Captivating carbon capture

For one of my modules, we expect the students to take a topic associated with marine geology, and write an article about it. They are also expected to present their work. And in order to give them a bit of an idea of the possible topics, we invite external speakers to give presentations about their field.

We have six speakers. The topics vary immensely! It goes from reconstructing climate from the geologic record via the porosity of aquifers to the dangers of mass movement on submarine cables. And we have a talk on geological storage of carbon dioxide. That's done by Allard. I noticed on LinkedIn his career had brought him in that direction and I saw an opportunity!

He did a fab job, and he must have touched a nerve with the students. Literally half the students decided to use his talk as the base for their project! And that inevitably meant a significant amount in repetition in the presentations, and in marking the popular scientific articles, but it was good to see he had been so inspiring, and that the topic resonated so much. I hope this branch of technology will need more employees in the near future! 

Is carbon capture and storage (CCS) actually the answer? Well no, of course we need to stop producing the CO2. But before we get there we need to make sure that the carbon dioxide we do create doesn't end up in the atmosphere. The energy transition will take time! Building windfarms, for instance, takes a while. So I think it is a fantastic idea. And I think our students agree…

The Sleipnir oil field, which is used for CCS. Pic by Bair175