Back to News >

9th August 2024

IChemE brought together a range of experts for a roundtable event on 16 July 2024, to discuss the safe future of the energy industry, and how to ensure process safety capability is protected and promoted as the sector moves away from oil and gas and as green energy ramps up. Trish Kerin, Director of the IChemE Safety Centre, chaired a discussion, with representatives from a regulatory, industrial and professional engineering institution background, including IChemE’s Clean Energy and Sustainability Special Interest Group, and the Major Hazards Committee.

The new government has ushered in a new ambition for green energy, with “clean energy by 2030” being their second overarching mission, and a commitment to make the UK “a clean energy superpower”. To successfully deliver these ambitions, these sources of energy will need to be, and be seen to be, safe and reliable. This will require that we make the most of the existing skills of the energy workforce as well as effectively and rapidly develop new capacity. Indeed, Labour’s manifesto set out an aspiration to “embrace the future of energy production and storage which will make use of existing offshore infrastructure and the skills of our offshore workforce.”

The UK faces a significant challenge in ensuring that the energy sector has the know-how needed to achieve process safety in the future. We are facing a perfect storm, as an increasing demand for energy and the resulting increased demands on the workforce combines with the Great Resignation and the potential loss of significant human capital and organisational know-how as the oil and gas sector adjusts to a low carbon future. This roundtable saw IChemE bring together a range of experts to discuss this challenge and how to address it.

To read the full summery of the round table, please visit the link below.

External URL: https://www.icheme.org/about-us/news-releases/making-sure-green-energy-is-safe-energy/