 Good afternoon. I'm Alex White, Chair of the IAEA's Energy Group, and I'm delighted to welcome you to this event, which is part of the lecture series, Rethink Energy, brought to you by the ESB and the IAEA. And on behalf of the IAEA, I would like to thank the ESB for their continuing support and generous sponsorship of this series. This seminar will explore the potential of the European hydrogen economy. Hydrogen is expected to play an important role in achieving a carbon neutral economy in Europe by 2050. And while currently representing a modest fraction of the global energy mix, projections indicate that clean hydrogen could meet approximately 25% of the world's energy demand by mid-century. And of course, green hydrogen also has many possible applications in the Irish context as it does across the world. Today, we've convened a distinguished panel of experts to hear their assessments of the role that hydrogen could play in the transition to a clean and secure energy future. Today's event, just to say briefly about the event that lasts for around 70 minutes or so. And shortly, I'm going to invite each of our three panelists to offer some introductory remarks. Then we'll have a brief panel discussion amongst our distinguished guests before turning most importantly then to your questions. We really encourage your contributions. You can join the discussion using the Q&A function on Zoom, which you'll see there on your screen. And feel free to send in your questions throughout the session as they occur to you. It's always a hazard that questions, really good questions all come together towards the end and we just can't get to them because, you know, we just have to wrap up at some point. Once something occurs to you, just put the question in then and the sooner it comes in, the better chance there is that we'll actually reach it. And I would ask you, if you don't mind, to identify yourself when you put the question in and your affiliation if you have one when you do that. A reminder that the event, the whole event is on the record, and you can join the discussion on Twitter if you're motivated to do so, and you could use the hashtag, which is hashtag rethink energy. First though, before we introduce our panelists, I'm delighted to hand over to Jim Dollard, Executive Director of Generation and Trading at the ESB, and Jim will offer some opening remarks. Jim, over to you. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon, and you're all very welcome to what will be I hope a very exciting seminar today. ESB has worked really closely with the IEA for for a number of years now, but in particular to rethink energy series. I think this afternoon's discussion in particular is a tremendous fit with rethinking energy. This week ESB has announced a new corporate strategy in a similar vein. Its focus is net zero by 2040, which is a tremendous target of one we all need to deliver with. I think when you talk about net zero, Ireland has tremendous natural resources in terms of renewables, particularly off the West Coast, and they will bring emissions down, we will make big steps. However, solving intermittency of wind will be a final piece in the jigsaw of net zero and long term storage is essential to deliver that. And we believe green hydrogen will be a key aspect of that solution. Since 2019 as a result, we've been advocating hydro hydrogen as a storage solution green hydrogen as a storage solution for Ireland in particular, and ESB is intent on playing its part on driving that possibility for Ireland. As part of our overall strategy now, and we see hydrogen as a key plank in 2021 we announced green Atlantic, and which is a plan to repurpose money point which is a coal fired station which has been the cornerstone of the system for about 40 years. So it's particularly as well symbolic. We see ourselves repurposing that site as a green energy hope that processor that transition has already started with a key pieces are a 1200 megawatt floating offshore wind farm, which we believe will be in place partially before the end of the decade and in partnership with that a major hydrogen production and storage hope. And we believe that vision can be delivered in the time frame 2030 and beyond. We're also developing another light, a number of light house projects projects that will take us there in terms of our vision for hydrogen. They're across a range of areas one obvious one that I'll call out is we will build an electrolyzer on one of our wind farms in the coming years. We're partnering with companies like the Carbon X in terms of large scale storage, and we are working with a number of partners in terms of transport, how can we put transport solutions that are hydrogen based into operation in our economy. It's exciting times. We believe the green hydrogen will be a critical part of the energy landscape in terms of net zero, but also in terms of security supply. And to conclude, we have a tremendous panel today. So without further ado, I'll hand over for all I know will be a really informative lecture. And great to have you with us as always. And so now to turn to our first speaker, Dr. Isabel Cabrita is professor of energy solutions at the Institute of Education and Sciences in Lisbon. She serves as a researcher at Serena, hope I'm pronouncing that correctly, a Portuguese research and technological development Institute, which best specializes in innovative and sustainable energy solutions from 2015 to 2021. And the research directorate general of energy and geology in Portugal. In this role, Dr. Cabrita oversaw the implementation of the Portuguese energy and climate plan, and Portugal's national hydrogen strategy, which we're very interested to hear something about this afternoon. She has produced more than 300 publications and served as guest editor of an edition of energies in 2021. So, Isabel, the floor is yours. Very welcome. Thank you. Well, first of all, thank you. And I would like to thank the Institute of International and European Affairs for the invitation and the opportunity to share my knowledge and the experience I had with the Portuguese hydrogen strategy. I would like to start by referring to the flexibility that hydrogen can offer to the energy system. It can be used in various sectors, and also serves as an energy vector that goes into different products and service energy storage as was stated before, and provides or can provide clean solutions in the context of a circular economy. And this will contribute to meet the sustainability goals in the future and also to strengthen the economy. I think it's a very important factor that I think should be considered when we are discussing hydrogens with its advantages and disadvantages. In the case of Portugal, we have very favorable conditions to develop a hydrogen economy. We have a modern natural gas infrastructure that can be used to introduce hydrogen. We have very competitive prices related to electricity generation from renewable sources. And also it's a geographical location that facilitates business in terms of exports and also the use of water to produce hydrogen and I think very in a way similar to the conditions of Ireland. So taking this strategy was designed to promote an industrial policy around hydrogen and with the definition of a set of public policies which could drive public and private investment at all levels and from production to consumption of hydrogen. And together with this, we actually associated renewable gases. And I think that what that is an important fact, because we didn't only focus on hydrogen production but also in either types of gases through hydrogen and that also in a way promoted the project. Based on hydrogen. The instruments we had in the European context were the carbon neutrality roadmap. And the national energy and