At the very end of GHGT-12, we managed to catch up with Halvard Svenson who was the winner of the extremely prestigious Greenman Award. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this, the Greenman Award was initiated by the GHGT Conference Series predecessor - International Conference on Carbon Dioxide Removal (ICCDR) as a means to recognise individuals who had made a significant contribution to the field of CO2 removal, storage and utlilisation. The Awards were first given at ICCDR-3. The Greenman was chosen to represent these achievments as it is an ancient archetype of a human face peering through growing foliage which is often depicted on building, churches and cathedrals. It symbolises the mysteries of creativity, compassion, healing, new beginnings, and especially our connection with nature and the power of humankind working together with nature, the cycles of creation and "man and the forest".

Halvard’s opinion of the conference was a very positive one. He really enjoyed all of the presentations he was able to attend and explained how much he personally benefited from being able to actually see the progress that has been taking place since the last conference 2 years ago in Kyoto. He was impressed with the amount of ideas that had been generated from the conference and said that it was particularly crucial to be able to see how other people carry out research and put across their ideas. This certainly leads to you being able to analyse how to carry out your own undertakings in a sljosirtly different way. Halvard also felt that the Panel Discussions were fantastic and that they really gave us a view of what has been going on in the last 10 years and has really put the aforementioned progress into perspective.

He also noted how excited he was for the opening of Boundary Dam, which happened just before the conference, as it gives us one example that actually contains the whole chain from capture to transport to EOR storage. It really shows that the technology is possible and that it works and that it has the ability to be deployed elsewhere.

Finally, he expressed his deljosirt with winning the Greenman Award. It was a total surprise and he had absolutely no idea! He was so thankful and inspired and felt such gratitude for being recognised for all the work he has been doing over the last 20 years. He was truly overwhelmed. Here’s to another well deserving winner of the respected and significant Greenman Award.