CPD Roundup: November 2023
Welcome to November’s CPD round-up! This is where I share a quick summary of the continuing profession development (CPD) I’ve completed during the month.
The Institute of Translation and Interpreting recommends that all members, including Qualified Members (MITIs) like me, do at least 30 hours of CPD per year. I normally end up doing rather more than that, and I normally only include subject-knowledge (and some translation-skills) CPD in this public summary. You can find out about the other types of CPD that the ITI recommends here and my previous summaries here.
Energy Security & Green Infrastructure Week (part 1)
There’s never a shortage of focus days and weeks in the area of sustainability, and this month was no exception. Unfortunately work and other scheduling commitments mean I can’t always attend every single session live, but thankfully the online events are often recorded so I can catch up later. This was very much the case with the Energy Security & Green Infrastructure Week, so there will be a part 2 in the December CPD round-up. For November, here are the sessions I was able to attend:
Interview with Adrian Del Maestro, Global Energy Advisory Lead, AECOM
Interview with Tom Burke, Co-founder & Chair, E3G.
Energy Trilemma: How do we deliver clean, secure and affordable energy for the rest of the century?
CCUS: How far have we come? What’s next?
Infrastructure Resilience: How do we secure our green energy infrastructure against rising risks?
What would it take for hydrogen to have a place in the UK’s net zero energy future?
ADBA Webinar on AD and Net Zero – the vital role of small on-farm AD in the renewable energy future
As with last month, it’s probably too much to go into each individually, but there are some important takeaways:
We are seeing partnerships between companies you might not expect, e.g. fossil-fuel companies working with offshore-wind companies to work on green hydrogen.
There is a massive resource gap in the green energy sector that represents a major bottleneck to the transition.
Government must play a role in creating the conditions for people to pull together, but that’s not the same as massive state intervention.
There is enormous power in aggregating small gains, rather than focusing on big companies doing big things.
Net zero is here to stay, no matter the political rhetoric.
We need to avoid what happened to the workers of the coal mines when they were shut down, instead creating a structured way for those working in these sectors to transition to green energy.
A fully green grid is possible, but it involves creating massively more electricity storage than currently available, and savings are available by combining different types of storage.
There is enormous potential for biomethane to deliver real benefits.
The energy transition is the biggest economic opportunity in a generation.
There is a need for greater infrastructure to enable CCUS technology to achieve its full potential, but the focus is currently on storage rather than utilisation, especially given how much potential storage the UK has.
Achieving network resilience is a hugely intricate and interconnected challenge, which will only get more complex as changing weather patterns change when electricity can be produced and when it needs to be used, stored, etc.
Some modellers are using outdated weather data (dating back to the 1960s) in their modelling.
We need to take a long-term horizon to planning, but that doesn’t mean we can act at a long-term pace.
Transporting hydrogen is going to be a major challenge, but there are several options including liquid organic hydrogen carriers.
Modular anaerobic digestion plants may be essential to decarbonising the UK agricultural sector.
How the approach to biodiversity net gain will differ in Wales and Scotland (RSK First Thursday Club)
Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKPbbPP-6vc&list=PLnitr_yxGf0yyOuQwL1ZRNARiKGWt3XWI&index=1
As always, a really fantastic amount of information condensed down into a very digestible presentation. This month’s session focused on differences in how the new Biodiversity Net Gain requirements will vary in their implementations between England, Wales and Scotland. The recording is linked above and explains much more clearly than I can, but here are a few key takeaways: England will take a primarily quantitative approach, contrasting with Wales’ more qualitative approach. Scotland will also be taking a quantitative approach, but requiring biodiversity enhancement rather than requiring a present level of biodiversity, as in England.
Peter Melchett Memorial Lecture: Re-imagining politics in an age of environmental breakdown - Caroline Lucas (Soil Association)
Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r6bo9LibTs
It will come as no surprise that Caroline Lucas spoke passionately and persuasively on the importance of recognising that our environment is essential to everything else that we value, and that to imagine it as separate from our economy and society is nonsensical. It also won’t be surprising that she had some fairly ‘robust’ criticism for the current Conservative government and its erosion of the institutions that are meant to protect our planet and our democracy. She expresses these points far more clearly than I ever could, so I will merely summarise that she has three key suggestions about how to get us back on track:
Understanding the relationships between power democracy and politics
Rewriting political script - integrating long-term thinking
Rewiring political system to ask big questions instead of shying away