The London SPE YP committee is hosting this event, which aims to have insights from academia and industry experts on energy transition, readiness and skills required.
The two speakers are:
Professor Martin Blunt from Imperial College London and Dr Steve Freeman from SLB. Each speaker will deliver 30 minutes talk followed by fireside chat, moderated by Nihal Darraj. We will have drinks and networking at the end of event.
Talk by Professor Martin Blunt
The presentation will discuss how teaching and research at Imperial College London has changed from an emphasis on petroleum exploration and recovery, to a more computationally-based curriculum focused on the energy transition: carbon dioxide and hydrogen storage, geothermal energy and the design of electrochemical devices.
The aim of the talk is to explore the very rich and societally crucial applications of flow in porous media, and to show how using a common scientific framework should allow us to design more effective storage, reactive and recovery processes. This is reflected in our teaching that now equips students with the skills necessary to assume key roles in the transformation of our energy economy.
Martin Blunt joined Imperial College London in June 1999 as a Professor. He served as Head of the Department of Earth Science and Engineering from 2006-2011. Previous to this he was Associate Professor of Petroleum Engineering at Stanford University in California. Before joining Stanford in 1992, he was a research reservoir engineer with BP in Sunbury-on-Thames. He holds MA and PhD (1988) degrees in theoretical physics from Cambridge University. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2019. Professor Blunt’s research interests are in multiphase flow in porous media with applications to geological carbon storage, hydrogen storage and manufactured porous materials. He performs experimental, theoretical and numerical research into many aspects of flow and transport in porous systems with an emphasis on high-resolution imaging, analysis and modelling.
Talk by Dr. Steve Freeman
There is a critical need to dramatically and urgently cut anthropogenic emissions while scaling low-carbon energy solutions, all while ensuring affordable and secure access to energy. Our energy industry and our society need to rapidly transform its infrastructure to a more sustainable low-carbon future. Engineering our future low-carbon world is one of the biggest challenges facing society and that challenge will only accelerate through this next decade. In this presentation, we will discuss the scale of the challenges ahead, the form of the solutions we can deploy, the speed and scale at which it needs to be achieved, and the skills needed to deliver that future we all need.
Steve Freeman is currently the Head of Energy Transition Innovation for the Digital and Integration side of SLB. This spans solutions across emissions reductions, CCUS, offshore wind, energy storage, hydrogen, geothermal, and energy integration. Steve is also the Global Technology Advisor for Subsurface, AI, and Innovation. Steve gained his Ph.D. in Structural Geology from Leeds University in the UK. He has worked in the Energy and Natural Resource businesses around the globe over the last 25 years.