Winter School 2017 Blog: A personal Account

This blog was provided by Peng Xie, a PhD student at the University of Sheffield, whose attendance at the ECR Winter School 2017 was supported by the UKCCSRC.

The Early Career Researcher Winter School held at the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in CCS and Cleaner Fossil Energy took place in Nottingham from 13^th to 16^th February. With the support from the UKCCSRC, I had the opportunity to attend this winter school.

It is really a good activity for ECRs to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the CCS. In the four days, we listened seven keynote reports from speakers with different backgrounds, which covered nearly all the aspects of the CCS. In addition, the oral presentations and posters from students are a good method to obtain new research ideas. It is worth mentioning that we had a fruitful field trip to GE Company in Rugby. It is exciting for me to learn the world-leading R&D of the gas turbine.

Group work is another meaning but challenge activity in the winter school. Each group needs to answer several questions from the government consultation in a very short time. This activity inspired our creativities and trained our team cooperation abilities. In the discussion, I thought many things about globally environmental and energy issues.

Undoubtedly, environmental and energy issues, especially carbon emissions reduction are the global problem that require all the countries, no matter developed countries or developing countries, to deal with. However, carbon emission has its particularity because it is closely related to the economic development and people’s welfare. Therefore, it is very difficult for all the countries to form a unified point of view about this issue. Although UK is not the primary carbon emission country in present times, UK takes the responsibility and makes many efforts to promote the technologies development for reducing carbon emissions, which is worth respect. Under this background, the winter school is an amazing thing, where people from different countries and with different backgrounds discussed the problems that all humanity has to face. It is very good for us to understand each other and reach a consensus. In my opinion, when the governments are making policies, they should face to the future and have a farsighted view. As a PhD student, we should devote ourselves to make the world better and hope everyone can enjoy the benefits from the development of science and technology.

Finally, I thank everyone involved in the summer school again, and hope to have the opportunity to meet you in the future.