The wider focus of Young Adipec was on bringing together future energy leaders, equipping them with the knowledge to pioneer the next phase of energy solutions and empowering them to work together for a common cause

The 11th edition of Young Adipec, held as part of Adipec 2023 in Abu Dhabi, held its most immersive and comprehensive programme to date, to inspire and empower the youth to play a central role in creating a more inclusive and progressive energy future.

It was held under the patronage of Sheikh Nahayan Mabarak Al Nahayan, Minister of Tolerance and Coexistence, in partnership with the Abu Dhabi Department of Education and Knowledge (ADEK).

Adipec is a platform that brings together the world’s future energy leaders, but additionally it aims to equip 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, says: "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 had 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 more than 400 university students, and continuing on to our Future Leaders Programme and Global Youth Council."

INDUSTRY EXPOSURE

This year’s Young Adipec presented 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 more than 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, the 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 programmes 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.

YOUTH INNOVATION TALKS

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 questions and answers 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.

Young Adipec’s wide range of exploratory experiences and industry showcases for high school students complements Adipec’s other older youth-focused initiatives – the Global Youth Council and Future Leaders Programme.

The Global Youth Council was introduced this year to give young energy leaders a meaningful voice and a place at the table to drive clean energy transition trends in the UAE and globally.

Made up of 20 extraordinary university students and young professionals under the age of 30, the council supports Adipec’s event’s larger goal of ensuring the inclusion of young people in the ongoing sustainable transformation of the energy sector.

The Adipec Global Youth Council works in tandem with Adipec’s Future Leaders Programme, which was introduced last year to empower young energy leaders to drive clean energy transition by equipping them with relevant insights and skills.

Adipec 2023 featured a dedicated Future Leaders Programme Conference that brought together energy industry leaders, policymakers, regulators, investors, and academic experts, together with the next generation of leaders to establish their role as stakeholders in the energy transition, drive entrepreneurship, and nurture the skillsets required for the realisation of a clean energy ecosystem.

By Abdulaziz Khattak