Agenda

There is a major divergence between incumbent, predominantly fossil-fuel based companies and renewables-based energy providers in their detailed projections of global pathways to net zero carbon emissions. While both sides acknowledge the importance of climate as a driver, this divergence is rooted in very fundamental issues, especially alternative views of technology, finance and policy.  In this plenary we will explore the opportunities, risks, and uncertainties for achieving a net zero world.

Affordable, reliable and ever cleaner energy is needed to enable human progress in an environmentally and economically sustainable manner. This plenary will focus on the top scalable technology solutions to reduce the carbon footprint and environmental impact of current energy production.  Topics may include methane management, CO2 emissions reduction, water and waste management, electrification, and carbon offsets.

The multiple changes in the energy system envisioned under the umbrella of the “Energy Transition” will result not only in threats to fossil fuel companies’ business models, but also to new opportunities in domains in which their technical and commercial expertise will be an advantage.  One example is the possible growth of a major hydrogen manufacturing and distribution industry, which may go well beyond the current scale of hydrogen consumption in refineries and chemical plants. In this plenary we will survey key technical and business challenges of this emerging industry, as well as other new market opportunities for traditional oil and gas companies, such as offshore wind power.

The transportation sector is the dominant end-user of the products delivered by the oil and gas industry and net zero ambitions across transportation sub-sectors will have an overwhelming influence on the industry's future plans.  This plenary will offer end-user perspectives from across the road, aviation and marine sectors with a view to framing the challenges ahead.

Carbon management techniques will likely need to be deployed at global scale to slow down global warming.  These techniques include capturing CO2 emissions from existing point sources (e.g., power plants) and implementing direct air capture (DAC) of CO2 from the atmosphere, with the captured CO2 either used directly or sequestered in subsurface reservoirs; biological carbon capture is an additional option. This plenary session will focus on scalable technology being developed both to capture and to store CO2.

Because geothermal energy can provide low carbon baseload electric power, this energy source has attracted considerable recent attention and innovation, the latter leveraging E&P technologies and capabilities in drilling and subsurface engineering. Harvesting geothermal energy from existing wells and infrastructure gives one example of how the massive infrastructural investment of the existing E&P industry could be turned to new uses in energy production and storage.  This session aims to identify and investigate key opportunities and technical challenges in the areas of geothermal energy and re-purposing wells and infrastructure.