Who will keep the lights on?

Professor Jon Gluyas is Dean of Knowledge Exchange in the Department of Earth Sciences and Durham Business & Innovation Services. One of his specialities is carbon capture and storage. See more information about Prof. Gluyas HERE..

Before the meeting we were pleased to welcome fellow Rotarians and guests from the Durham Bede and Durham Elvet Clubs - and Dr Hardeep Singh of the Rotary Club of Delhi Garden City, India. President Elect Ed (in the chair for this meeting) took this opportunity to exchange Club banners with Dr. Singh:

We then were sad to have to say goodbye to Rotarian Derek Sowell and his wife, Sylvia. Derek has been a member our Club since 1980, is a Paul Harris Fellow, is a Past-President and has chaired and been secretary to many of our committees. We will certainly miss him, but we wish him and Sylvia all the very best in their new home in Hampshire - near their family. President Elect Ed presented Derek with a Club banner as a small memento:

But then Jon asked the question – “Have we really run out of coal, oil, gas – and what about geothermal?” He went on to explain that we have around 750 years’ supply more or less under our feet, and by using the carbon dioxide captured from the coal we could derive further supplies of both oil and gas from our existing fields, providing many more years of energy self-sufficiency. Moving on to geothermal sources (getting heat from deep underground) he indicated that research has shown that we could obtain rather more than 100 years of heating supplies.

So, given the political will - and funding - we could be self-sufficient in energy once again.

The summary of Jon's arguments are best illustrated with two images from his presentation:

Jon then concluded his talk by quoting a quip from Private Eye:

It's a high level political meeting in the USA or the UK - at the end, the chairman summarised:-

“OK – it’s agreed; we announce – ‘
to do nothing is not an option!’
then we wait and see how things pan out...”