During the premier gathering for the global hydrogen community in the Americas region at the #H2Americas2023 Summit & Exhibition, we spoke to global and regional #hydrogen and #energy leaders about the future outlook for the hydrogen industry, including an interview with Marcel Van de Kar, Global Director New Energies from Vopak.
“Vopak is a storage company so we store liquid bulk products, we’re already more than 400 years old so we’ve reinvented ourselves a few times over history and now we’re storing the chemical, oil, gases that todays society needs, and we’re working a lot on the future products as well, and hydrogen is definitely one of them.
Well I think there’s a lot happening in the U.S. or in the North America region I would even say, and the way the government has put in place these different acts like the IRA, really makes a big change, makes a difference in the global supply chains and we are very interested to understand those flows, we have a few facilities in the Gulf of Mexico, we have two facilities in the LA, so it has an impact on those terminals as well, we want to develop them towards the future, so we want to understand better what’s going on here and being here in the heart of the political arena in the country I think it’s made us decide or make me decide to come over.
I think it’s always good to know the people, to know them face to face, and I think because we do a lot of projects here, it’s a good opportunity to meet each other and to really look each other in the eye and say okay what is it that we’re going to do because you need to do it together, you need to set supply chains that are completely new today but new technology, new products. So you need to know each other, not only from a video call but also face to face, so it’s really about the meetings, the participants on the congress are for me the most important and then of course then to have nice discussions and learn a lot about the new development and the things you don’t know yet, but often you don’t what you don’t know so that’s what you can learn in a summit like this.
What I liked a lot is the different people on a panel have a different role that I play, they have a different part that they want to contribute, but we see a lot of challenges still, a lot of complexities that are coming our way, the more we develop it, the more we see the complexities, and what I liked in the panel that you feel the energy that everyone has to solve these challenges, and the confidence that we will be able to do it, although we don’t know exactly where it’s going, so that makes it a bit uncomfortable, and at the same time very exciting and great to see, and I thought well felt at least that excitement came through the panel as well.
Well I think it is always more expensive that’s where it starts, it starts with a financial challenge, if you want to set up a supply chain, you need to have an off-taker that is prepared to pay for the products and then you need to go all the way back and especially if you have an international supply chain there are a lot of different elements in there, and you need to have support in these different elements. So it’s not only the IRA in the U.S., but your probably will also need the H2 global system for example in Europe, to pay for the differences in the end, and you want to set up something that’s new technology and you know already that probably in four or five years from now there will be different technologies or further advanced technologies, so if you want to be first but there’s also disadvantages of being the first, so I think those challenges and at the end you need to prove that your hydrogen is really low carbon and how low carbon does it need to be? How do you prove that? So you need to have over the whole chain, you need to gather that proof, and we’ve seen that in other products is it’s quite a complex manner to do, so those are a few difficult things but I think there are quite a few other challenges that we need to overcome but I’m sure we will be able to do that.
We’re working a lot on ammonia, supply chains, I think that’s very exciting and very good, ammonia is a very good carrier, there’s a lot of hydrogen in ammonia, there’s even a lot of more hydrogen in ammonia than there’s hydrogen in hydrogen if you still follow me, but at the end ammonia has challenges as well mainly because it’s very toxic, so it’s not an ideal product to bring all the way to the end user, so other solutions like liquid organic hydrogen carriers. That’s what we are working on very actively as well, as well as the liquid hydrogen side, so what I’m very enthusiastic about now, also today in different panels, all three carriers, all three solutions and on top methanol and other, everyone opens their mind again and I think the year before some people were I think a bit too much in a funnel, and we need to keep our eyes open also for new technologies that probably are not event invented yet, but that will help to decarbonize.”
Join us at #H2Americas2024
Co-hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy, join global and regional #hydrogen and #energy leaders at #H2Americas2024 Summit & Exhibition taking place 11-12 June 2024 in Washington D.C. The event welcomes 4000 industry professionals, 200+ Speakers, 100+ Exhibitors and 40+ sponsors to share the latest news, establish key connections and sign business deals to accelerate the deployment of the hydrogen economy. Register your place among hydrogen pioneers.