climate plan and the national investment plan that focus mostly in large structuring projects. We designed the national hydrogen strategy and this in support of the energy and climate plan and carbon neutrality to make it easier even to meet the targets that were set up in a faster way. Three phases were decided for the implementation of this strategy phase one for a three year period until 23. We focus on regulatory measures and pilot projects to be set up. Then on the second phase until 2030 and supporting the energy climate plan to consolidate and implement a larger national projects. And the phase three until 2050 for full development of a national hydrogen market, and this of course was with the definition of various targets in different sectors that are stated in the slide, in terms of greenhouse gases and the percentage of the introduction of hydrogen in different sectors and was projected a value of investment from seven to nine billion euros. The framework to enable the implementation of this strategy was designed and starting by the legal and regulatory framework. All the legislation that existed in Portugal was based on fossil fuels. So this had to be adapted and revised to be able to include green hydrogen for its production storage production, the transportation and distribution. Based on the fact that we have a high installed renewable energy source production capacity that we could even enhance this by promoting smaller projects even going into a higher consumption at the domestic level, so promoting the funding of smaller and pilot projects focusing on industry, but not only. And this was introduced into the strategy plan, together with other renewable gases so that would enable the, let's say the introduction of hydrogen in a faster way and in a more acceptable way. It was also defined the target for electrolyzer capacity of 2.5 gigawatt, but the larger project starting with 10 megawatt installations was defined and this would be set up at the regional level and assisted by dedicated installations using wind and solar energy. In the case of solar energy we were taking advantage of the conditions of Portuguese conditions that actually we have let's say an incidence in terms of solar energy that is the highest in Europe. In terms of promoting these projects and setting up the market, auctions were also designed to on hydrogen production and storage to temporarily support operating costs. So not only the cutbacks, but the opacs and I think this is very important issue because in this discussions with industry, industry showed that this was a very sensitive point and that it should be enabled and something done at this level. We introduced the revision of standards and the certification schemes and also looking into guarantees of origin, focusing on green hydrogen and other renewable gases. And one important point that was introduced in the strategy was the importance of research to include research and innovation to strengthen national competencies that exist and that could enable even technology development and some capacity building in this context so that Portugal could drive some new technologies to and contribute to this and the collaborative laboratory on hydrogen was launched where there is a very significant participation of private companies, universities and research centers, national and international level and monitoring of the implementation of this strategy was also considered with the creation of a task force. Very briefly I just speak about the CNES digital and hydrogen value, which is a hub for production and consumption of hydrogen. It has a good location and drives, let's say the potential for large production of hydrogen as well as the possibility of having a source and to be a lever also for the creation of a national hydrogen strategy. And in case of the concept, the strategy focus all, as I said, all levels from production to induce, I would like to stress here the fact that we are not only focusing on the production of hydrogen with electrolysis from grid surplus or dedicated installations, but also biomass gasification and taking advantage of even potential use in the future of results in terms of research of all biomass or other type of processes to contribute to the production of hydrogen and in a way to strengthen the national competence and to this level. As final comments, I would like to put some issues that come from the experience I had with this strategy and to start with the engagement of all sectors and stakeholders right from the beginning. We have the various meetings and workshops is very important that you engage all stakeholders in order to accept this change because you have to change into a different system. The second point is public policies and regulation need to address different issues and this leads to different ministries and entities to be involved, which needs a lot of coordination and articulations to have some efficacy when you implement the strategy so that everything goes into place. The third aspect I would like to address is to guarantee an integrated regulatory framework to include tax and incentive measures that are necessary for development of infrastructures should have a network, all components should be addressed at all level standards, investment, all sorts and also the level of technologies that offer to consumers and consider the consumers that they have in technologies that are efficient and also affordable and this is very important because you can have something but then people cannot take and this should be included in the strategy. Research and innovation to strengthen national competencies should be included in the plan of action because this also will drive education and capacity building and also contribute to the advances of this transition and even advance the hydrogen economy. And last, knowledge and experience change from through international cooperation that some is not only staying inside but going outside sharing like who we are now sharing the experiences and should, there should be a room for international cooperation, even in terms of think tank and I would like to acknowledge and comment the strategy regarding the Institute of International and European Affairs on this that is actually promoting this discussion and I think it's very important that this is taken internationally and for instance I think European level I think is very important discussions between the Member States to see what are the what Member States can offer in terms of positive aspects ones are offering hydrogen even others, they don't have this capacity that can receive so that an overall market can be established taking the characteristics and the different I'm trying to find the English word for values of each Member States that can contribute into this European strategy. