 Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. You're very welcome to this event, which is co-organized by the Institute and the Irish Member Committee of the World Energy Council. For those who don't know the WEC, the World Energy Council, it's the principal impartial networks of energy leaders and practitioners working on stable environmental sensitive energy systems and has been in existence since 1923. It's UN accredited and has more than 3,000 members in 90 countries. And I should say on behalf of WEC Ireland that we're very grateful for the support of Air Grade and ESP. This talk today is very timely about hydrogen. Hydrogen has been much in the news recently. The level of discourse has increased. Those of you following the G20 in Japan will have noticed an IEA report on that. Hydrogen is a vector of energy, a feedstock. It's useful for renewable energy in terms of power to gas and in storage. And it's resurging again recently, I think, because fuel cell technology has come down in price, as well as renewable electricity, and many countries are becoming engaged with it. And to explore the hydrogen economy, we have two excellent speakers here. First of all, we have Dr. Angela Wilkinson. You're very welcome to the Institute, Angela. I'm just a senior director on business and insights at the World Energy Council. We have Alexander Florengstein from Hydrogen Europe, which is the leading trade association representing the entire value chain in hydrogen. And you're very welcome to the Institute, and each of the speakers will speak for about 20 minutes. And the sessions will be recorded. And afterwards, there's a chance for you to ask some questions. That will be, of course, under the Chatham House rules, so that the first part of the session is on the record. The latter part is off, which means that you can use the material, but you may not identify this house or either of the speakers. If you're minded to tweet, please use the hash at IIA and put your mobile phones to silent. And so with all of that, I guess Angela will ask you, is hydrogen hope or hype? Thank you very much. May I? Thank you. Hello, everybody. Thank you very much for a very warm welcome. I'm very pleased to be back in Ireland. I married a man from Tipperary nearly 30 years ago. I consider this to be a home from home. What I'm going to do, we want to be complimentary, as well as we don't mind disagreeing with each other. But what we're really here to do is to try and help introduce the situation around hydrogen. This is the first time I understand it's been presented in the Irish context. So I'm going to talk very much about the bigger global picture, and then we're going to talk about the more European specifics. So that would be one way of thinking about our different talks. So I'm going to present one study that we've recently completed around the hydrogen economy. But let me just first start. If I don't give you the advert, when I go home, I will get told off. But you've already done an excellent job of talking about 1923, who the World Energy Council is. We're all vectors, all sectors. We reach the parts of the energy system that other actors can't reach, where OECD and non-OECD. And we are a technology neutral, technology agnostic act, but not passive around global energy transition and the success of energy transition at national and regional level. What I'm going to talk about is one of our recent studies. But what we actually produce for our members is what we call a practical transition toolkit, which has five different sets of tools in it that can be used by companies, countries, cities and communities to actually make sense of where are they in energy transition, where do they want to get to, and how are they going to achieve it. And for us, energy transition is not just about decarbonisation, it's also about taking care of energy security, as well as the sustainability, as well as the affordability and the equity issues involved. And I'll touch a little bit upon our, an innovation insights brief that we're just finishing on hydrogen. We've also just completed work on existing infrastructure, where we're looking at stranded assets, decommissioning and repurposing, which touches on the hydrogen theme as well. And we also have a paper coming out on storage soon, which also touches on the hydrogen connector, as I might call it. And I'll touch upon some of these other tools. Recently the IEA published a report on hydrogen in the advance, in the run up to the G20. The World Energy Council went out first earlier this year with our own insights brief, innovation insights brief on hydrogen. And the story of course is for those of us who are old enough to remember, you know, in the 1970s we were getting a little bit excited about hydrogen in the context of all the energy oil price shocks at the time. We were getting excited about the possibilities of coal produced hydrogen. These days that's known as grey hydrogen, right? It used to be called brown. It's now called grey. And we were getting, we were thinking about all those fuel, those, all those long queues at the petrol station who would have access to transportation fuels. That was the 1970s context. Now we get very excited about hydrogen, not because of what happened in the past, but because of what we think is going to happen in the future. And all the new energy visions that are coming about, which are increasingly not about grey hydrogen, but about multiple shades of blue and green hydrogen. So hopefully by the end of the day, if nothing else, you'll walk out of this talk knowing your, your grey from your blue and your green hydrogen, if you don't know that already. And some of the things that are driving that discussion are the excitement about the falling