists recognised there was more that needed to be done. Carbon pricing and taking the carbon take-back obligation seriously were among the responses to what barriers needed to be overcome. 

After summing up the discussion and thanking the panellists he announced the results of the student poster award. Working with a team of thirteen expert reviewers from academia, research organisations and industry, Alex championed the first GHGT student poster prize.  From a total of 60 posters, two winners were selected: these were awarded to Elliot Ross (University of Strathclyde) for the poster ‘Brewing up solutions: developing high-performance adsorbents from spent coffee ground waste for post-combustion carbon capture’, and Evie Nessi (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) for her poster ‘CO₂ utilisation through the production of carbonated salt nanoparticles in a rotating packed bed’.

We thank all our panellists for contributing to a great discussion and Alex and Abdul’Aziz for their leadership in making the Future Leaders Forum a firm fixture in the GHGT program and for launching the poster awards – congratulations to the winners.