Anna Morris

I was always really attracted to Edinburgh. It's iconic as a city in terms of the geological landscape that it sits in. I thought that was really going to inspire me, and I'd feel connected to the subject. In terms of the University itself, it's a pioneer in geology. It has an amazing history with some iconic names within the subject. I think it really has a world-class heritage and reputation, and I thought it'd be a really vibrant place to study and it’d give me the inspiration that I needed throughout my studies.

I studied a BSc in Geology and Physical Geography at the University of Liverpool, so I already knew that I was really passionate about the subject. I then decided to take a bit of a break - I worked for a couple of years and found myself in an industry that wasn't aligned to geology whatsoever. I really started to crave learning again and I was craving understanding more about the subject. Ultimately, I wanted to apply myself more to the subject so I could start to shape my future career.

GeoEnergy stood out to me because I've always been interested in geology, but also in the energy industry back from when I was in school, and particularly about renewable and sustainable energy. The mix of the two subjects that I'm passionate about was too good to be true. I looked into what GeoEnergy encompasses and what would be studied on the MSc and thought this was the perfect course for me.

One highlight for me was how fantastic my fellow cohort were. From the get-go, when we all arrived into a new city and found ourselves studying the course, we all really hit it off. I think everyone made a real effort to get to know each other. We organised social events and we would see each other quite often in our lectures and labs, and we really formed this amazing bond as a full cohort. That really stood out for me throughout the year because it was not only that friendship that my peers provided, but it was also a support network. 

My cohort was incredibly diverse. There were people who came straight from their undergraduate degree, and there were people who'd been working in industry for 10 years, so we could really leverage those different experiences from each other.

A master's degree is obviously quite challenging, so we could really lean on each other. Throughout my year, my peers were really a ‘rock’ for me – which is a bit of a cliché with geology - but we really did have an amazing bond.

I had the opportunity to work alongside Professor Katriona Edlmann, who is a pioneer in the specific topic of hydrogen storage. We shaped a project that was looking at hydrogen storage relative to industrial clusters. We decided to focus on the northwest industrial cluster, which is local to my hometown - so I was passionate about that specific area - and also the northeast industrial cluster.

My project was to really take a deep dive into the geology and to understand the geological potential of those areas to host lined rock caverns as a novel hydrogen storage technology. So going from that large scale geological overview right down to that more refined and granular analysis. We undertook a lot of borehole analysis and we utilised a lot of the readily available data online from the BGS GeoIndex and other similar repositories of data and formed a picture of the area from a geological perspective.

We not only wanted to understand how the geology could host this lined rock cavern technology, but also if the geology was favourable, and what would that then mean for the decarbonisation of those industrial areas.

Read Professor Katriona Edlmann's research profile

One thing that was really important to me was learning how to network and learning how to understand what opportunities are available to me. Primarily, that would be utilising the knowledge and the experience of my lecturers and the staff at the University. If there was a certain kind of career path I was intrigued in and wanted a bit more information on, I would go and ask about that. So you should really leverage that experience from the staff and also from your peers who may have different experiences to you.

In my role as a ‘Project Engineer’ with Scotia Gas Networks (SGN), I sit within the strategy and regulation department. I primarily focus on hydrogen and biomethane as two potential options to decarbonising our future grid.

Quite excitingly for me, we work with institutions such as universities, and we've done quite a lot of work with the University of Edinburgh and the School of GeoSciences looking at, for example, large scale storage of hydrogen in the future and how that would feed into a future decarbonised gas network. 

It’s a really exciting job and is constantly evolving. I have very dynamic discussions with a wide variety of key stakeholders across the industry. We help to manage these exciting projects and publish all of this information to the wider industry for us all to ultimately achieve our goal of Net Zero by 2045 in Scotland, and 2050 in the UK.

The most difficult thing about my job currently is that the landscape across the energy industry is constantly evolving. There are constantly new innovations that come on the scene and policy updates that the government implement, and different conversations are being had as to what strategic direction the industry should take. Should we electrify everything? Should we decarbonise our gas grids?

In my role, I have to constantly be aware of the evolving industry and learn about new technologies, keep up to date on policy decisions and what's happening not only in the UK, but also globally. There’s a lot going on at the minute in the industry and it's a lot to keep up with, but I welcome that challenge.

I would say that there's no time like the present. There’s so much attention on the industry at the minute because decarbonizing energy is really at the forefront of everyone's mind, specifically the government's, as we seek to understand how we enable a decarbonized future for the industry. So, there's no time like the present to get involved.

Before studying my MSc, I didn't quite have full appreciation as to how integral geology as a subject is to the wider energy industry, and I didn't truly understand how my skills could be applicable. There are so many wide-ranging areas that you could go into and there are so many different applications of geology and of the skills that you will learn in your studies.

Don't silo yourself into one area of the industry to specifically go into. I didn't really know much about the gas industry and gas network operation before I started my current role at SGN. Go to conferences if you're able to do so, listen to webinars and really start to build your knowledge and understanding of the industry and what opportunities are available.

Vibrant, Inspiring, Enriching