On Monday 10 March, we were delighted to welcome Mr Chris Joly to the College for our latest Scholars’ Masterclass titled ‘The Energy Transition – The Journey to Net Zero’.
Mr Joly previously worked as a petroleum engineer in the international energy industry and is now an Associate Director of the Green Angel Syndicate investing in a number of start-up companies involved in renewable energy and energy efficiency. He is also an ambassador for the STEM initiative delivering lectures in schools on astronomy, archaeology, and renewable energy to stimulate interest in the science subjects.
Mr Joly’s talk focussed on renewable energy, and he began by sharing his journey and career path so far from A-level to now. He spoke about his work in the oil industry before in 2016 he made the switch to working in the energy transition. The presentation was split into four parts starting with the importance of renewable energy. Mr Joly stressed that is important we stop using fossil fuels to prevent further damage and that the aim must be to generate electricity with renewable energy to also offset any emissions.
Mr Joly also spoke about the different types of renewable energy that are currently available to us. These included hydroelectric power, geothermal energy, solar power, and wind turbines. With each example, he explained how each type of energy works and provided examples of them is use from across the world. For example, with geothermal energy, hot lava in volcanically active regions heats water and turns it into steam – this can subsequently be captured and used to drive turbines to generate electricity.
Mr Joly then spoke about how we manage renewable energy and shared some of the difficulties here. Today, there is not a great enough supply of renewable energy that would match the current demand hence why gas-fired power stations are used to ‘peak shave’ - match supply with demand. Another challenge is the cost of renewable energy. It is currently very expensive, and it costs a lot of money to adapt the grid and build electricity storage and/or back-up systems to deliver electricity reliably.
Mr Joly concluded his talk by talking about Net Zero - achieving a balance where the amount of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere is equal to the amount removed. This is to be achieved by 20250 and Mr Joly had a chart that demonstrated how UK is setting about doing this. Once again, he also spoke of the challenges we face in order to achieve this.
Thank you, Mr Joly, for visiting the College and talking to our pupils. We’re sure that they found your presentation on renewable energy and Net Zero to be informative and balanced.