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for that and for your insights and Isabelle and also you know the experience of Portugal and which is as you make the point that we've a lot countries have a lot to learn from each other. That's really it's great to hear those points and those insights, and we come back to it in a few minutes for the discussion. Another country that has led the way that has a hydrogen strategy established one is Germany and we're delighted this afternoon to be joined by Franz Lerner, I nearly said Franz Lerner, I'm sorry, Franz Lerner, Head of International Cooperation at NOW and the German organization for hydrogen and fuel cell technology. NOW is responsible for the coordination and management of the German innovation program for hydrogen and fuel cell technology and the electoral mobility model regions program of the federal ministry of transport and digital infrastructure of Germany. An engineer by training Mr Lerner has more than 10 years of professional experience focusing on hydrogen, fuel cells, renewable fuels, and electric mobility. Before joining NOW in early 2021, Mr Lerner was managing consultant at the international energy transition consulting firm E4Tech in Lausanne in Switzerland from 2014 to 2019. He co-authored the annual fuel cell industry review published by E4Tech, the global benchmark report for the sector. So Franz, you're more than welcome this afternoon and we look forward to hear what you have to say. The floor is yours. Thank you very much, Alex, for this kind of introduction. It's an honor to be on this panel today. I hope you can see my screen because I can't see the video right now. So unless I hear anything different, I continue. So today I tried to capture a few topics in a relatively short presentation. So briefly a few words on NOW, who we are, what we do. And then a bit on the broader picture about hydrogen in reaching net zero by 2050. And then on a global energy transition picture, and then concluding with the latest policy developments in Germany for hydrogen. So briefly about NOW, it's the national organization for hydrogen fuel cell technology originally founded for that purpose to coordinate the national innovation program for hydrogen fuel cell technologies. Meanwhile, we are also having a number of other funding programs in our portfolio. So we are fully owned by the federal government and only get our assignments directly from ministries at the federal level. And beyond hydrogen fuel cells, what's very important to mention is also we are responsible for rolling out the national charging infrastructure in Germany for battery electric vehicles. And we also have a duty better electric vehicles. So I say this, especially because I know there are sometimes quite heated discussions on one or the other options. And the good thing is we have both of those technologies in our portfolio and very healthy discussions also internally on what are the pros and cons of each option. I would like to emphasize right at the start hydrogen works. So the technology is beyond the R&D stage today, which should not say we don't need to continue doing research and development to improve it. Of course we should do that but we don't have to wait for breaks through innovations to get started with deploying hydrogen and fuel cell technology. With NRW we support funding programs for using hydrogen and transport applications. So this is a snapshot of where we are currently in Germany for around 100 refueling stations across the country. So with the fuel cell vehicle you can basically drive across Germany today and with around 1500 vehicles on the road, mostly cars at the moment. But we've also of course funded a number of research and development projects and continue to do so as part of the second phase of the national innovation program. So for transport hydrogen maybe a bit more recent and a bit of a more new approach, but hydrogen generally is an industrial commodity that has been used for for decades, and also transported an industrial scale. So if you compare it on a global picture the problem is really how we produce hydrogen today so the emissions of producing hydrogen are basically corresponding with the emissions of the aviation sector today. So it's not hydrogen that we need to tackle, it's how we make hydrogen that we need to tackle. In the national corporations at NRW we have over the years established ourselves as a representative of Germany in this technology fields and so we are involved in multilateral initiatives, such as mission innovation. The IPHE, the IEA hydrogen technology collaboration program, and trying to bring here the right actors together to move forward on the standards and regulation side, which is important so we can share products across countries, and also on financing for the early market ramp up I'll get to that later in a little bit more detail. Now about the role of hydrogen in reaching net zero. I'd like to start with the relatively bold statement that 100% renewable energy system by mid century globally is feasible. There are enough studies that have looked at how much materials does it require how much land area how much water does it require. So it's not that it's not known that it's possible. It's more about the question, do we actually want to get there, and will be put in the right measures to to get on that journey. So we have to deal with a legacy technology fossil fuels. And so the transition gets, it gets quite complicated in some places. But the speed of transition is really key, because we have gone 28 years left mid century for Germany we have tightened the target so we want to be climate neutral ready by 2045 which is not really far away. So on the supply side I think the all options are important versus the, what are the fastest options we can deploy is an important question and we know that solar and wind have scaled up dramatically over the last 20 years so they've proven they are able to grow with 20% per year. And so we should, on the supply side not very too much that's the good thing should we know how to get there. We should not get distracted with too many options on the table. Beyond 2050, maybe another ball game but for the next 30 years I think we should focus on what we have today in our toolbox and use those wisely. When I move to 100% renewable energy system storage is of course very important because, as we all know the wind doesn't blow all the time and then the night. It's hard to run a heat pump with the solar solar panel. So underground gas storage is key here and the first step from getting from electrons from wind and solar to molecules is hydrogen. We can turn this hydrogen and other derivatives, but the easiest in the longer term picture will be to just use hydrogen as is, as a replacement for natural gas, and then use that also in natural gas power plants to seasonal balancing but also maybe more short term balancing. I'd like to conclude this slide with one important point that we will have to replace fossil fuels not just in the electricity sector, but also for industrial use cases the so called hard to bait applications. And we're getting very interesting questions in the chat. One debate that's also in Germany very prominent these days is where should we use green hydrogen should we use it only for those sectors where we don't have any other options to decarbonize. Or can it also be used in transport in building in heating buildings, etc. And I think if you're talking about using green hydrogen for industrial uses, we are working on the assumption that we'll get it cheap enough to be a broadly available commodity at the expenses of fossil fuels today otherwise we would have to subsidize our industrial sector forever to be CO2 neutral so the target should be getting hydrogen so cheap that it's really broadly available and not have the same mistake as we had in the 90s and 80s where we always said renewables will always be expensive from solar to renewable and wind. So we have to firstly reduce the demand and efficiency measures in place before we can move to renewables. You know the reality today is renewables are the cheapest source of electricity. And now the challenges to make in the next 20 years renewable hydrogen the cheapest form of molecular energy carriers. And so the question is, will we get there in time can electrolyzer technology scale quick enough to where we need to get them by 2050 or mid century around 10 terawatt hours of electrolyzer capacity today. We are manufacturing less than about 100 megawatts per year. So it's a huge upscaling that we have to get done in the next 20 years from 10s of gigawatts to hundreds of gigawatts between 2013 2040. The good thing is this has been done in the last 20 years for PV so we know it's