RMetS Attends the International Conference Energy & Meteorology

At the end of June, the Royal Meteorological Society’s Energy Science Engagement Fellow, Matthew Wright, attended the International Conference on Energy and Meteorology (ICEM) in Padua, Italy, on behalf of the RMetS. The conference is organised by the World Energy and Meteorology Council. See below for his report on ICEM.

My attendance at ICEM was very enjoyable, and a great success. It was very beneficial to have everyone back together in-person after Covid – and many of the most interesting conversations took place over coffee, dinner or an Aperol Spritz!

ICEM brings together companies operating at the intersection of energy, weather and climate, with academics and operational meteorologists from around the world. It was a great opportunity to meet delegates from across the energy sector, find out what issues and problems they are having, and tell them a bit about what RMetS are doing. Since RMetS’s energy engagement programme is fairly new, and slightly outside what we are generally known for, it was really important to get our name out there and advertise the great work we have been doing.

I presented a poster and lightning talk, about RMetS’s past, current and future engagement with the energy sector. The poster was interactive: several weather/climate questions facing the energy sector were posed, with delegates being invited to take a sticker and place it next to the question they found ‘most interesting’ and ‘most difficult’. This went down very well, and was an innovative way of taking a poll of conference attendees. It also got people talking about issues, and gave me loads of ideas of how RMetS can help companies and academics working in this space!

You can see the full results in the picture below. The most interesting question was How common will compound extreme events be under climate change, and what impact will they have on the energy sector? The most difficult was How can we effectively predict and prepare for weather-induced faults in distribution networks?

Along with Juan A. Añel, from the Spanish Royal Physics Society and University of Vigo, I co-chaired one of the conference workshops on the first afternoon. Our topic was ‘Energy and Meteorology Education’. The workshop consisted of, after an overview of current educational resources, splitting into breakout groups to discuss gaps in energy-meteorology education, and what we think the future of it should look like. We also talked at length about educating the general public about weather and energy’s intersection. A full report of that workshop will be published in Weather in the coming months. 

I am looking forward to putting some of the feedback and ideas I came across at ICEM into practice, as we continue planning for the Energy, Weather and Climate Forum on 12 October 2023!