IChemE Matters – December 2024/January 2025

Recognising the present (and future) of chemical engineering

Mark Apsey, IChemE president

It was an honour to represent IChemE at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, to talk about our vision of engineering a sustainable world, our new climate change briefing, the recently launched technical challenge report and our UN Sustainable Developement Goals-aligned DiscoverChemEng campaign. We made some great connections with government officials, universities, industry bodies, and NGOs to follow up on.

By chance, I bumped into the UK energy secretary, Ed Miliband, and his advisors at the airport for a quick chat to offer our support and insights on industrial decarbonisation. I met with Marco Mensink, European Chemistry Industry Council (CEFIC) director general, talking about the challenges facing the European chemical industry and I had a great conversation with the president and CEO at the World Resources Institute, Ani Dasgupta, learning about their Green Skills Partnership.

Continuing the sustainability theme, I chaired a roundtable to discuss the realities of industrial decarbonisation. This expert gathering saw several barriers to carbon reduction identified and explored, with key stakeholders from industry and government using the discussion as a springboard to put forward possible policy solutions to aid the transition to net zero. As ever, I was incredibly grateful to be involved in facilitating such an important conversation, and I hope that everyone who gave their time to the debate found it as valuable and rewarding as I did.

I’d like to thank all our members and volunteers for their continued hard work in ensuring that IChemE remains the chosen professional home for chemical, biochemical, and process engineers across the globe. Please do also remember that your membership subscription is due on 1 January, so if you haven’t done so already, make sure to renew your membership and maintain your IChemE membership benefits for 2025.

I extend my very best wishes to you all, and I hope you have a pleasant holiday break.

I always welcome any feedback, and value any input or ideas you would like to share – you can contact me at president@icheme.org

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Making connections

Duncan Lugton, head of policy and impact

THE FINAL flurry of activity for 2024 gives a chance to reflect on how far IChemE’s policy work has come this year. We have just submitted our response to the government’s industrial strategy, where we highlighted the fundamental role of chemicals and chemical engineering to achieving the government’s ambitions and fed in the insights of our members across a range of industries (https://bit.ly/3ZpKkep). In particular, we called on the government to think strategically and systematically about the demands it will be placing on a finite supply of chemicals, limited production facilities, and on a STEM workforce that is too small to fully meet the demands of the present, let alone the future. It has been great to be contributing our voice to these sorts of consultations in the UK, and in Australia and New Zealand as well.

We round out 2024 with two roundtables, one on industrial decarbonisation and another looking at progress on the government’s clean energy mission (hosted in Parliament by IChemE member and MP for Stockton North Chris McDonald). Over the year we have established a steady rhythm of roundtables, and they have been a great way to develop our policy thinking and networks, connect our members to our work, and spin off new conversations and activities – such as the session on battery energy storage systems at IChemE’s Hazards 34 conference which came out of a roundtable.

We’ve been championing the voice of chemical engineers externally too. In the last few weeks I have spoken at a number of external conferences and roundtables organised by the likes of the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Campaign for Science and Engineering, looking at topics such as the role of R&D in delivering the government’s priorities, the future of UK chemicals regulation, and how to transition to sustainable polymers. In these conversations I have been making the case that the chemical and process engineering workforce is strategically critical to the UK’s aspirations and needs to be grown, that systems thinking is vital to setting government strategies off on the right foot, and highlighting the role of chemical engineers as the masters of scaleup who are essential for getting all these promising new innovations off the ground. We’ve been starting to see some traction in the world of government and politics, with productive meetings with senior civil servants in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and with the Secretary of State for Scotland.

Looking ahead, I’m excited to be building on these foundations next year. I’m particularly excited about plans to engage members further with our policy work, starting with IChemE Connect. Watch this space!

For more on our work: www.icheme.org/policy

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Now thats what I call a ChemEng Playlist

Our publication of last issue’s Now That’s What I Call Chemical Engineering Music Spotify playlist is inspiring recommendations from members on what might be included on our difficult second album.

“I would add to your list The 2nd Law: Unsustainable by Muse,” said Esther Ventura-Medina on IChemE Connect.

Adam Turner added: “I’d also put forward Isopropanol by Aphex Twin just for the organic chemistry reminiscent name.”

To add your recommendations and access the playlist, log in to IChemE Connect and visit this thread: https://bit.ly/4fDQYDv

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