costs of renewables, which makes it much cheaper to produce hydrogen and particularly green hydrogen. So if you're using renewables to produce hydrogen, it's called green hydrogen. If you're using gas and CCS to produce hydrogen, it's called blue hydrogen, right? We're looking at other developments around storage game changes. We're looking at other developments about how national governments are doing things called sector coupling and they're looking particularly about how do they manage deep decarbonization by not just focusing on energy, but also on the connections between energy and transport, energy and buildings, energy and industry. And we're also looking at the new geopolitics, which is shaping the energy plays around the world, which are not just about oil and gas anymore, but increasingly about information, technology and data and the resources that are required for the renewables revolution and the battery revolution, not just the clean energy revolution. So we published this new brief, why hydrogen? Because hydrogen energy transition increasingly has always required a mix of electrons and hydrogen. And the world energy council is always very interested in the dichotomy that seems to be presented in many of the debates between those who are in the electrification part of the transition dialogue and those who are in the molecular part or liquids part and the little common ground that there can be between them. So energy transition requires a mix of electrons and molecules. We can't electrify everything. There are some things that still require molecules. Hydrogen can reach the hard to abate sectors that electrification can't currently. There are new opportunities for trade in clean energy that are coming about in the world. And it costs 10 times as much to transport electron as it does to transport molecules. So somewhere we need liquids in the system. And high renewable penetration increasingly requires new types of storage, not just daily, not just hourly, but increasingly on demand and from many different places. So hydrogen matters in all of these senses. There are many shades of green and blue production pathways just to try and introduce some of them. I talked about gray hydrogen. It's intensive in terms of carbon dioxide. It's low cost, but it has very low social acceptability in many parts of the world. Blue hydrogen produces less CO2. It is more expensive because of the cost of electrolyzers or the cost of carbon capture and storage. And its social acceptance is better than gray. And then green hydrogen, which is about using renewables or net zero emissions in terms of carbon, it's more expensive, but its social acceptance is high. And what we see is even when hydrogen producers get very excited about blue hydrogen, some of the adjacent sectors like aviation don't want to use it because they think that there will be some form of lack of social acceptability of blue rather than green. What's new in the hydrogen business globally when we take a look? So we interviewed people who are actually bringing forward the new hydrogen economy, the people who are investing in it, who are actually piloting it, who are actually producing hydrogen and the different value chains in different parts of the world. What we have found is that there are now over 50 countries with mandates, policies and goals on hydrogen. Those include China, the Middle East, in the Middle East, Japan, Australia, as well as, of course, in Ireland itself. The falling costs of renewables, zero marginal cost, the falling costs of electrolyzers, we expect those to come down very quickly, and the falling costs of carbon capture and storage are all contributing to the hydrogen business case. Fuel cell costs have also dropped in terms of compared with battery electric vehicles or other types of energy applications. So we have fuel cell costs and an expectation by many that we will see cost parity between fuel cells and battery electric vehicles in the mid-2020s, that's just around the corner. And we also have found the biggest change that we have detected internationally is the amount of talk there is about China as somebody who's going to be a market shaper in this area and the amount of investment that is going on in China in terms of their hydrogen development commitments. That's not to underscore, not to detract from the increasing partnership between places like Japan and the Middle East, who are also pushing a very big hydrogen investment and business development case. It's a flexible fuel, this is why it makes it attractive, it gets used for many different things. So it gets used in power generation, gets used in mobility, gets used in industry, gets used for heat and it gets used for storage. In the economics of it, the biggest pools are around mobility at the moment. They're expected to be followed by industrial energy use and power generation in terms of where there's scalable economics. But the future of hydrogen, whether it's blue, green or even gray, is not a simple trajectory of inevitable development. We have found that although the economics of hydrogen have changed dramatically in terms of production, the economics of transporting hydrogen from where it is produced to where it gets used also require a lot more cooperation if that's really going to be the game, if it's really going to significantly grow. And that depends on policy, not just markets. And the biggest policy change is the policy around decarbonisation and whether it's maintained or not, or whether we see fragmented policies and very little international cooperation. So we have four different futures for hydrogen. We have a world where we have coordinated international action on decarbonisation and we have favorable economics not just in