Mackenzi Oliver: Committed to a cleaner and smarter energy
future, our next guest plays her role in helping Australia
decarbonise the gas sector by 2050. I'm Mackenzi Oliver and on
this episode of Ready STEM Go!, we're chatting to Jess Godfrey
about Capturing the energy. Welcome, Jess.
Jess Godfrey: Thanks, Mackenzi. It's great to be here.
Mackenzi Oliver: Thanks for joining us. So, Jess holds a
Bachelor of Earth Science at QUT and went on to complete her
honors year at Uni Western Australia. Jess was hired by
Origin Energy as a graduate geoscientist and over three
years has worked across many different ventures from building
paleo geographical maps for the greater MacArthur basin, to
providing technical support for the Shoalhaven pumped hydro
power plant expansion project. Jess is now focused on helping
Origin become net carbon neutral, analysing and assessing
the impact on the development and deployment of carbon capture
and storage, or CCS technologies. As an Origin
Foundation champion, Jess has donated her time and skills to
help empower young Australians with educational opportunities
of equality. So very excited to be speaking with you today,
Jess, but before we get into that, have you brought an epic,
inspiring or crazy STEM story or STEM fact with you?
Jess Godfrey: I certainly have. And I think it's gonna cover all
of your topics, maybe epic and inspiring and a bit crazy.
Mackenzi Oliver: Awesome.
Jess Godfrey: So this piece of rock that I'm holding is
Permian. And that's a period that spans 47 million years,
from 298.9 million years ago to 251.9 million years ago. And
basically, it ended in the largest mass extinction the
earth has ever known. So at that time, a supercontinent was
emerging, Pangaea. And due to its incredibly vast size, the
earth was experiencing severe climatic and environmental
extremes. And during that time, the east coast of Australia was
experiencing an ice age. And that's where this piece of rock
is from. It's a glaciomarine facies known as the snapper
point formation. And isn't that crazy that I can hold that time
period in my hand?
Mackenzi Oliver: It's crazy that there's, yeah, these relics are
left behind. Yep, definitely epic, inspiring and crazy. So
yeah, diving in. You've already dazzled us with some geoscience
stories. But what was it about Earth science that really
initially made you want to jump into this role?
Jess Godfrey: Well, I love of mountains and volcanoes and
oceans and the beach and exploring and travel. So Earth
science or geoscience literally has it all, every landscape and
the bill, like the ability to understand how it formed. It's
just fascinating.
Mackenzi Oliver: That passion that you've got there, very
clear, of course, you've now harnessed that with Origin
Energy. So yeah, what are you doing now with Origin as part of
the Future Fuels team?
Jess Godfrey: I'm a CCS analyst. So that's Carbon Capture and
Storage analyst in our decarbonisation team within
Future Fuels. So our team is helping to decarbonise a
decarbonise our operations to align with the Paris Agreement.
So if you guys don't know the aim of the Paris Agreement is to
limit emissions to net zero globally in the second half of
the century. And to meet our 1.5 degree Celsius global warming
target, basically, net zero means any emissions that are,
any emissions have to be balanced by absorbing an
equivalent amount of CO2 from the atmosphere. So the
geological storage of CO2 is paramount basically to meet this
goal of eliminating our global average temperature from the pre
industrial levels. So removing CO2 from the atmosphere will be
necessary to compensate for emissions from different sectors
in which reaching zero emissions is more difficult. And that's
things like aviation, transport, agriculture. Carbon removal can
be achieved by a lot of different means, including land
based approaches, such as restoring forests and boosting
soil uptake of carbon. But there's also technological
approaches such as direct air capture, and storage or even
mineralisation. So what we can do is capture the CO2 from power
stations and other CO2 emitting industrial facilities. And using
different technologies, we can then store it permanently
underground, in suitable geological reservoirs.
Mackenzi Oliver: So it sounds like you're pretty busy saving
the planet. So, what is your role within the team? You said
it was an analyst position, what do you get to do day to day?
Jess Godfrey: day to day, we analyse and look at different
technologies that are available around the world, as well as do
a different analysis on what basins are suitable for storage
across Australia. Once we've identified these basins, I guess
that's where it gets to the more business end versus science end
of things. There's a lot of different regulatory
requirements that we have to go through with getting things like
tenure and approvals in place, before we can actually start any
projects. And this is just the day to day work of making sure
that all environmental and water approvals are done. And that we
can safely store in the appropriate reservoirs, we have
to do years of research to know what the subsurface conditions
are, and whether or not things are suitable.
Mackenzi Oliver: And so the subsurface conditions that
you're mentioning there, so are the conditions part of the
mineralising process that you mentioned before?
