Many programs can lead to CCUS jobs at COWI

No one yet has extensive experience in CCUS and power-2-x, and that opens up the playing field for new graduates and people from other fields. At the Green Innovation Workshop at Aalborg University, COWI met with students to outline the possibilities for future jobs.

By Lene Klitgaard, AAU Innovation

It requires highly specialized labor to make the plans for a strong North Jutland CCUS industry a reality. But it is a new area and there are not many experts to draw from.

- You can't just find someone with 20 years of experience. The employees therefore come from similar areas, and we have i COWI need many different skills – of course primarily engineers or others with a technical background, says Mads Heuckendorff, Associate Technical Director, Green Fuels & Energy.

Mads Heuckendorff mentions that, for example, specialists in high voltage and pipes can bid. They are necessary for the development of a "hydrogen backbone", i.e. the pipelines which will constitute a hydrogen infrastructure throughout Europe.

- But there will also be a need for people who can do social analyses, understand business contexts, new markets and trade in CO2 quotas. That is why it is also important to be able to work across disciplines, he elaborates.

Students collaborated on the COWI case
On Wednesday 26 April 2023, Aalborg University organized the last of three Green Innovation Workshops as part of CO2Vision. Green Innovation Workshops are part of the Green Innovation Lab concept, which puts competence development for CCUS on the agenda.

Read about the innovation approach behind Green Innovation Workshops at Aalborg University.

At the Green Innovation Workshops, students spend a day developing ideas and collaborating to solve a case within CCUS.

At this last workshop, interdisciplinarity gained extra focus when COWI presented a demanding case regarding power-2-x. Mads Heuckendorff explains:

- Power-2-x projects are super complex and require a very interdisciplinary approach. They involve everything from very advanced technologies to issues of society, environmental approval and citizen involvement. We would like to be involved in supporting the students to think broadly. And of course we also participate in the workshop, because we are challenged to be able to acquire the right skills when you look forward to the rapid development in green technologies.

Humanities contribution to the CCUS adventure
The two previous Green Innovation Workshops were attended by students from UCN, MARTEC as well as the institutes for Energy and Planning at Aalborg University.

This third time, students from the university's humanities were also involved based on the idea that CCUS affects people and their immediate environment, which is why citizen involvement, information and debate are important factors in making a possible CCUS adventure a reality.

Karen Schrøder Haagensen, who studies Learning and Change Processes, attended the workshop and got a lot out of it:

- It has been exciting to listen to others in the group. We usually just sit in our own studies and confirm each other in everything that is right, so it is good to hear the perspectives of the others. There are really many aspects to the case we have had today. It was clearly a nuance of how complex a problem it is, and I may have also been confirmed that it is important that there is someone like me who can help facilitate the process.

Professional competences within CCUS are not part of the students' syllabus for Learning and Change Processes - just as citizen involvement methods are not part of the syllabus for the energy and planning programmes. But in everyday life in companies that, like COWI, work with CCUS, interdisciplinary collaboration is a necessity. It is therefore important to practice, Mads Heuckendorff believes:

- The case we came up with was well received. There have been many good questions, and the students have been good at identifying paradoxes and challenges.