Materials innovation will help transform the world’s energy ecosystem

Hello, I'm Sarah Haigh, Professor at the School of Materials at Manchester and Director of the bp International Centre for Advanced Materials, or bp-ICAM, and I'm speaking today as a contributor to The University of Manchester's COVID Catalysts lecture series. I started as Director of ICAM on the first of July, so in the middle of the UK lockdown, and at a really exciting time for bp. I'm going to reflect on both aspects over the next few minutes.

To give some background, the bp-ICAM is a $100M investment by bp into an academic-industrial partnership between bp and four universities, including Manchester. The centre is focused on fundamental and applied research with the goal being to meet the current and future materials challenges within bp and the energy industry.

We have over 200 active researchers and I think everyone will have been affected by the move to working from home in some way or other. While this may have been welcomed by those with lengthy commutes, it has been difficult on those who have found themselves isolated or with additional caring responsibilities due to COVID-induced school closures or the loss of family and paid support. The bp-ICAM Hub is based in Manchester and when the University closed in March (2020) the hub staff moved to weekly Zoom check-ins, as well as regular scheduled and drop-in meetings and Teams project updates with bp. All the online stuff we are used to as the new normal. Now as the advantage of this, we're able to offer more flexible working patterns and I also understand that the quality of the coffee has improved.

To support our researchers, we have tried to be as flexible as possible with support where we are aware individuals have been disproportionately affected. For example, in one project two students lost their family childcare arrangements due to lockdown restrictions. In their case we were able to support their return to productivity by transferring unused travel budget (from cancelled conferences) to support childcare costs.

The lockdown has also changed the way we communicate our research, with this year's bp-ICAM conference being held online. This is the first year we have done this, but despite some downsides, there are clear advantages. People don’t have to travel halfway around the world and they can still hear about the latest discoveries, meaning that it will hopefully be a more accessible platform. We’ll be able to reach more researchers that are interested. We’ve also seen an increased attendance at our webinar series. Most of our previous seminars are available on YouTube - please do have a look, there’s some really exciting presentations from bp-ICAM universities as well as more widely from academics around the UK and the world. 

It is important to mention that the pandemic has strongly affected worldwide energy demand, which together with the global evidence of climate change is focussing global interest on transitioning to a more sustainable energy model. bp absolutely wants to be a part of that change. This year, bp's new CEO, Bernard Looney announced moves to change from 111 years as an international oil company to a new future as an integrated energy company. The company has committed to an ambition of being 'a net zero company by 2050, or sooner, and to help the world get to net zero'. That is a huge commitment from what has traditionally been an oil company. They have gone beyond this and announced some big changes.  

In the last months, bp announced some of the "big changes" they are planning by 2030, including:

• a 10-fold increase in low carbon investment to around $5 billion per year.
• a 20-fold increase in developed net renewable generating capacity, to 50 gigawatts.
• a near 10-fold increase in EV charging points to over 70,000
• a 40% reduction in oil and gas production - becoming more focused, more resilient and higher value.

These enormous changes, as Bernard Looney said at the conference, is going to transform bp into a very different company. Now this can’t happen overnight given the size and scale of bp. But the company are committed to making it happen fast because they recognise that the world needs change and importantly, bp really wants to be part of that change. I'm really excited to be working with bp as it makes this change.

I am a material scientist (and so could be considered to be biased) but I think it is clear that material science and engineering innovation are absolutely essential if we are to change the world’s energy ecosystem. Towards this aim the bp-ICAM developed a new low energy research theme in 2019, focused on researching the fundamental material science and materials technologies needed to support the transition to a carbon neutral economy. In June we put out a call for low carbon based projects on the topics of fast charging, hydrogen, and CO₂ conversion. We received an amazing response, with 50 great ideas submitted, many from researchers who were entirely new to bp-ICAM. Some of these have been shortlisted for the full proposal stage and we expect to see six to eight new projects funded in this area by the end of 2020.

The three focus topics for this call were based on where we see key material challenges in low carbon. Fast charging is one of the main problems that is facing widespread adoption of electric vehicles. Although electric cars now have the battery life close to matching the range of petrol cars, it is far quicker to fill up a petrol car. Even Tesla's 'supercharging' charge points take half an hour to add 200 miles to the battery. Therefore, bringing this time down will make electric vehicles much more attractive, and provides further incentive for both individuals and businesses to switch to electric, greener technologies. 

Nonetheless we recognise that sometimes battery technology may not be suitable for a specific purpose such as in aeroplanes in which case physical fuel may be needed. For example I've been working on a bp project where the reactions we are studying are being used in a pilot plant in Nevada to convert household rubbish (municipal solid waste) into jet engine fuel - with an 80% reduction in carbon emissions compared to conventional fuels. An alternative approach is to move to a hydrogen fuelled economy. Hydrogen is a clean burning fuel and has the potential to replace natural gas and is therefore crucial in areas where battery technology may not be suitable. A lot of hydrogen is currently produced from fossil fuels, so we are looking at ways of producing it cleanly and storing it safely.

The last focus area of the recent project call was CO₂ conversion. Since CO₂ is likely to continue to be a problem for the foreseeable future, one way of mitigating its effects is to convert back to a useable fuel.

I'm confident bp-ICAM researchers will deliver amazing things in all these areas in low carbon. I'm really looking forward to working with them and bp to deliver the materials solutions needed for a sustainable future with reduced carbon emissions to meet society’s net zero ambitions.