Jess Godfrey: The mineralising process, depending on the
technique you use, can take anywhere from a couple of years,
from a company based in Iceland have developed a quite a
fascinating technique, to 10,000 no, from anywhere from 1000 to
10,000 years, naturally in the subsurface. So what we have to
do is store the CO2 in a liquid form. Basically, that means we
convert it from a gas into a liquid and put it in its
supercritical state, that changes the volume of gas that
we have to deal with, then in order to keep it in that state,
we have to inject it at least 800 meters deep in the ground.
And that will keep it as fluid. From that point, once you're
that deep in the ground, most of the sandstone or reservoirs that
you are targeting, do have what's known as saline waters in
the pore space. And what these waters do is they help bind the
CO2 in place, and over then geological time, that will then
mineralise.
Mackenzi Oliver: Wow, so by being able to convert the carbon
into that liquid and injecting it into those 800 meters below
the surface reservoirs, so then the rock then is able to, yeah,
just essentially capture that?
Jess Godfrey: Basically, yeah, it's, it's quite fascinating. I
wish I had a slab to show you. But if you can find a slab of
sandstone, anyone can do this as an experiment. If you get a
little beaker of water and pour it on your sandstone, what
you'll notice is the water will just soak into the rock. And
that's basically how, well if you imagine the water's carbon
dioxide, basically how we'll be storing the carbon dioxide. But
there are different different technologies out there, and our
team is all about assessing them. Another method is
injecting it into basalt, which is not what you typically
imagine, which is a volcanic rock. And basically, our entire
ocean floor is made out of basalt. So there's a lot of land
or a lot of places that you could use this technique. And
what they do is they mix the CO2 with water, and that can be like
a saline water. And what you make then is a type of carbonic
acid. When you inject this acid into the basalt rock, it starts
to eat away the rock creating its own pore space. And that's
releasing the minerals from the basalt, into your carbonic acid
mix. And if you know anything about geochemistry, which I'm
sure no one does, there's two end members of olivine, which
you find in basalt. And they have different elements
attributed to them. One is iron, and one is calcium. And so when
the calcium is released from the olivine in basalt, it can bind
to the CO2 and it will form Ca CO2, otherwise known as
carbonate rock. And that's a process that only takes a couple
of years.
Mackenzi Oliver: And that's so exciting. So these are some
technologies and things that you've been able to work on as
well?
Jess Godfrey: I'm currently not due to COVID, unfortunately, but
it is old technology that we are investigating and researching.
There's so much exciting, innovative new ventures out
there in the world that are looking at solving our climate,
or our CO2 problems. And we were researching them all. We want to
make sure we get the right solution for Australia.
Mackenzi Oliver: Yeah, and it definitely sounds like a very
involved process. It must be a pretty big team, who are some of
the different types of professionals that you might be
working with?
Jess Godfrey: Sure I work with other geoscientists, data
scientists, engineers, lawyers. We've got commercial. Basically,
if you can probably think of it, we probably have someone in our
team dedicated to this area of our business.
Mackenzi Oliver: Wow. So no matter your skill set, if you're
interested in helping get Australia to net carbon net zero
carbon emissions, it sounds like there's a place for you.
Jess Godfrey: Absolutely.
Mackenzi Oliver: That's awesome to hear. Um, so yeah, maybe
what's something involved with being a geoscientist that
perhaps people wouldn't really expect?
Jess Godfrey: Um, okay, this is surprising, you get to colour in
a lot. So,
Mackenzi Oliver: Amazing.
Jess Godfrey: You need a whole lot of good pencils. And when I
studied Earth science at uni at QUT, I had a lot of labs and
tutorials where I spent my whole time drawing and colouring in
pretty maps and cross sections and stratigraphic charts. I've
even gotten to do it at work.
Mackenzi Oliver: There you go. So yeah, get busting out those
colouring pencils.
Jess Godfrey: Absolutely.
Mackenzi Oliver: Definitely something, yeah, I didn't think
I would have expected that.
Mackenzi Oliver: Um, we also mentioned a bit before about the
Jess Godfrey: No one does.
Origins, you're as an Origin Foundation Champion. So do you
want to tell us a bit more about that, what is involved with that
role
Jess Godfrey: As an Origin Foundation Champion. Basically,
the Origin Foundation sits across all of Origins business.
And there are a number of Champions or ambassadors to that
foundation. So when when we have volunteering opportunities
arise, we basically talk to our team members, and let them know
that there's a need for volunteering person or team to
attend. And that's all paid for. So as long as we get manager
approval, anyone can volunteer an extraordinary number of days
during the workweek. And from there, we've got different
different organisations that we hope mostly in education. So one
of the most interesting projects that I got to work with with
Origin Foundation, is the solar buddy project, where we go out
to schools and teach the kids in a science class how to build a
small solar light. We also educate them on what energy
poverty is, because it's a really critical thing that a lot
of people internationally suffer from. And us in Australia, often
our children aren't aware of it, that people don't have access to
electricity every day. Or if they do have access to it, it
might just be for one or two hours. Well, they don't have
lights at night, or air conditioning, or TV or internet.