terms of production but whole value ecosystem and then we can get to the hydrogen society. By contrast, we could see a future for hydrogen where we see fragmented energy policies, less international cooperation around decarbonisation and we see a lot of investment around hydrogen production costs but very little value whole supply chain development. And in that case we would be down in the bottom left hand corner of niche to limited applications for hydrogen. So not a given future but a very interesting future. And I think for Ireland, you have a huge play around putting increasing amounts of variable renewables onto your grid. Hydrogen opportunities are as far as we can see many and different in Ireland even given the constraints around being an island energy community on the edge of the European continent. We have the possibility for linking energy transition to industrial policy in Ireland, how will hydrogen play not just as you think about decarbonisation but also about new industrial development and what will happen in the future of the jobs and industry market around how can we manage an affordable not just a faster and deeper decarbonisation and how hydrogen pathways contribute to social justice and affordability of clean energy transition. About an opportunity to use existing infrastructure if it's coming from gas and CCS or if it's coming just from electrolysis or if it's from the possibility to develop long range you could think about yourself as the Atlantic wind frontier export market for the new hydrogen economy and many different opportunities depending of course on not just how we produce it but also what value chain gets developed in Ireland but also between Ireland and other countries in terms of import and export opportunities. So that's my total big picture look on hydrogen it's got a very big bright future it's being invested in in many parts of the world the biggest surprise has been China's move very quickly into this space and the amount of investment that's going into this space in the Middle East and Japanese partnerships the Asia Pacific is moving much faster than Europe the US is not not out of the picture but the plays for hydrogen are very different in different parts of the world and I shall leave it there. Well thank you very much for that Angela and straight away Alexandra I invite you to give us the European perspective thank you. Thank you first of all thank you very much for the invitation thank you very much for the Institute for organizing such a well-attended event and thank you for all the participants to to actually be here and take their time to to see where hydrogen is is going. My name is Alexander Frustan I'm from Hydrogen Europe the leading association of the hydrogen industry when I say hydrogen I only say renewable hydrogen and and low carbon hydrogen so that's what we stand for that's what we we we represent I wanted to get that out there from the from the very beginning. Is my presentation on all right here we are. So I want to to give an idea about the scale of the problem here about why it's absolutely crucial that we need to act and why hydrogen is essential to to reaching the the Paris Agreement goals. Here we have the amount of CO2 reductions that that needs to take place in order to stick to the to the two degree scenario and already we're seeing that a two degree scenario is not enough so we have a gap of more than 1000 metric tons of CO2 every year in Europe that cannot be met in the in the reference technology scenario and that part that that massive part needs to be covered partially or completely through the use of low carbon and green and green hydrogen that is what what what people say hard to abate sectors that that's what it means it it's a huge chunk of the need of to to decarbonize and these are the figures just for for Europe so the way we see it and you you presented it very well is of course that the purpose is to enable as many renewables into into the system to distribute that energy as an energy vector through hydrogen to store it to act as a buffer to use it when when we need it and of course to then consume it where where where it is needed in the transport sector but we must not forget the heavy industry sectors as well when it comes to as a as a feed stock or as a primary energy energy source of course the challenge of of heating as well both in terms of commercial heating personal heating and and industrial heating is also an essential part of where hydrogen can be can be used that way the way we see hydrogen and the way everybody should see hydrogen is as part of a system I think you made a very good point in saying that it's not the only technology that is going to be out there it's going to function in a world where electricity is produced through renewables it is then taken to consumers through that electricity grid at the same time excess electricity is is is is transferred into into hydrogen it is then transported through a dedicated hydrogen grid to consumers of hydrogen and there are many that that need hydrogen at 100 you may need to to to import it or Ireland may want to export it as well if it has the potential to do so and it will for the foreseeable future function alongside alongside the natural gas infrastructure as well so we must see it as a part of an energy system an integrated an energy system between production transport and consumption I'm not going to stay too much on the figures it's just to say that there's a role for hydrogen in all the different areas that I mentioned earlier transportation plays an important part but the other sectors should not be forgotten as well because it it meets certain needs that cannot be met with with other energy vectors just to to tell you about this report