possible and the pressure on climate policies much stronger today than it was in the early 2000s. So the framework conditions are in place. And the question comes often is the electrolyzer industry ready to scale so fast. And here we have conducted a study already in 2017 and 18 looking very detailed on what it takes to manufacture electrolyzers and the critical components that go into electrolyzers. So making five gigawatts a year, which will be in the horizon around 2030 and beyond for Germany, we came to the conclusion that it actually just takes for most of the components, a full sized industrial manufacturing line. So it's really no rocket science, we just have to have the right program in place to scale it up very quickly in the next years. And the good thing is also we have a pool of different technologies on the electrolysis side so we are not dependent on just one approach. And last slide on the global picture would like to touch on the discussion blue versus green hydrogen. Blue hydrogen is quite often mentioned as a bridge into a future where we ultimately reach green hydrogen. So that's the topic for the for the next talk by Shiva about the financing of green hydrogen projects the challenging thing here is that they are, I have a very high upfront costs, because you have to invest in the wind, or in the solar power plant, then also in the electrolyzer. But then once it's all running there are very little costs. That's quite the opposite with fossil fuels or bioenergy. But the good thing is that you know all your costs at the beginning so for the entire project lifetime, you are secure you you have all the factors under control with blue hydrogen. It's quite the opposite so you have little, you have less cost upfront but then you're exposed to a lot of risks, such as price, volatility of the natural gas sector something which has been overlooked in recent years but has become very prominent recently with the energy crisis, and then also regulatory risks such as methane leakage how will those methane emissions be accounted for in future regulations but price will they have to someone who runs a project and also the abatement of the remaining CO2 emissions so blue hydrogen with CO2 capture will usually not capture 100% of the emissions because that will be very, very expensive to capture the last few percentage points. And then you don't know how much abatement costs will those remaining emissions be in the net zero world you would have to abate them with some negative emission technologies at some point. So there's a risk that you end up with stranded assets with blue hydrogen over the investment cycle. And so I would argue that that is a strong factor for green hydrogen in investment decisions as soon as it's becoming large scale. So I'm looking forward to to probably have some some questions and discussions around these topics afterwards and now a brief, brief statement on Germany so we have done also this exercise that is able to describe for Portugal with establishing a national hydrogen strategy in 2020, also a lengthy process to get alignment and agreement with all the different ministries, and I can only support that it's very important those to involve the stakeholders at the industry level at the research level to get all these these I think it's helps to have this central document, which defined a number of measures and has also provided quite good stimulus package for supporting it. Two billion euros going into international hydrogen topics. And part of this is, for example, the so called H2 global program, where Germany will will cover the difference between the production costs for green hydrogen today, and the price rate on the market in Germany for green hydrogen that's being brought from outside of Europe to Germany or Europe, probably in the first phase through derivatives of hydrogen and then the longer term was as pure hydrogen. Now that was in 2020. Some of you might know we have a new government from December almost last year. And they have pledged in their coalition treaty that they will continue the hydrogen stretch T have an update to that, which we are expecting in 2022. And the coalition treaty suggests that the approach and hydrogen will be even more ambitious. For example, the electrolyzer target for deployment has been doubled from previously five gigawatts by 2030 to now 10 gigawatts by 2030. And also commented in the treaty that they would take in the near term technology agnostic view on regulation so not prescribing everything, not to kill the momentum now in the startup phase which is very critical. And also support technologies such as fuel cells, etc. You can drive from the statement that that technologies will also be supported, even if green hydrogen is not yet broadly available immediately because take some time to do that ramp up. I will conclude with a statement from Chancellor Olaf Scholz recently, just a week ago where he said, we will transform our economy, for the most part, I guess is necessary to a hydrogen based one. And there will be a process which will happen much faster than some may think, but which will create a great future for all of us. So, I underlined the happen much faster than some may think. I think we have all the tools that we need to get this transition done as quick as we have to to get to Nancy by 2050. You just have to get started. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you very much, friends for that intervention, which is so informative and interesting and I'm sure there's lots of stuff that we people want to come back on. I know certainly that I do and there is an early activity on the Q&A function. So please, if you're watching and listening and a question or comment or course to you, and put it in there on the Q&A, and keep it as succinct as you feel you can. Give us a chance to read it so we can turn around and actually put the question so it's great that people are taking interest in this, you know, there are hundreds of people on this call now, which is which is terrific. So, turning to our third speaker, Shiva Dostar is head of Innovation Finance Advisory at the European Investment Bank, a leading innovation finance expert with over 25 years experienced at JP Morgan, Fitch ratings and now at the European Investment Bank. Shiva specializes in identifying future investment opportunities and developing new business and market opportunities to finance the transition to a green and digital economy. She co-founded the European High Yield Association, EYEHYA, which is now part of the Association for Financial Markets in Europe. In 2006, Shiva was listed in the Top 50 Women in Credit by Credit Magazine. You didn't know that, did you not? Ms Dostar holds a BA in Economics from Columbia University in New York and an executive MBA from London Business School. So, Shiva, we're delighted to have you with us this afternoon and really welcome forward to what you have to say. Over to you. Thank you very much, Alex, and thank you to the IAEA for inviting the EIB and myself to this really important session of rethinking energy. So really happy to be here. I may ask for my slides indeed to show up. I wanted to ensure that the connections are stable, so I appreciate if somebody can help me passing through those slides. So the European Investment Bank and if we could maybe move to the next slide indeed. I hope you have all heard of the EIB, otherwise you are really missing out. And this is maybe your time to quickly get familiarized with the European Investment Bank and I would say the EIB group. This also includes the EIF. So you see here right now. The numbers that were released in our annual press conference just a few weeks ago. So we're hitting almost 100 billion on the group level, so EIB and EIF included. And you will see that