banff and buchan college

“Girls in Energy” take on Energy challenge

50 female students from Turriff, Mintlaw and Huntly Academy visited Shell for the second annual ‘Girls Energy’ conference which is organised in partnership with Banff and Buchan College.

The students are all part of Banff and Buchan College’s ‘Girls Energy’ Programme which provides training to encourage more women into science, engineering and technology careers. The pupils are undertaking the Skills for Work Energy Course along with their usual subjects at school and with support from Shell U.K. Limited and Schlumberger the girls will experience real-life examples of engineering and technology in action.

This theme for this year’s conference is Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). In preparation for the conference, a small group of students came to Shell in late September to meet Paul Garnham, Front End Project Manager, who gave them a talk about CCS as preparation for the conference in October.

Paul said: “It’s important that we provide relevant learning opportunities for the next generation of engineers, scientists, technologists and mathematicians. Tackling climate change by reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is such an important issue for both our generation and ones to come, so it is necessary to talk about the short and long-term options to achieve this.”

On the day the students were divided into groups, each team representing a specific viewpoint on CCS - Government, Operator, Villagers and NGOs. Each team spent time discussing the topic from their new perspective and created a slide pack to present to the other groups. They were also asked to think of challenging questions to put to the other teams. Finally, each team selected a student to act as a negotiator; the aim was to work together across team boundaries to find a solution that was acceptable to all parties.

Technology Sector Manager at the College David Cook said: “This assignment was set to encourage team building, discussion, research, presentation and negotiation skills, along with the added challenge of putting forward a point of view that was not necessarily the student’s own. This will all be invaluable to them when they enter the world of work.”

At the end of the day members of the conference took a vote to choose the winning team. The winners were the NGOs who had a well thought out and balanced presentation and a strong negotiator. The end result was that the CCS project went ahead with specific environmental considerations taken into account, including better and less invasive transport infrastructure.