There is huge interest in hydrogen as a solution to net zero, an alternative fuel sources, a fix for energy security and energy storage and even as a wealth creator, but how far has hydrogen really come, relative to its other energy technology siblings such as oil & gas, nuclear and renewable energy? This presentation will reveal the world’s energy markets, covering all technologies, at a high level, using EIC DataStream source data, and will then focus in on hydrogen as a relative part of the whole, and revealing the types and locations of hydrogen projects that have actually been funded. The results will perhaps surprise you.

The EU provides many funding programmes in support of hydrogen technology research and Innovation. Given the importance of hydrogen in a Net Zero Emission Europe, research, innovation and deployment are essential. This presentation will elaborate some of the EU funded programmes, explain their interaction in support of technologies of different maturity, and elaborate with some concrete examples. The third Innovation Fund deadline of 3 Billion Euro, is only one of the potential programmes to act in synergy with Horizon Europe, and nationally administered funding programmes, such as the Recovery and Resilience Facility and European Regional Development Fund also play an important role. This presentation will elaborate on elements of these programmes.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s vision-2030 includes being a significant player in clean hydrogen to support global decarbonization ambitions. Aramco as a National Champion intends to be one of the largest and competitive low carbon solutions provider, to serve energy, fuels and chemical markets. This will play a key role to accelerate energy transition and global decarbonization targets. Aramco’s decarbonization targets and low-carbon solutions include significant investments to lower its emissions; develop CCS (carbon capture and sequestration) capabilities; and ensure lower carbon intensities across its value-chain. Aramco is embarking to develop a low carbon hydrogen and ammonia hub with capacities of 11MMTA, by 2030. This ambition includes a commitment to transparently trace its greenhouse gas emissions across its value chain.

Green H2 represents a viable path toward decarbonization and continues to attract global interest and investment. In the past few years, new policies have begun to pave the way for widespread adoption of green H2 as a sustainable energy carrier. Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are producing the electrolyzers, fuel cells and fueling equipment that will make adoption a reality. However, there are still great uncertainties related to technology capability to scale up, H2 impact on environment, lack of infrastructures, return of investment. To deliver, manufacturers must quickly scale up with limited resources, achieving execution efficiencies. System methodologies can play a relevant role in achieving project de-risking and accelerating technology developments, through the deployment of techniques such as standardization, modularization and digital optimization.

Achieving the lowest possible Levelized Cost of Hydrogen is one of the key objectives for renewable hydrogen projects. This panel discussion will address several factors on this topic, such as geographical factors, input cost of renewables, optimizing energy architectures and intermittency management systems. This panel will also assess what makes green hydrogen projects commercially successful and mitigation strategies around this.

Sustainably produced hydrogen is a key vector for decarbonising many hard-to-abate industries such as transportation, power and chemical manufacture. Ammonia is a potential hydrogen carrier which offers advantages in containing no carbon molecules and it is a globally traded commodity today. Ammonia cracking allows the conversion of ammonia back into hydrogen to facilitate the transportation of large quantities of clean hydrogen over long distances. Johnson Matthey have nearly 100 years of ammonia cracking heritage and have developed catalysts and commercially available licensed processes to enable this ambition. The intimate interplay between catalyst and process is essential for optimising and scaling up technologies. Safely developing technology is something Johnson Matthey has successfully done for decades in multiple technologies. JM’s methodology deeply reviews and de-risks lower technology readiness level (TRL) elements such as combustion. This means we have full confidence in process developments which are being put into practice in global world scale projects.

In this presentation, we take a deep dive into the industry partnership between Hoeller Electrolyzer and Rolls-Royce and how this is leveraged to scale up PEM electrolyzers.

This talk will focus on the development priorities for proton exchange membrane (PEM) water electrolysis (WE) systems to deliver a lower levelized cost of hydrogen (LCOH) to meet global clean energy demands in a net-zero economy. Leveraging a world-leading fuel cell R&D platform, Gore’s advanced PEM design and technology enables high-efficiency, low total-cost-of-ownership WE systems by breaking through existing performance barriers and reducing engineering trade-offs. Gore’s global supply chain and quality assurance capabilities, developed over 20+ years, also provide the resources and security for the scale-up of efficient WE systems using novel composite PEM - while acknowledging that collaboration is key to achieving our collective net-zero ambitions.

