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Students from Millmerran State School P-10 will today (22 March) absorb new knowledge in water management during the Queensland Minerals and Energy Academy’s (QMEA) Water – Yours, Ours, Mine workshop.

Proudly sponsored by Millmerran Power, the workshop takes principles from the national science and geography curriculum for Year 7 and explores how the resources and energy sector treats and manages water.

More than 20 students will lap up activities that allow them to analyse water from an industry and broader community perspective, giving them insight into various strategies that resources and energy companies use to protect and preserve water.

The QMEA, the education arm of the Queensland Resources Council (QRC), has developed this workshop to include hands-on tasks that add real-world knowledge and application of the activities and concepts the students have been studying.

“One of the most frequent questions our QMEA officers are asked when working with students is how their school learning will translate to their lives outside the classroom,” QRC Director of Skills, Education and Diversity, Katrina-Lee Jones said today.

“This workshop provides the dual benefit of helping students understand how the industry manages a valuable resource like water, as well as showing how the school curriculum is preparing them for important future careers,” she said.

“As an active community and industry partner, we remain committed to empowering and supporting the development of students who will make up the generations to come,” said Millmerran Power’s Plant Manager, Chris Seydel.

“We are proud to be sponsoring this critical education program that we are confident will guide students onto a pathway into one of the most important and transformational industries – resources and energy.

“Millmerran was the first power station in Australia to use air-cooled, supercritical boiler technology, thereby using less fuel and less water than conventional stations to produce the same amount of electricity,” he said.

“We play a critical role in the communal utilities system, and we want students to see how an organisation can efficiently operate whilst only consuming less than 10 per cent of the water used by a typical station of equivalent size.”

Millmerran State School P-10 Principal Rob Michel said this workshop is an excellent forum for students to test their skills in solving real-world challenges by collaborating with each other, gathering data and applying learning outcomes from the classroom.

As Australia’s largest and most successful industry-led education and schools training initiative, the QMEA seeks to broaden student and teacher knowledge of career opportunities in resources.

The academy encourages a talent pipeline of employees into vocational and professional careers, with a focus on female and Indigenous participation. The QMEA currently engages with 90 schools and is a partnership between the QRC and the Queensland Government under its Gateway to Industry Schools program.

Media contact: Ellie Blumel – ellieb@qrc.org.au or 0448 122 948

The QRC is Queensland’s peak body for coal, metal and gas explorers, producers and suppliers across the resources sector. It contributes one in every five dollars to the state economy, supports one in six Queensland jobs, supports more than 15,000 businesses and contributes to more than 1,400 community organisations – all from 0.1 percent of Queensland’s land mass.