Annual Lecture 2007

Faculty Annual Lecture 2009

This year's lecture will be given by
Professor Paul Younger
Pro Vice Chancellor (Engagement), Newcastle University

King Coal: Time for restoration of the mucky monarch?

on Wednesday 11th March 2009 at 7pm
in Lecture Theatre 1, Ken Edwards Building, Main campus

Old King Coal has had – and continues to have – a very bad press (and a very bad press has he!). The protestors cluster around Kingsnorth and Drax power stations; opencast developments that are relatively modest compared to those previously undertaken in Britain arouse storms of controversy; and the handful of remaining deep mines struggle to expand even when market prices for coal reach historic heights. So isn’t Old King Coal dead and buried? And isn’t it a case of “good riddance”? This provocative lecture will argue otherwise. Ranging widely over the issues of climate change, renewable energy technology development, “peak oil”, nuclear power and the troubled concept of economic growth, Professor Younger – a hydrogeochemical engineer with decades of experience in the mining and energy sectors – will argue that a new approach to coal exploitation probably represents the world’s last best chance of bridging the gulf to a genuinely low carbon future. In particular, underground coal gasification with carbon capture and storage (UCG-CCS) offers the UK a phenomenal opportunity to lead the world in using the energy locked up in coal whilst ensuring that almost all of the CO2 arising is safely stowed in the deep subsurface, in purpose-engineered voids which do not suffer from the physical limitations of most deep saline aquifers which are currently posited as targets for carbon capture and storage projects.

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How to find us

Tickets (free of charge) are available from:
Mrs Chris Goddard
Science Faculty Office
George Porter Building
University of Leicester
LE1 7RH

Tel: 0116 252 3403

Email: science@le.ac.uk

Please contact Mrs Goddard if you have any queries

See our previous Faculty Annual Lectures >