we are very much sort of, you know, coming in all the key priorities of innovation, environment, infrastructure and SMEs. Now what is really, I think important to remember is that the bank has now the ambition and is really working towards to becoming the EU climate bank. I mean, this is quite an important step, I think, to also preserve the EU leadership. I think we had some really excellent presentations from Portugal, from Isabelle, on Portugal, from France, on Germany. I mean, I think Europe can really work on that leadership and the EIB both in its activities in the EU and outside plans to play an important role on the financing. We have put to ourselves to mobilize with our investments a trillion euros into climate action environmental sustainability in this crucial decade to increase our own share of financing dedicated to these two activities to 50% by 2025. And in 2021 we were already at 43%. So I think we are getting there. But it is indeed an important also reshifting of our business activities because there are clearly things that we no longer can finance with this very sort of strong commitment. And this is also the third bullet point, which is that we have as of actually last year aligned all our financing activities with the principles and the goals of the Paris Agreement. Hence, you know, with the 50% that we may not, that may not go into climate action environment environmental sustainability, they at least don't do any harm. Next slide please. Now this is just to give you a bit of a retrospective of the sort of financing that has happened. What is actually going to be quite interesting is how it will accelerate and, you know, gain in size and momentum if we now look forward if we took the same for five year period. You know, in the next five years I think you will see much bigger numbers just because of our huge commitments to really, you know, actively support climate action environmental sustainability. In a sense on the adaptation front alone we're planning to triple our activity to 15%. So, now, hydrogen and I think if we could move to the next slide please will play a really important role. And I think the hydrogen economy is actually going to be quite a capital intensive one as as much as we do have perhaps some of the technologies I think we will certainly our view is that quite a lot of the infrastructure needs in order to really get hydrogen across the whole value chain and get the full impact of hydrogen and decarbonizing our industries our transport systems will require massive investments and this is really where we believe at the EIB that we actually do have, you know, the right set of instruments it's just that they do need to now perhaps be tweaked and ensure that we take the right risk appetite and and use them therefore to support the investment needs. So here you see basically that we are they, you know, effectively together with our subsidiary operating across the public private sectors across the various instruments. And as we will see shortly, you know, in the case of hydrogen I would say we will need to deploy all of them, but where we perhaps see some of the gaps are indeed in this rather risk sharing blending type because of some of the particularities of right now the hydrogen economy. So next slide please. And, again, looking at therefore these instruments. You will see on the left hand side sort of this this famous valley of death that is very often referred to where we see some of the very interesting hydrogen technology solutions that are being coming to market they often require nevertheless this critical amount of capital at a stage where they are not considered to be bankable so the typical traditional commercial bank may not be able to come and finance them. The equity may be exhausted and at this stage in this valley, you know, very often we're looking at 10 to 30 40 million euros never less to get them to the commercial demonstration scale. And that's where the gap is and that's where we have a really important financing instrument called the enough in energy demo project, which actually is a risk sharing instrument between the European investment bank and the commission to precisely support these projects so you see on the right hand side a number of these projects some in hydrogen some, you know, in clean tech more broadly, where indeed this instrument has been extremely powerful and we'll see some examples later on. Next slide please. Now there's also advisory I'm of course representing the advisory side but I think when it comes to hydrogen. What we see is that currently looking at our own pipeline, quite of quite a number of projects are not yet bankable or they're not yet in a situation where they can actually go straight into due diligence and have, you know, a check coming their way in the next six months let's say. The reason for that is that we will see later on but indeed there's either the risk element or the wider value chain that is not properly set up in order to actually, you know, address all the various risks that that would be that need to be made a particular project bankable. So therefore the advisory is playing a very important role. And I would say it comes in both at the upstream project preparation level. And here we are fortunate to actually have some very interesting new initiatives by the European Commission that you may have heard of the Innovation Fund. These are the proceeds of the ETS mechanism that are now flowing into innovative technologies there are calls that the Innovation Fund is, you know, has underway and both large projects and small projects. What we are doing at the EIB is that for those projects that are not immediately ready to get the benefit of the grants from the Innovation Fund they get then project development assistance, either of technical nature or of financial advisory nature. The financial advisory part is handled by my own team and we actually see that a large part of the Innovation Fund projects that are in our current portfolio are hydrogen related so I think this is therefore, you know, there is a high demand for such to benefit from the Innovation Fund and to us this is also giving a sense of direction that those are the projects that we hope to then finance in the future with our other various financing instruments. You see that sort of the current type of projects are very interesting so on the one hand we have the typical sort of technology innovative technology type projects in the electrolyzer space. We are looking at sort of these giga factories that are right now being looked at the high deal it has recently also gotten some very interesting press attention so we are providing sort of this downstream financing advice to these type of projects. You once may know of the work we did with Germany on looking at PPP models for the next sort of set of hydrogen refueling stations to be financed beyond 100 and and how sort of, you know, the chicken egg the famous chicken egg of getting the financing for a network before we have all the, you know, trucks and the cars on the road how that could be established. So these are the type of projects that we are seeing in our advisory portfolio and very much also feeding into our landing portfolio. Next slide please. In summary the way our advisory is set up we provide this sort of project specific advice. And as I said in the hydrogen space that portfolio is actually growing up, you know, nicely, and the key is to get these parts into the due diligence phase. In summary, however, have seen that with hydrogen is actually really important to take a wider approach. And this we have done together with the European Commission, who have asked us to actually, you know, reach out to the wider investor community to better understand how they perceive and when I say