EAGE NEWS
gy, carbon capture and storage, subsurface energy (and waste) storage, offshore wind farm development, green hydrogen, etc. Another priority will be to grow our new Sustainable Energy Circle by guiding the ‘transfer’ of members, activities and content into the Circles overlap zones. One of the priorities of the Education Committee is to assess the skill gap between the capabilities of the member communities of the Oil & Gas Circle and those typically required by the emerging Sustainable Energy industry. In the short term, one of the key challenges of the EAGE then becomes meeting our members’ needs in filling this skills gap through our revised education programmes and high-quality workshops and events. Along the same lines, I see a need from both the oil and gas companies and professional member communities as well as the Sustainable Energy Circle to stimulate ‘outward communication’, rather than only inwards towards other geoscientists and engineers. Any particular initiatives you would like to promote? During my year tenure as president, I would like to stimulate and even proactively invite EAGE members to establish new communities within the new realm of our three overlapping EAGE Circles. These communities are considered the building blocks of our Association, and are all self-governed, independent of Circles. After Vienna, individual EAGE members and groups have already reached out with great ideas, now we need to condense those into communities, activities and content.
How can we accelerate the road to energy transition? Hard to say. In my view EAGE is still ahead of our peer societies, although we want to cooperate with them and lead by example. We first need to define clear goal posts and measures of success. Specifically for EAGE, I see the energy transition as the movement of our Near-Surface Geoscience and Oil & Gas Circles towards this newly created Sustainable Energy Circle, with increasing overlap between all three Circles as the global ‘new energy’ industry keeps growing. One proposed measure of success will be the percentage of overlap between Circles. How do we quantify this rather abstract overlap percentage. It can be accomplished through percentage measurements of 1) EAGE membership affiliation choice, e.g., more than one Circle vs. a single Circle; 2) New EAGE communities naturally falling in overlap zones of multiple Circles vs. a single Circle; and 3) Joint events and collaborations between Communities/Circles, in other words, cross-pollination of activities (workshops, side events, special sessions) and content between major events and key EAGE journals. These metrics still need time to be defined clearly. All EAGE members were recently invited to update their affiliations with EAGE Circles and existing communities and this should be helpful. As a society, the EAGE can accelerate the energy transition process by helping to remove some of the blocks that prevent us from transitioning towards a decarbonised energy mix.
What we need to do Communicate outwards to improve the image of the oil and gas industry and the sustainable energy sector, and to attract a new generation of geoscientists and engineers. Facilitate the transfer of skills, knowledge, experience, technologies, solutions and funding from the Oil & Gas Circle to the Sustainable Energy Circle. Data liberation and digitalisation: we are drowning in a sea of unstructured data, and still not sharing enough data between companies and industries. Support currently weak business models of sustainable energy by providing our EAGE members and their businesses platforms to share solutions on how to reduce costs, risk and uncertainties and create cooperation, synergy, efficiencies, supporting concepts of integrated energy systems. What do you like to do outside work? Since we now live two blocks from the Dutch North Sea shoreline, I am spending most of my spare time at or near the beach with my wife and two children. In Colombia, I summited two ‘Nevado’ peaks, Tolima (5.216 m) and Santa Isabel (4.950 m) with my climbing friends and witnessed clear evidence of the striking reduction of the snow caps. Back at sea level, we have now picked up wave surfing during increasingly hot summers in plain view of an increasing number of offshore wind farms. One could say I still have my eye on the energy transition process, even outside work.
Update your member affiliation for best EAGE experience Connecting with other members with similar professional interests is one of the key benefits of participating in EAGE activities. We highly recommend you maximise your engagement with the geoscience and engineering community by joining one or more of the new EAGE Circles, reaching out to a Local Chapter near you and par4
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ticipating in the Technical and Special Interest Communities relevant to your interests. In order that we can make sure your preferences are best served, we would like to invite all our members to take a few minutes to update their EAGE Affiliations in a short form. You can find the questionnaire in the link that was sent
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to your mailing address or by visiting our website eage.org. We appreciate in advance your updated affiliations which help us to continually improve your EAGE community. Access the EAGE Affiliations Module