Before hydrogen can be used as an energy carrier on a large scale, considerable hurdles still have to be overcome with regard to transportation and storage. Compared to methanol, the liquefaction of hydrogen requires more energy and its compression to 700 bar also creates higher energy losses. These disadvantages can be avoided if green hydrogen is bound to carbon oxide from renewable sources right after its synthesis by electrolysis applying established processes. A liquid product is generated and established logistics already exist for its transportation and storage. The hydrogen bound in the methanol can be converted back through a methanol reforming reactor. Fraunhofer IMM is developing hydrogen generation systems applying methanol, ethanol and ammonia as hydrogen carriers. Fuel cell applications require purification of the hydrogen, which can be achieved through catalytic processes (preferential oxidation of carbon monoxide) or alternatively through pressure swing adsorption. Both requires previous reforming of the methanol, which is carried out with IMM self-developed catalyst technology, which holds the world-record on activity for methanol steam reforming. The IMM reactor technology for methanol steam reforming is a co-current heat-exchanger, which can utilize off-gases from the fuel cell anode or from a pressure swing adsorption (PSA) purification. This increases the overall process efficiency considerably also when compared to reactor technology heated by electricity from renewable sources. The productivity of the IMM reactors which amounts to 1.5 LH2/(L s) holds another world record for more than a decade. Having demonstrated the feasibility of this unique approach in a multitude of systems of increasing power equivalent (100 W- 5 kW- 35 kW) IMM has recently realized a methanol reformer with 100 kW power equivalent which can be scaled up to the MW size in future. This paves the ground for a large variety of novel application areas of the technology from maritime to small scale stationary and others.

Since COP26, more and more countries are committed to net-zero by mid of century. Looking at sources of GHG emission, there are significant portions are coming from those hard to abate applications, such as ammonia, methanol productions, petroleum refining process, as well as aviation and long-distance transportation, cement and steel productions. To reach net-zero, wide spread of green hydrogen adoption is desired in those applications. As cost of renewables, such as PV and wind, continue to drop lower and lower, green hydrogen gradually becomes cost competitive. Green hydrogen enables deep decarbonization to reach net-zero emission. To accelerate green hydrogen adoption, we need to start with mature alkaline electrolysis technology to minimize both technical and financial risks. In this presentation, recent progresses on alkaline electrolysis technology, equipment and process will be reviewed. Alkaline electrolysis has demonstrated as leading technology to enable green hydrogen adoption.

The presentation will demonstrate the evolution of PEM water electrolysis technology since it was employed in the early missions into space to present-day advanced materials crucial for enabling a sustainable hydrogen ecosystem and helping to achieve the ambitious net-zero decarbonization goals. With more than 50 years of experience in electrochemical applications, Chemours plays a vital role in moving the Hydrogen Economy forward and driving decarbonization at a global scale. Nafion™ Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) technology is the heart of hydrogen production, storage, and use. The Chemours company is committed to advancing technological progress and product innovation by adding production capability with a $200M investment in France to provide direct, domestic access for Europe to Nafion™ ion exchange materials and build on the existing efforts in the US to have a reliable supply chain and robust capacity to help customers grow and fast-track the implementation of hydrogen solutions.

In order to meet the high and increasing demand for hydrogen the industry needs to scale-up. This panel discussion will present lessons from large-scale hydrogen production projects.

Equinor is a Norwegian energy company, currently the largest supplier of natural gas to Germany, a major European oil producer, and a leading pioneer in the development of both floating and bottom-fixed offshore wind technology. Equinor has almost three decades of experience within carbon capture and storage (CCS) on the Norwegian continental shelf (NCS). As part of Equinor’s roadmap to become a carbon net-zero company and its ambition to help its customers to decarbonize, Equinor is working on several projects to produce low-carbon hydrogen from natural gas, combining its experience within CCS and its leading role in natural gas production. Equinor believes that low-carbon hydrogen is an important building block for a fast and cost-efficient ramp-up of the hydrogen market in Europe, to achieve significant CO2 reductions in the energy-intensive industries and to pave the way for green hydrogen