they these are both financial and corporate investors, how they perceive the hydrogen economy where they see the risks and where they would like to see the public sector come in. So I will briefly give you some highlights of that work in a minute. So also in the hydrogen space in very close collaboration with the various hydrogen associations that are around in particular hydrogen council hydrogen Europe, and also on a national level with the French Association we have also recently been engaged with some other national associations. The key here is for us to not have only good access to a potential deal flow but to also help those associations have a better understanding of the bankability issue so that they can help their members to have not only a good understanding of what it takes, you know, to be bankable and finance but also where to come to for the level of support that they meet. So this is therefore in a sense for us an important approach through advisor to have a good holistic understanding of the space that is also quite dynamic to have a sort of hand on the pulse. And, and then prepare in a way that EIB to have the right financing instruments and also the right internal capacity to actually handle the projects. Next slide please. So briefly giving you an insight into our study that I mentioned that was a request by European Commission it will actually be launch end of March so the audience here gets a glimpse of what is not yet sort of publicly out there so this there's a benefit to the discussion on this session today. This is basically what we did is we reached out to 46 corporate and financial investors you see on the right hand side of the distribution of the type of investors along the whole value chain of hydrogen and also geographically so they strong focus on Europe but we really also try to nevertheless reach out to some Asian and non European investors to get also global perspective. Next slide please. So our study basically then or our market, you know, outreach highlighted where investors see the key risks and I would, and I don't think any of them will surprise you per se and I think it's more what are we going to do about this risk and how with the EIB together with the Commission and other public sector institutions actually help to unblock and mitigate this risk so that actually these projects become bankable. So you will see that they are in the three categories of economic risks and also the first point of market regulatory conditions. We heard earlier about the green premium about initiatives like H2Global which are going to be quite critical. That regulatory clarity is extremely important I think for a lot of investors and they're still looking for, you know, more clarity to come and more standardization to follow. Looking at it from a more sort of specific access to finance perspective. When you look at the whole value chain there are certainly there is more risk capital needed in in the space that I mentioned earlier with some of the technological solutions, but actually downstream you will have also risks that are more standard project than financial it's just because of the way the dynamic works you may not have, even if you have offtake agreements they may not have the same tenor that is required, you know, they may not have the same tenor as a loan that is maybe required so we see that there is actually important role that public sector banks and also entities generally can play to mitigate some of these key deployment risks. And this whole value chain approach is actually increasingly viewed by the wider investor community as being critical. And this is where we hope that also the EIB will play a role in bringing the wider ecosystem together and and better understand really in a more dynamic way, not just one of outreach, how, how these sort of risks are shifting and how it can play an important role going forward. Next slide please. Now here just a few examples of products that we have financed before these are primarily sort of on the more higher risk element using various sort of thematic instruments that we have a future mobility and the energy demo project. So we see that you know the amounts are somewhere between 12 million to 25 million so we are in that high risk, high impact sort of category here. Next slide please. Then for instance an interesting project that we financed with a slightly higher amount of 40 million to establish a corridor in, you know, in France that sort of green hydrogen corridor. And again we hope and we already see some interest in other parts of Europe for that type of financing, again looking at it from a mobility perspective. Next slide please. And then I guess to conclude, as you see that you know the EIB as a climate bank has of course ambitious objectives hydrogen will be critical for us to not only be the true climate bank but really also to decarbonize more broadly hence, you know we need to make sure that we are keeping a pace with the development of the hydrogen economy. We have the financing tools available, we are also well set up with the advisory services to help projects to become bankable to identify them and also have the right financing instruments so therefore I guess there's nothing to stop us to lead a role and really looking forward to an interesting discussion. I think the next slide is just our contact details, yeah, in case you wish to reach out directly to us or through our inoffin advisory mailbox and with that I stop thanks a lot. Thank you very much. They were three superb contributions thank you so much Shiva for yours and to each of the speakers. Instead of me asking the questions that I had in mind and taking up 10 minutes to do that. I think really we should, you know we should start looking at the questions that we've got in from our very engaged, our very engaged audience. Actually can I just say they're engaged but so are our speakers because our speakers going above and beyond the call of duty are already replying to some of the questions that have come up on the chat on the Q&A and I want to thank them for that. As I said that's more than we asked you to do and it's very professional and very decent of you to start into answering some of those questions specifically that have come in. So, I'm going to just dip into one of those questions I think France has already been looking at it. So, but it has a general, it occurs to me as a general question from Raj Tiwari, and it's like, so we've heard the climate bank. And we've heard the example of Portugal, we've heard the example of Germany two countries that actually have established strategies in place, and Raj Tiwari is asking a question. Well, if we, if we already have a hydrogen infrastructure in Europe, why are we not sharing it across, I presume he means across Europe to save time and cost analysis, if we have a developed fuel, fuel cell technology, why are we researching again, why can't we implement what we have, and then work on further research and my question, what occurs to me is, is there a danger of duplication obviously the conditions for individual countries are different. Very different anyway. But to me as a lay person in this area, is there a risk that there's duplication that, you know, countries go off and do their own strategy where somebody's already got one. And if they just implemented that one or at least adopted it to their conditions that we could move more quickly and achieve what France was talking about which is the speed that we need. So maybe Isabel, do you have a view about that as to whether you know there can be better sharing between countries on this whole agenda, so that we can save time. Well, as my presentation actually I stated that there should be more cooperation among countries to come to agreements, of course, but