climate change Archives - Inventive Podcast

Enass Abo-Hamed and Manjot Chana – The future of energy is hydrogen

How can we create carbon-free energy? The future of energy is hydrogen. As Glasgow hosts the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference, engineer and activist Enass Abo-Hamed and systems integration engineer Manjot Chana from renewable energy company H2GO chat to Trevor Cox about their groundbreaking plans to help save the planet.

The carbon we produce in heavy industries, aviation and energy supply emits pollutants. 1.2 billion people in the world don’t have control over energy supplies – they can’t get it at the flick of a switch.

Chemical engineer Enass from Palestine is as much an activist as she is an entrepreneur. She is passionate about raising awareness of the problems associated with climate change and set up her company H2GO to provide a solution. Enass explains her vision to Trevor Cox – to store renewable energy as low-cost hydrogen with zero emissions.

Manjot began his career as an apprentice engineer with Jaguar. He tells Trevor how his desire to change people’s lives for the better led him to switch to a career in renewable energy – and it turns out the skills he learned in the car industry are transferrable.

We mix fact and fiction in Inventive and in this edition, writer George Sandifer-Smith‘s short story highlights one of the biggest challenges in the climate change movement – people. There’s conflict when engineers are sent to repair green energy boxes smashed by conspiracy theorists.

A must-listen for everyone concerned about the planet, especially the leaders attending COP26. The future of energy is hydrogen!

H2GO – https://www.h2gopower.com/

Enass Abo-Hamed – linkedin.com/in/enassa

Manjot Chana – linkedin.com/in/manjot-chana

George Sandifer-Smith – linkedin.com/in/dr-george-sandifer-smith-phd-78830319b

Josh Macabuag

The second episode in Series 2 of Inventive Podcast is an exciting insight into a profession we only get a glimpse of in news reports, through the eyes of an engineer who wants to make a positive impact on the world.

Disaster Risk Engineer Josh Macabuag has been at the scene of major natural disasters around the world. He was part of the SARAID (Search and Rescue Assistance in Disasters) relief team in Japan in 2011, the earthquake in Nepal in 2015 and most recently the earthquake in Haiti 2021. As a volunteer with SARAID, he has to find the least dangerous way of getting people out of collapsed buildings, making on-the-spot decisions relying on his intuition. His day job involves quantifying the risks and costs of catastrophes for The World Bank. Josh was the first person in his family to go to university, studying engineering at Oxford. He counts his dad, a car mechanic, as one of his major influences. A humanitarian and engineer, Josh tells his remarkable story to presenter Trevor Cox.

If you listened to our first series – if not, you can listen to previous episodes below – you’ll know that we mix science and the arts by asking writers to create works inspired by the engineers’ stories. Writer Nina Allen, a winner of the British Science Fiction Association Award, is included in The Guardian’s 2018 list of ‘Fresh voices: 50 writers you should read now’. We asked Nina to write a short story based on Josh’s interview with Trevor. On the process of writing her story, ‘Forces and Loads’, Nina says, ‘It was the most engaging and inspirational, most unusual participation that I’ve ever experienced’. Her sinister story uncovers more than people trapped in the rubble of an earthquake.