Energy, Environment and Sustainability Group
Saquib will be contributing to the Institution's Decarbonising the Industrial Clusters 2025 technical event later this month in Manchester. For further details and to join the event, please visit the event website.
Could you briefly explain your role, involvement, and experience related to the focus of this event?
Saquib Sultan (SS): I am Head of Technical Assurance for hydrogen production and industrial carbon capture (ICC) projects at DESNZ, which means I assess the technical deliverability of industrial-scale projects applying for government funding, including assuring their costs, from application stage through to negotiations and contract award. Prior to this, I completed a PhD on the capture of CO2 using calcium-based sorbents.
What, in your experience, has been the biggest roadblock for the industry over the past 2-3 years?
SS: The clusters approach has been necessary to enable funding of capture, transport and storage projects through capture business models and a T&S regulatory investment model. These are complex models where the balance of risks has had to be carefully developed. It has taken time to get there but we are there now with the announcement of cluster financial investment decision (FID) for the East Coast Cluster at the end of last year and we look forward to HyNet cluster FID shortly!
What key topics are you excited to discuss at this year's conference?
SS: I would love to see where we can bring the costs of CCUS down and the confidence we can give to the industry through more clusters and projects taking FID and starting to capture and store CO2.
What do you consider to be the key areas of innovation in this industry, both in the UK and internationally?
SS: There is a lot of research into more efficient forms of CO2 capture, using next generation solvents but also through metal organic frameworks (MOFs) and membranes. It would be great to see these competing with traditional amine-based solvents at the commercial scale.
Who else are you most interested in hearing from on the programme?
SS: With so many interesting topics, it's hard to pick just one! As it's closely tied to my area of work, I am particularly interested in Dr. Shengke Zhi's talk on Lessons from First-of-a-Kind (FOAK) projects.
Why is it important for engineers to join this conference?
SS: Government can put together all the business models and competitions for CCUS it wants but without engineers, none of this can become reality. Engineers can tell us what is sensible to do and what to avoid to give us the best chance of making a success of CCUS.
Power Plant Operations and Flexibility 2025 will be taking place as part of Decarbonise, Power, Store on 29 April 2025 in Manchester.
Decarbonising the Industrial Clusters has an engineering focus on the projects advancing the decarbonisation of industrial clusters using technologies such as hydrogen and carbon capture, utilisation and storage and will feature presentations from DESNZ, SGN, AtkinsRealis, MHI, engaging roundtables, moderated by industry experts, and open Q&A sessions.
Attendees will also be able to access presentations at the Power Plant Operations and Flexibility and Energy Storage 2025 events, taking place at the same day and location as part of Decarbonise, Power, Store.
To view the full event details and to book your place, visit the event website.