when it comes to, for instance, in the case of fuel cell and we have been debating that in Portugal. The use of fuel cell when you, you kind of store hydrogen or you get the hydrogen from the grid, then you store and you use in the fuel cell. There is a loss of efficiency, you know, the yield and, for instance, we don't fund, for example, those projects, we put them out of the line not to promote the production of hydrogen to then to be used on the hydrogen. But I mean, everything has to have a solution and I mean the conditions are different so I do agree that even in the global policy and in Europe, I really think that countries should sit and see what they have and don't have and see how they could contribute, you know, to have a share on it. That's my point of view and analyze the situation of each one because they are all different. Franz, are you on that? Yeah, I tried to clarify in the chat so I want to make the point that the infrastructure is working in industrial context so we don't have to reinvent the technology itself obviously we have to build hydrogen infrastructure before refueling metals for transporting hydrogen. That could be through repurposing existing natural gas infrastructure, but we are just at the starting point there in terms of deploying the technology but we understand how the technology works that is what I wanted to make clear and for across borders, their standards, regulations are very important so I think having an umbrella at the European level, like the hydrogen strategy from the European level but also then for 55 package which sets the boundary conditions so that we benefit from synergies across the different countries. Shira? Yes, I would concur with what was said and indeed I think a lot of the products that we see have by nature a cross border dimension. You know you have the demand very often in heavy industries in one part of Europe you have the generation of the green hydrogen in a different part. So really and I think this is what will make the financing in some ways complex but also I think this is why we see as the EU bank that there is an important role that that capital has to play in order to take that sort of more holistic value chain approach, you know in order to get these projects bankable. So I actually, you know I would say, I don't think you know you can think in national terms I mean energy systems are global and in fact it's not even think enough to think of Europe you know we will see that there is actually even a dimension with Africa and other places when it comes to hydrogen. So, Paul McCormack. Thank you for your comment hydrogen Ireland fully agree that the focus should be on green hydrogen plan and invest for a zero carbon future, and not be investing in blue hydrogen which is a fossil fuel past. Paul McCormack McKay says that, and that blue hydrogen is greenwashing and Gavin Blake wonders whether blue hydrogen should be treated with a lot of skepticism, given skepticism, given the claims that the powerful fossil fuel industry is essentially behind it as a means of manufacturing, surviving in the medium to long term. So what, what does, what do any of you like to say about that make those distinctions between blue and green, and the politics of what I suppose as well. Anybody. Yes, please. The difference is you can't just switch your fingers and you are with hydrogen you you really have to have a transition period and blue hydrogen can, can help that. And to my view, of course you have the plan that and you want to have it as short as possible. I think also that one should also consider in terms of even the sequestration of CO2 all together and try to analyze that in terms of the impacts because there are always impacts even with green hydrogen there are impacts. So is not you don't have a solution whatever you do you are going to disrupt something, but you, you need to go from one point to the other, and the blue hydrogen probably is a good way to go, because you could also consider, as I stated in my presentation we included biomass classification, and there are the hydro thermal processes with the algae and so on but they are not mature enough yet and they are costly. And you have to look into the other side, if you can afford those technologies. And so, I would say yes, let's go for it in within a certain term and analyze and see the impact, and of course you can look into different scenarios, because when it comes to also biomass gasification that you have the sustainability and you have to look into these things and the natural gas is available as Franz put it we have a network already. So, let's minimize it let's put this. I'll go to you next if you don't mind. I come to France then because I'm going to ask France a question, which is more specific to Germany and I go to ask and deal with the two questions together so Shiva on blue and green and everything in between. Well, I don't want to really go into the politics of it and you know I would just perhaps make two comments just to give a feeling. I mean, I be clearly comes into primary two areas where there is market failure and where, where, you know, as I mentioned earlier the risks and, you know, returns are in balance. And therefore I mean I think from a, you know, even though our energy lending policy guidelines which were updated in 2019 allow us also to support natural gas as a transitional fuel and so on. I think the main focus is going to be on green hydrogen because that's where a lot of the, you know, that's what we want to move towards from also from a fake market failure perspective that that's where maybe the harder part of the puzzle is. And the other thing from a risk perspective, you know, if you come in as a long term lender into, you know, as a patient long term provider of capital, you know the issue of stranded assets is also going to be an important consideration. So I think there are dynamics, you know, that would probably put our emphasis much more on on the green than anything else and there's plenty of we see plenty of projects that need our capital. Sure, sure. That's interesting. And France, I go to ask you maybe to comment on that but just while you're thinking about what you might add. Frank daily, the German Irish Chamber of Industry and Commerce, Frank says has established the German Irish Hydrogen Council to build stronger links between the two countries in the field of green hydrogen. Two questions we're very interested in, what is the most likely form hydrogen will be imported as for example ammonia etc. And what is the expected delivered cost to Germany per kilogram. Yeah, very good. No pressure, no pressure. No specific question. So I think that's worth saying here that we have seen a breath of studies over the last years that have calculated the cost of potential costs currently future cost of green hydrogen. And I'm very pleased that with the age to global program, we have now an initiative that is starting, hopefully this year with the first auction system where we will first round of options where we will actually get real prices what it will cost to make green hydrogen somewhere in the world and bring it to Germany. So then then we would have a real world data point for the first time. Obviously, in the smaller scale we are doing this today but for really thinking about a commoditized approach, we don't have real world data right now. So where we have to get to is by 2030, at least in the order of two euros $2 per kilogram ideally lower us is even more ambitious there with a $1 per kilogram target, which brings you in the, in the range of fossil hydrogen today. So, and all those studies and ambitions have have calculated, is it feasible and yeah you have to squeeze out all the little bits and you can maybe get there. So, which carrier we would