‘The Natural Gas Conversion Programme’ by Russell Thomas
December 16 @ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Joining us IN PERSON – just turn up, there’s no need to register
please email meetings.syorks@newcomen.com for zoom link.
This is a joint meeting with the South Yorkshire Industrial History Society
The natural gas conversion program was a government-led initiative in the UK to transition the gas industry from town gas to natural gas between 1966 and 1977.
Gas users were faced with an ultimatum; switch to natural gas and accept the inconvenience of the changeover or choose another fuel source and absorb the resulting cost and disruption. It was regarded as one of the UK’s biggest post-war engineering projects.
About the Speaker
Russell Thomas is Technical Director of WSP in the UK and his wide ranging career has had a strong environmental and historical focus on the energy sector and gas in particular. Russell’s early career had a strong focus on addressing environmental legacy issues associated with the gas manufacturing industry, through developing remediation systems. This work had an extensive research element which has been maintained throughout his career working with universities and academic institutions (e.g. the University of Strathclyde, University of Manchester and the BGS) generating extensive journal publications.
More recent work has focused on heritage aspects of the industry including the understanding, interpreting and reuse of former gasworks structures. Russell is media trained having featured in several TV programmes and has also been asked as an international expert to speak at overseas conferences. Another main area of interest is the energy transition, trying to learn from the extensive history of the energy industry and gas in particular.
Russell is currently managing a very interesting collaboration with the British Geological Survey. His main areas of research focus over the years have been the application of environmental forensics to tars, bioaccessability of hydrocarbons, remediation of heavy metals and furthering the understanding of microbial communities in gas production wastes and unconventional gases.