you can look it up for yourself this is what I wanted to present today but I want to decide it in the last minute to focus on more concrete things so you will be able to research this on our on our website if you if you want to it tries to quantify the market for hydrogen in 2030 and 2050 to in the different sectors to really understand where it's going in Europe just the basic conclusions we think it's going to go to 24 percent of total final energy demand is going to be consumed as hydrogen in terms of the economic importance of it just in Europe it's going to be quite massive a sector that is estimated around 820 billion annual revenue and 5.4 million direct jobs not counting the indirect jobs created by the by the subsequent services it has to be admitted and has to be said from the very beginning that the different applications that that hydrogen will reach maturity at different times you cannot compare the technology maturity of the aviation and maritime to those of passenger cars or the introduction of hydrogen into into steel production for example to some of the other applications so this is something that we understand this is something that we're also working with with our members and with the FCHU I will tell you something about that a little bit later but to understand that it is a transition that is going on it is expected and certain application will reach maturity later on in in the following decades the political push in Europe for hydrogen is impressive just last year the energy ministers of most of you country signed the hydrogen declarations committing themselves to to the sustainable development of of hydrogen technology just a few days ago the leaders in Brussels could not agree on EU leaders but they could agree to mandate the commission the next commission whoever it will be as leader to to undertake concrete action to to enable sector coupling with the use of hydrogen so the the next commission already has a mandate given by the European Council a few days ago to to act and deploy efficient regulation effective regulation to support the hydrogen industry so the political inspector at least at European level is is is definitely present now I decided last minute also in consultation with the organizers to focus about what's going on in practice and to show you that hydrogen is not something that we're looking for in the future or we're hoping it's going to happen and crossing our fingers but it's something being developed right now with concrete plans on on the ground before I I start just wanted to to to say that we need hydrogen as an energy vector in order to reach those sectors that cannot be reached by by electricity they're complementary they complement each other as technologies but on the left you see a pipeline and on the right you see cables carrying exactly the same amount of of energy it's just to say why it is unreasonable to think that everything can be electrified and hydrogen needs to exist especially in a world with significantly much more renewable renewable energy so that is why Germany and the Netherlands have very concrete plans to develop a a system of production and distribution through through through dedicated pipelines there's a lot of a lot of things going on on this slide so I will just explain to the right is Hassunis the Dutch TSOs plan for the Netherlands that includes a backbone around the Netherlands with production capacities in in in just north of Rotterdam through wind with production capacity in in the north of the Netherlands through both CCS as well as solar as well as wind and for that to be stored in salt caverns there in the north of Netherlands transported all around the different industrial areas of of the Netherlands so this is extremely concrete with a clear timeline the different projects being green green lit and one of the pipelines is it's a pipeline that exists now it's a redundant pipeline they will stop using a natural gas within that pipeline and simply convert it to a dedicated hydrogen pipeline Germany has been producing hydrogen through through through electrolysis for for quite the number of years in the in in in in mines they have been injecting it into into the grid for that long now get H2 wants to develop a hydrogen backbone going through all the industrial clusters of Germany and of course connecting it to the to the Dutch to the Dutch pipeline when it comes to the Irish case obviously we're talking about a high target for renewable integration in your power sector I think these are very conservative but these are estimations and modeling of how much of the energy produced with variable renewable sources need to be converted in hydrogen in order to stabilize your your your grid and as you can see from around 60 to 70 percent renewable integration your your the need for hydrogen production it increases well quite quite exponentially and this is already an a conservative estimation so that is already a need for for Ireland when it comes to storage I understand that it's more difficult in Ireland due to the topography of of the earth and the lack of salt caverns although storage will be will be something that's that needed in a source in a form of the other the Netherlands is clearly ahead of of this and there are already existing salt caverns that are being converted to to hold hydrogen uh Nourian is involved in in in in in that so again something that takes place today on the on the ground when it comes to transport when it comes to transport it is infinitely easier to deploy a hundred the battery electric vehicles than to deploy a hundred hydrogen vehicles to due to the infrastructure that you need around it when you're talking about scale it becomes infinitely easier to deploy an entire fleet of hydrogen