John Barraclough MSc CEnv MIEMA is a Senior Advisor in the Environment Agency’s Environment and Business Directorate and has a background in environmental management and industrial regulation. Over the last 30 years John has built up experience of working on decarbonisation projects in the public, private and voluntary and community sectors. He is currently leading the Environment Agency’s work on the regulation of carbon capture plants in England alongside a team of technical specialists. John is a Chartered Environmentalist and Member of the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment.
Dr Gareth Johnson is Head of CCS Sustainability at Drax. Gareth is a geologist with expertise in energy geosciences. He specialises in CCS and CDR and has also worked in the geothermal, energy storage and oil, gas and mineral production sectors. He joined Drax in 2023, after ten years of research at the Universities of Strathclyde and Edinburgh. Before that, he was a consultant geologist in the energy sector. He has a PhD in CCS, specialising in MMV. At Drax, Gareth leads on the science and evidence that underpin the sustainability of BECCS to help Drax deliver their commitment to be amongst the world’s first carbon removal companies.
Simon Gant is the Strategic Science Adviser for Net Zero at the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). His main responsibilities include identifying and prioritising HSE’s scientific research activities across Net Zero topics such as CCUS, hydrogen, alternative liquid fuels, batteries etc. Simon has worked at HSE’s Science and Research Centre for 20 years, during which time his technical work has mostly focused on modelling atmospheric dispersion of toxic and flammable substances. He is chair of the Atmospheric Dispersion Modelling Liaison Committee (www.admlc.com), which comprises dispersion modelling experts drawn from around a dozen UK Government departments (the Environment Agency, Met Office, UKHSA, Dstl etc.) plus the energy company EDF and consultancy RiskAware. He has been involved in various CCUS-related projects, including CO2PipeHaz and COOLTRANS. In 2017, he led a review of HSE’s work on CCUS, which is documented in a report available here: https://webarchive.
Zoe Chaplin is a Principal Risk Scientist at the Health and Safety Executive’s (HSE) Science and Research Centre. She has a particular interest in major accident hazard (MAH) pipelines and is responsible for the on-going development of HSE’s MAH pipelines risk assessment modelling tool. She is also a member of an Institution of Gas Engineers and Managers (IGEM) standards panel on natural gas pipeline risk assessment.
Zoe is actively involved in projects relating to the conversion of the natural gas network in the UK to hydrogen and the associated carbon capture and storage. This includes industry-led projects and those from other government departments, as well as the updating of HSE’s risk assessment models to make them suitable for both hydrogen and carbon dioxide.
David is a Founder and Director of Progressive Energy. He has a long and successful track record of Technology and Business Development at Senior level, with over 30 years’ experience in the electricity and energy sector, including 15 years in the area of CCS and more recently energy storage. This includes development and commercialisation of new and emerging technologies, project management, project and business financing, plant operational support, international marketing, commercial management and negotiation and business strategy.
Professor Sara Walker is Co-Director of Birmingham Energy Institute at the University of Birmingham. She has been working in the energy sector since 1996, with a career spanning industry and academia. Her research focus is on renewable energy and energy efficiency in buildings, energy policy, energy resilience, hydrogen, and whole energy systems. She is Director of the EPSRC Hub on Hydrogen Integration for Accelerated Energy Transitions, and Co-Director of the UKRI Energy Demand Research Centre. She is an Advisory Committee Member for the UK Energy Research Centre and the UK CCS Research Centre, and also contributes to the EPSRC Scientific Advisory Committee for Energy and Decarbonisation.
Adrian Topham isSenior Technology Manager CCS & Hydrogen, at The Crown Estate.
Adrian’s role as sector lead is to help create a pipeline of geological CO2 storage prospects that delivers CB6 targets and meets market expectations, while playing a lead spatial planning role to optimise seabed use between CCUS, wind and other sectors.His previous experience as an engineer, team leader, general manager and now development manager stems from academic training in chemical and petroleum engineering. He has worked as a reservoir engineer, aiding hydrocarbon extraction in many countries and is now committed to the carbon cycle and returning the by-products after use to the subsurface.Adrian’s CCUS sector interests are both technical (geophysical, geomechanical, geological) and economic (capture feasibility, transportation, removals). He is currently involved in supporting research into windfarm / seismic monitoring interaction.
Fatemeh has more than 17 years of experience in Energy industry. Currently she is the Director of Hydrogen and CCS Business Development at Air Products where she works with a range of global customers across the energy value chain on topics related to the Energy Transition. Prior to this role, she was the Venture Owner of Carbon Capture Technologies at Siemens Energy Incubator where she developed technology development and go-to-market strategies to build the CCS business for which she successfully pitched the business to potential investors to raise sufficient fund to take the venture to the next level up to the “Exit/Launch” phase.Fatemeh’s background is Mechanical Engineering, she has Masters in Renewable Energy from Heriot-Watt university and PhD in Carbon Capture Technologies from the University of Leeds in collaboration with the University of Texas at Austin.
Prof. Ian Reaney leads the Functional Materials & Devices Group in the Department of Materials Science & Engineering (MSE). IMR is a Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society and the IOM3 and Dyson Chair in Ceramics. He has published >400 papers, has a H-index = 69, with > 18,000 citations. He has won numerous awards including the Verulam Medal (2017) and was recently elected to the World Academy of Ceramics. He is an Adjunct Professor at Pennsylvania State University (PSU) and University of Aveiro, Portugal and European site director of the Centre for Dielectrics and Piezoelectrics in partnership with PSU and North Carolina State University. He is the PI on the newly awarded £2m, Transforming the Foundation Indutries Network+ grant
Professor Mercedes Maroto-Valer (FRSE, FIChemE, FRSC, FRSA, FEI) is Champion and Director of the UK Industrial Decarbonisation Research and Innovation Centre (IDRIC) focused on accelerating the transition to net zero of the UK industrial clusters and establishing the first world net-zero industrial cluster. Mercedes is Deputy Principal (Global Sustainability) and Director of the Research Centre for Carbon Solutions (RCCS) at Heriot-Watt University. Her internationally recognised track record covers energy systems, CCUS, integration of hydrogen technologies and low-carbon fuels. She has over 550 publications, holds leading positions in professional societies and editorial boards and has received numerous international prizes and awards.
The UK Carbon Capture and Storage Research Community (UKCCSRC) is supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) as part of the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Energy Programme.
The mission of the UKCCSRC is to ensure that carbon capture and storage (CCS) plays an effective role in helping the UK achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Location
D03 Ella Armitage Building
University of Sheffield
40 Leavygreave Road
Sheffield
S3 7RD
UK
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