use for age to global right now it's clear it will not be hydrogen as gas, because liquid hydrogen tankers are not yet out there that that can move around the oceans. And the pipelines are not refurbished hydrogen yet to import it. So, that's why we, I would expect that the first option will probably go in the direction of ammonia maybe methanol. We could also imagine that something like products for for the for the mineral oil industry to make chat fuel and these things could be could be some of the commodities in the early rounds. Okay, thank you. I'm Gavin Blake, and I think we mentioned Gavin earlier and burn Wallace law firm here in Dublin as an interesting question which is kind of puts it on to a broader global level which some of you have already touched on and obviously we're talking about the view of Europe but Gavin says does the panel field of the successful future deployment of green hydrogen could be reliant on China, getting fully behind it, and driving down the cost of electrolyzers in a similar fashion to how contributed to bringing down the cost of solar PV. So would China be the whatever the game changer. Is that is that is that a possibility. And do you want to have a crack at that Shiva. What's your sense of. I was, I mean I of course I think anything that can drive the price down is going to be important. Having said that I guess from an maybe EU perspective. I also hope that we learn from perhaps the past and you know let's try to keep some of the technology solutions in Europe. And I mean as you know certainly down the PV manufacturing, you know, Europe unfortunately did lose out in that, in that situation. Yes, I mean I would certainly say I mean we have some really excellent energy hydrogen solution technologies that are being right now developed in Europe I think be excellent if they have good access to global markets. And I think this is therefore the role of the European Union and certainly the role of the bank to ensure that you know it's not the financing that may drive them away from Europe in order to, you know, keep them grow and scale up. As companies in Europe and have that technology also be very much available in Europe. But yeah, I mean I think China brings scale China is an important has invested the most in renewable energy of the last how many years so indeed they will play an important role. I'm going to just stay with you Shiva and I promise I'm not drawing you into the politics but the Brexit is something that we're, you know, we're, we're conscious of, don't worry, I'm not going to go into the detail of that it's more just the broader question of whether McGurk is here and he says, he's wondering whether you think Brexit might present but let's let's call it the post Brexit situation that we're in, rather than Brexit itself so we're now in a new world where we have Brexit. So, where Aiden McGurk is wondering whether that might present problems for British and Northern Irish companies accessing finance from the IB for hydrogen projects. I mean again there needs to be some more political agreements between the EU and obviously the UK on these things but I would say generally, if their investments are in, again in territories where we have these agreements or EU or elsewhere. Those are eligible. So let's say a company, you know, wants to invest in a project in France, Germany anywhere in the EU or indeed in countries outside of the EU where there's a framework agreement that is okay. You know I think anything that is right now specifically for investments into the UK we're still waiting for some of these agreements I certainly hope that they you know that these agreements come in place. So until then I think we need to just see how we can support the companies maybe for the investments outside. Thanks for that. Joseph Cummins has very interesting comment and question. He says this this has been a very useful session and we all agree with him on that the focus has understandably been on supply side preparedness. And in the first instance the demand side is focused on the transport sector. What would the panel have views on stimulating demand in industry or electricity sectors. Do other countries foresee quote unquote directing hydrogen to those hard to carbonize areas, such as high temperature requirements, steel production and so on, or is a more market based approach. Is there any ongoing demand to emerge where consumers are willing to pay a premium. Would that market based approach be preferable and is about. Well, that level. What happens is we have a carbon tax and that you know, he is a motivation for industry to go into other options. And actually, for instance cement industry has, as you know, high levels of CO2 emissions and there is a motivation to reduce this substantially, and is actually making an effort and I have contacts to for introducing hydrogen into the combustion system to decrease the level of CO2 production along with other sectors I mean we've been discussing that and I think there is a very good potential to have them shifting to hydrogen. At the beginning not fully and but I mean because even you need some other materials to to be combusted and but I'm sure that we the past combustion. I mean, specific systems, the beginning and then we the experience we get from there, we develop new burners and so on. And that's why I think is very important to work with industry and at least industries in Portugal is motivated to that to change their system to have some small pilots to see how it works and economic works to and to have bigger projects and I think is it's a good way to go with pilots and then to drive into other projects. Yeah, thank you for that France. This. Okay, the question of tension between our question between stimulating, you know proactively pushing into our directing into new areas, or allowing the market perhaps to find the level that you might expect it to find. As I touched upon in my talk it's also very debated topic in Germany, because of the notion of having limited amounts in the beginning in contrast to that, the premium for using it in transport is something you might want to use in the beginning because that makes it easier to reach some competitiveness so they are different views on this topic I would say so there's no real consensus in Germany right now where you should start from. I will give you I'm afraid what will have to be the last word because way over time here so. No sorry I just want to say that I recently read a study where the premium on a car that was made with green steel for consumer was I don't know 4050 euros more. If you therefore look at it from a whole value chain perspective, you know, maybe indeed we should be stimulating demand by the end customer for green cars with green steel because that's what would incentivize the steel manufacturers to provide the green car you know manufacturers so I mean i'm just putting that last thought. Yeah no no interesting and very interesting, as indeed all of the contributions have been and i'm only sorry that we've run out of time, and but these things have to stop sometime and the people have other things to do, including i'm sure our speakers, I want to thank each one of them, each one of the three of you for the generosity of shown in terms of the time that you gave the preparation of the presentations and also your willingness to deal with them to answer questions and engage with our audience. It's been a really, really stimulating session. So thank you once again, and I hope in the future we'll see one or all of you in this, you know, continuing debate that we're having. And thank you for viewing this seminar this webinar this afternoon. Thank you for all your support. Thanks again to the ESP and I'm sure we'll see you again before too long. Good afternoon.