On 8th October, Dr Sean Simpson from Lanzatech will be speaking at the University of Auckland, on the subject of “Climate-friendly fuel: A challenge of scale and time”. This is part of the Energy Centre’s Energy Matters lecture series.
Sean is a great speaker – I saw him give a keynote address at the Energy Conference back in March – so I’d strongly recommend coming along if you’re interested in these issues, or even just if you’re into science or commercialising new technologies. You can register here, and it’s a public event so anyone can attend.
The synopsis for the lecture is:
World energy demand is expected to increase by up to 40% by 2030 with renewable sources playing an increasing role in the primary global energy supply. Internationally, governments have already begun incentivising and mandating the increased use of renewable fuels in the transport sector. It is anticipated that the global markets for more environmentally sustainable alternatives will exceed $100 billion by 2020 so finding sustainable, scalable solutions that will safeguard the environment while not detrimentally impacting food supplies is essential.
This talk will discuss sustainable hydrocarbon fuel and chemical production processes, ranging from available, mature technologies, to processes on the brink of commercialisation and those still further back in their development stage.
And the following gives more detail on the speaker:
Dr Sean Simpson is the Chief Scientific Officer and Co-founder of LanzaTech. He leads the development and commercialisation of the company’s core technology, which involves taking waste gases from steel mills and converting them into high-value low-carbon fuels and high-value chemicals. The core technology has been successfully demonstrated in a pilot plant in New Zealand and two large pre-commercial scale plants in China.
Since its inception in 2005, Dr Simpson has led the company to secure numerous rounds of venture capital funding, significant commercial and technical partnerships with leading global organisations, and government R&D grants. His leadership has encouraged collaboration between biologists, fermentation specialists, process and design engineers and business development teams to develop the technology and the company to become a global leader in gas fermentation.
Prior to LanzaTech, Dr Simpson had eight years’ experience in bio-products development and is the author of more than 20 publications and numerous patents.
If you want a bit of a sneak preview, Sean’s presentation at the Energy Conference was filmed and is on Youtube.
Processing...