Can plants avert the climate crisis?

Suitable for secondary, high school and college students, this article and accompanying activity sheet can be used in the classroom, school clubs and at home.

This resource links to KS4 and KS5 geography and Earth and environmental science.

It can also be used as a careers resource and links to Gatsby Benchmarks:
Gatsby Benchmark 2: Learning from career and labour market information
Gatsby Benchmark 4: Linking curriculum learning to careers

• Grow plants, burn them for energy, then bury the carbon deep underground. This is the principle behind biomass energy with carbon capture and storage, but how effective can it be in the real world? Dr Astley Hastings, from the University of Aberdeen, has been investigating.

• This resource also includes an interview with Astley about his career path, as well as a section dedicated to careers in his field. If your students (or you) have questions for Astley, you/they can send them to him online. All you need to do is to go to the article online (see the Futurum link below), scroll down to the end and type in the question(s). Astley will reply!

• The activity sheet provides ‘talking points’ (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) and activities to prompt students to reflect on Astley’s research.

This resource was first published on Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, tech, engineering, maths, medicine (STEM) and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE).

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