vehicles as it is opposed to deploy an entire fleet of battery electric vehicles this is again due to the to the adjacent infrastructure that is needed not just for refilling but also in terms of the power power need the need for to power all those vehicles in terms of size you can see it takes 15 times more space to to charge as many as many hydrogen vehicles with with only one hydrogen refueling stations in in France Belgium in in the Netherlands and in the UK the best business case now for transport in terms of passenger cars is the deployment of fleet and if you are looking to deploy and start off a a micro system in terms of transport I would look at the at fleet first and captive fleets that can refuel at a at a base taxis in in in Paris London and in well in Brussels they haven't arrived yet but in Paris and in London they're already present they make the business case be commercially viable from the very beginning both in terms of the refueling infrastructure which is highly profitable as well as the the the taxi operator which can function almost full time without the need to to to to recharge and lose precious precious time so that is an experience in the passenger car sector when it comes to buses there are more than I don't remember the number you have to add the total the total there but being being deployed in in in Europe mostly in in in western Europe unfortunately none in in Ireland at at the moment but these are these are buses whose prices have fallen from one million and a half euros the first hydrogen bus was a million and a half to three hundred and seventy five thousand this is the type of price reduction that that you've mentioned that the sector is is is experiencing and continues in to to experience so when it comes to what is different in in hydrogen that is the the amazing cost rejection not just in fuel cells but along the entire supply chain also why this focus on on heavy duty this is a comparison of the of the weight that is needed for battery electric vehicles on the right and the weight of the same system carrying the same amount of energy in in in a fuel cell this is why for buses and heavy duty transport this sector requires hydrogen hydrogen mobility in practice there are trucks being placed on the on the market collaroid in in in belgium has already ordered trucks from vdl 44 ton trucks and 28 ton trucks to be to be deployed by the retailer in belgium they have they're already their infrastructure for refueling they're just waiting for the the truck so it's not something in in in the future they're expecting to to to arrive later this this year in in switzerland the main retailers in switzerland also pushed by a quite a heavy taxation on fossil fuel transport there i have also committed to to to to to to re remodernize their their their logistic fleet to to hydrogen and have ordered the 1,600 trucks from from hyundae in the us you all know about about nicola and and their plans to the to deploy hydrogen trucks well there's also to say more about all the different application that already exists and these are real applications in terms of garbage trucks and other utility utility vehicles when it comes to refineries as you know the renewable energy directive requires that fuel suppliers ensure 14 percent of their their fuel release for consumption is from renewable sources one of the ways to achieve that is to ensure that the hydrogen that they used in the refining process is of renewable origin well there are already projects in in in in in in in Germany shell has has developed an electrolysis on its on its refinery to to switch its gray hydrogen to to to renewable hydrogen i know this is less relevant for for ireland but i want to talk about this case because when we do talk about hydrogen we talk about decarbonizing all the different sectors that are difficult to abate steel uses coal burns coal to reduce oxygen in in the iron ore and it could switch easily to renewable hydrogen replacing coal to do exactly the same job well that's already being done in two places in europe one in vestal pin at those alpine in austria and another one in in in sweden what do we do to support this from happen to to make sure that this actually takes place and it takes place as quickly as as as possible well obviously we want to to to enable this vision of a zero emission society we have teamed up with more than 120 companies from the entire value chain with research organizations and with national associations throughout throughout europe to create hydrogen europe we represent the entire sector from from the different parts and no single part of the value chain dominates us we welcome tso's both from from the gas sector and from the power sector that will more and more need to to use hydrogen to to balance their own infrastructure i won't stay too much on these slides but i do want to say that together with the european commission hydrogen europe has partnered to create a public private partnership it's called the fuel cells and hydrogen joint undertaking it's a different organization but 50 percent is hydrogen europe and 50 percent is the european commission what the joint undertaking does as a public private partnership and has been doing for the past 10 years was make sure that this energy revolution takes place in europe as has funded the the research needed and the demonstration projects needed to prove that the technology is is is ready to to to function on the market the past 10 years more than 244 projects were were funded over one almost a billion and now of of euros have been have been provided to research and demonstration projects and have allowed the industry to prove itself as as market as market ready it's everything i wanted to to say about that thank you