Gulf Today, Staff Reporter

In partnership with the Abu Dhabi Department of Education and Knowledge (ADEK), the 11th edition of Young ADIPEC has held its most immersive and comprehensive programme yet, to inspire and empower them to play a central role in creating a more inclusive and progressive energy future.  

 Held under the patronage of  Sheikh Nahayan Mabarak Al Nahayan, Minister of Tolerance and Coexistence, and fully supported by ADEK, Young ADIPEC is part of ADIPEC 2023, which concluded in Abu Dhabi. ADIPEC is a platform that brings together the world’s future energy leaders, equipping a new generation with the knowledge to pioneer the next phase of energy solutions, while empowering them to work together, break out of their silos and unify around a common cause.

Christopher Hudson, President of dmg events, the organiser of ADIPEC, said: “Young people are the future, and with the global energy sector transitioning to secure a more sustainable system, it is absolutely critical that we support their ability to play an active role in the sector. That is why ADIPEC has such a strong focus on youth, starting with our long-running Young ADIPEC programme, which this year connected with over 1,000 high school students and 400+ university students, and continuing on to our Future Leaders Programme and Global Youth Council.”

The 11th edition of Young ADIPEC presented 1,000+ UAE high school students with an invaluable opportunity to visit some of the most innovative companies and research institutions in today’s rapidly evolving energy sector. Students had 20 unique field trips to choose from, like the Schlumberger Middle East & Asia Learning Center, where they witnessed next-generation cementing technology innovations. The students also visited Abu Dhabi University, where they engaged in a hands-on creativity and design challenge to create a process flow diagram for a chemical engineering plant using a software simulation.

This year Young ADIPEC also introduced its University Programme, which engaged 400+ university students from five universities in ADIPEC’s Innovation Sessions and specialised industry areas focused on decarbonisation, digitalisation, and manufacturing and industrialiation, to demonstrate how they can contribute to the energy sector’s ongoing innovation and growth.

In one session titled ‘Fifteen Minutes with a CEO’, attending students heard from visionary leaders who are at the forefront of harnessing youth talent in the energy industry. Speaking in the session,

Proscovia Nabbanja, CEO of Uganda National Oil Company (UNOC), highlighted an example of how Uganda approaches this challenge, saying: “Uganda has a very young population, and what we are doing is putting inclusive programs in place. We have a national content plan of how we bring youth and SMEs in to be part of the oil and gas industry. We have youths who are field-ready to take part in this industry, but it is important to train them with the right skillsets and deploy them into the right projects. We want them to have transformational skills, and those that can be transferred to other parts of the economy.”

Hosting a total of 160 hands-on workshops and other interactive experiences, this year’s Young ADIPEC was organised into 10 unique zones. These ranged from the well-known favourites of previous events, such as the Engineering Zone and Innovations Zone, to zones that were entirely new for 2023 – including the Electric Zone, Energy Transition Zone, Hydrogen Zone and 2023 Careers Zone.

Another newcomer this year was the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi Zone, which aimed to demonstrate to young minds the potential of a career in sustainable engineering, firing their curiosity for the subject through games, live quiz competitions and interactive explanatory simulations. This setup allowed the attending students to clearly see what was on offer at a glance, making their preferred ‘must-attend’ workshops more accessible.

An equally important source of inspiration for the students in attendance was to see how young minds like theirs can play an active role in shaping the world’s clean energy future. Across four Youth Innovation Talks, students engaged with in-depth presentations and Q&A sessions with Khalifa University students, detailing the process of how they invented, refined and delivered two highly impactive cleantech innovations. These included a novel nanomaterial-enhanced membrane capable of removing oil from wastewater in a sustainable manner, as well as a computational screening method for identifying the best photocatalysts for green hydrogen production – a crucial pillar of the UAE’s clean energy production future.

At the Young ADIPEC Talks, students listened and learned from the real-life experiences of the next generation of energy leaders like Raifa Al Maamari, a PhD student in Energy Futures at the University of Cambridge, and Alyaziya Alseiari, an application engineer at Weatherford.