The challenges raised by energetic transition require innovative industrial developments adapted to local and territorial markets that are showing a growing appetite for sustainable solutions improving their energetic sovereignty. In this respect, coupling of offshore windfarms with hydrogen production is deemed particularly relevant to unlock their full potential. Indeed, it allows massive storage of electricity, thus tempering the difficulties presented by the electrical production intermittency of the renewable energies. Used as a fuel and distributed on the offshore windfarm field, hydrogen may also decarbonize the activities of the maintenance vessels operating in the area. When considering floating windfarms located further from the coast, hydrogen production considerably reduces the cost of the electrical connection to the shore, thus presenting an additional economical interest for the developers. This vision is already shared by many North Sea countries which federated their efforts to develop a growth strategy for offshore green hydrogen produced from offshore windfarms. Official project announcements so far will give rise to 200-500MW renewable H2 production capacity per year from 2027, at least 1GW per year for the period 2031-2032 and over 10GW per year after 2035.

Babcock & Wilcox (B&W) is developing two strongly carbon negative technologies capable of producing negative carbon intensity (CI) hydrogen and steam. These decarbonization technologies both share the ability to use solid fuels such as waste agricultural biomass, construction and demolition debris (C&D), and municipal solid waste (MSW). The first is a chemical looping technology (BrightLoop) that uses an oxygen-carrying metal oxide particle to independently react with air, fuel, or steam in three separate vessels, producing three nearly pure streams of oxygen-depleted exhaust, wet carbon dioxide (CO2), and wet hydrogen, one stream from each vessel. The second is an oxy-combustion process (OxyBright) combined with a bubbling fluidized-bed (BFB) boiler that uses recirculated flue gas and nearly pure oxygen to produce an exhaust gas with very little nitrogen. This gas is more easily purified and compressed for sequestration. By using carbon neutral fuels and combining this with sequestration of the CO2, the produced hydrogen, steam or power is truly carbon negative.

Briefing on the market overview of technologies and advancements in converting waste to chemicals (in general) and specifically to Hydrogen. The presentation will also cover the feasibility analysis of each technology route, in addition to laying out recommendations from both a global and local vision.

Tenaris has developed an intermediate solution for hydrogen storage, consisting of an array of long vessels manufactured from seamless pipes, designed to operate at intermediate pressure levels. This work presents the concept and illustrates how the new solution maximizes storage efficiency in terms of estate required and cost and complexity of operation.

As demand for hydrogen grows, so does the need for available water. This panel discussion will address the water quality criteria for hydrogen production and the latest technologies being used to optimize this industry. This discussion will also highlight the challenges around water scarcity, and how water can be managed for scalable and sustainable hydrogen production.

The trend towards low-carbon hydrogen production, at large scale, is in full swing. Air Liquide’s Autothermal Reforming (ATR) and Cryocap™ carbon capture technologies are the most essential building bricks for hydrogen production at scale. Air Liquide will share insights on how customers can benefit from a unique integrated solution to reach the lowest carbon intensity hydrogen production.

Aramco’s efforts in establishing clean hydrogen industry will accelerate the decarbonization initiative toward 2050 ambition goal of net zero carbon emission for scope 1&2. Accordingly, the company is building one of the biggest carbon capture and sequestration projects, in order to be able to sequester millions of tons of CO2 annually by 2027. The presentation will give insights on the opportunities and value chain challenges related to Aramco’s clean ammonia export to Europe as one of the big potential markets. These ammonia will have a direct use in different sectors or crack it to hydrogen for use as fuel and in chemicals industry.

This presentation will discuss the latest advancements in AEL technology and it’s scaling up for large green hydrogen projects.

Hydrogen is one of the building blocks moving toward a climate neutral society, in which digital technologies play an increasingly important role. CGI, who is among the largest IT and business consulting services firms in the world, has deep domain knowledge and experience in digitalization in the energy and utilities domain. We will touch upon the parallels between existing and new energy markets, the challenges and the opportunities we see in creating an integrated hydrogen ecosystem. Join our presentation where we share how data driven technologies can help you in optimising an integrated and sustainable hydrogen economy.

We will discuss how digitalization can improve the reliability of hydrogen production facilities and facilitate the integration of hydrogen equipment in an end-usage context. Whether you are a hydrogen producer, a technology provider, or a policymaker interested in advancing the hydrogen economy, this presentation will provide valuable insights into the role of digital solutions in making hydrogen production cleaner, more efficient, and more sustainable.