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 Akshay Thakur, Co-Founder and CEO of Blackcurrant.
“Blackcurrant is a hydrogen marketplace connecting buyers, sellers, transportation providers and storage providers, improving the time to transact, today it takes months at end to do bilateral contracts, on Blackcurrant you can do it in days.
Blackcurrant is a marketplace built by the people with frontline experience in hydrogen industry so we build a platform for hydrogen people by the hydrogen people, we’ve built a platform where it allows you to transact faster, and then we have the IP as well, where it allows you to transact well, you get price volume discoveries and we also provide carbon intensities for every transaction, so it reduced your burden of working with different entities out there and you can gain validation for any V45 credits that are coming down the line. We also have built an AI engine using natural language processing that is very narrow and allows you to trade faster in the hydrogen market, to give to you the data from any DOE reports that are put out there, you can ask it a question and it can come back with a very accurate answer, instead of your team and your company going through thousands of pages of reports out there, so it brings all the information in the market to you rather than you going to the market.
Blackcurrant comes from my past and the history, I come from India in a small village and I grew up there in a load shedding environment where we wouldn’t have electricity for 4 days out of a week in summertime, so I would do my studying outside underneath a black current tree, and my dad was an electrical engineer so he taught me about the challenges of load shedding, and in India we still have load shedding today, so we named a black current to have an impact in the power industry and make sure energy is accessible for everybody.
The big thing that makes this different is the way everybody approaches is, and watching the Secretary talk about their stance on hydrogen and then meeting DOE folks is very refreshing and keeping the relationships alive, that’s very crucial, because I think the people in the industry are narrow and it’s expanding but keeping the dialogue and making sure we hit critical mass is important, so company like ours or any other company in the hydrogen market will only succeed if all work together in a coalition and we are here to achieve that coalition.
I saw the panel yesterday talking about the ASIS delta project between Mitsubishi and Chevron, that is big, we are part of the capitalist programme at Chevron, and we are one of their world portfolio companies there so we understand the value of building coalition with these partners so we are here to understand what the market leaders are trying to do and build a network where the hydrogen industry is more approachable and accessible for everybody.
I think this has been fantastic, I think more and more customers out there who are interested in the hydrogen industry should approach these events, and it’s a place where you can come and be part of the network, and I think less companies out there are taking advantage of these conferences so if they think climate change is critical and we need to take advantage of new technologies then this is the platform they need to take advantage of, and we are here to support.”
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.