So these lights give kids that suffer energy poverty, the
ability to just do their homework at night. And that's an
amazing point of change. And it's just a fantastic program to
be involved in to go around to different high schools and
primary schools and teach you how to build a solar light.
Because that's pretty cool. Right? Yeah, it's fantastic
foundation.
Mackenzi Oliver: Yeah. And that project that you mentioned, as
well, it's like, what a good crossover between harnessing
your STEM skills for creating some positive change?
Jess Godfrey: Absolutely, absolutely. It's been like,
really, really rewarding.
Mackenzi Oliver: Um, so I guess another big part of working at
Origin might be the chance to go to some of those big sites. And
what's your experience of going to the some of these sites and
as well as a woman being on site as well?
Jess Godfrey: Wow, the sites are incredible. I've been to Eraring
Power Station, which is in Newcastle, it's Australia's
largest coal fired power plant. I've had the opportunity to go
down to Shoalhaven, which is our pumped hydro power plants.
There's two of them down there. And I've also been out to our
gas fields in Spring Gully and Reedy Creek. And what's really
fantastic with working on site with Origin is Origin is a very
inclusive and diverse workplace. And I'm, I think I'm very lucky
to work for an organisation that's been continually
recognised as an employer of choice for gender equality. And
I think this has been awarded from the workplace gender
equality agency. And I think because of that, I've had a
fantastic time working on site. Saying that though, the industry
is still really male dominated, and it's really important for us
to get more women involved in STEM and to increase our gender
diversity.
Mackenzi Oliver: Yeah, well, it definitely sounds like it's
really promising that is becoming a more and more
inclusive space. So definitely, hopefully more people are
excited to get involved. And start, yeah, coming to some of
those sites. And so yeah, you mentioned one of them the hydro
power plant expansion project. What was some of the work you
got to do there?
Jess Godfrey: Oh, that was a fantastic project. So we did a
number of different borehole zones. Drill holes. The idea was
to build the expansion part of the hydro plant underground so
it wouldn't be visible in the landscape and we obviously
wouldn't disturb the wombats which are just roaming around
wild.
Mackenzi Oliver: Very important, protect the wombats.
Jess Godfrey: Danm right, they're very cute. And that's
actually where this rock came from.
Mackenzi Oliver: Hey
Jess Godfrey: Um, yeah, it's it was fascinating and obviously
pumped hydro power is one of the best storage batteries we have
in the world for energy. So whilst they're turning a Eraring
into an energy storage battery site, it will have a 700
megawatt battery. Shoalhaven has the ability to store 24 hours I
think of energy or electricity, and a 700 megawatt battery,
which is I think, 10 times larger than the Adelaide one
will be four hours. So just gives you a difference in how
much energy can be stored naturally in something like
water.
Mackenzi Oliver: Wow. Yeah, I guess people might not know that
water can also be a battery.
Jess Godfrey: Yeah, it's it's fascinating.
Mackenzi Oliver: Definitely some, yeah, extra new properties
and materials that you get to learn about as a geoscientist
then.
Jess Godfrey: Absolutely. Not so much the the power itself,
because that's more than engineering guys, but the
subsurface in how you safely engineer a power station?
Absolutely. Are the rocks suitable enough? Are they strong
enough? How do you dispose of the ones that you've mined out?
All of those sorts of things.
Mackenzi Oliver: Yeah, definitely so many different
things to be involved with there. Well, it's nearly all we
have time for today, but before I let you go, if you could go
back in time and tell yourself something, tell your younger
self a little piece of advice. What's something that you might
say?
Jess Godfrey: Um, I think I would tell myself that you can
do anything you put your mind to, and to be yourself and be
curious.
Mackenzi Oliver: So big message of self empowerment.
Jess Godfrey: Absolutely.
Mackenzi Oliver: I love it. Well, thank you. So that is all
for this episode of Ready STEM Go!. Thank you to our listeners.
And yes, a big thank you to Jess for joining us today.
Jess Godfrey: Thank you for having me, Mackenzi. It's been
wonderful.
Mackenzi Oliver: No worries. So yeah, to our listeners make sure
you subscribe to never miss an upcoming episode. And also stay
in touch, join our Facebook group, QUT #STEMis4me to keep up
to date with events and resources that you can access.
Bye, guys.