One of today's most important challenges
is the decarbonisation of the economy. This will require huge changes in
little more than a single generation and will demand innovative
solutions technologies and policies. Hydrogen will play a crucial role in making
this fundamental change to our energy systems. A globalized hydrogen economy could play a
major role in preventing the climate emergency from becoming a catastrophic
reality for the next generations. Hydrogen, It's light, It's energy dense,
It's storable and it produces no direct greenhouse gas emissions, which, of course, is
why it is attracting enormous interest on the part of governments and business. Does the balance of
opportunities and challenges justify all the high hopes? Our title is at the dawn of the hydrogen
academy, and we have brought together a fantastic international panel, representing countries with
biggest hydrogen ambitions. In just a moment, I will welcome our speakers, but I would
like to get your take on our audience poll, which is will hydrogen become the
bulk energy carrier of the future? And the voting as begun. As you can see, the yeses
are definitely in the majority, but we want to keep those votes coming in for a while, ladies
and gentlemen, so if you're a registered user, please go to the Slido window there on your screen
on this stream and let us know what you think. Will hydrogen become the bulk energy carrier of
the future? And now it is my pleasure to introduce our great international panel, and then we'll
come back to that graphic that we have for you. And I'm just going to, as always, keep the
introductions really brief to try to maximize our time for discussion. So, we begin with Juan Carlos
Jobet, the Energy Minister for Chile, set itself to be one of the world's leading exporters of
hydrogen by 2030. Great to have you, sir. Colombia is joining forces with Chile and ratcheting up its
own goals. We're very pleased to have Diego Mesa, Minister of Mines And Energy. Also very pleased
to welcome Dan J rgensen. He is Minister for Climate Energy and Utilities for Denmark.
Europe'S largest green hydrogen facility is planned for the Danish North Sea coast.
Also, very, very pleased to be joined by Jo o Galamba, Deputy Minister and Secretary
of State for Energy from Portugal, which plans to start producing green hydrogen by the end
of next year with also the aim of becoming a major energy exporter. And finally, Kersti
Berge is with us. She is Director For Energy in the Scottish government. Scotland is putting
massive resources into the strategy we'll see it generate 5 gigawatts of hydrogen by 2030,
and already hundreds of Scottish homes are going to be the first in the world to use entirely
green hydrogen for heating and cooking. So as I said, all of our speakers with big ambitions
in the new hydrogen economy. We'll hear more after we take another look at that audience poll
that we had there. And the voting seems to have stopped, and in fact, a good 2/3 of those who
answered said hydrogen will, indeed, become the bulk energy carrier of the future. And a
little bit later on, we're going to do a second poll with our audience, but, first of all, let
me ask all of our panelists to get us started with your headlines only version of hydrogen's
main advantages but also the challenges. And I say headline only because, as always, in lieu of
our very tight schedule, we are looking for about two minutes per speaker for this first round. So,
I will begin, if I may, with Juan Carlos Jobet. Well, thank you very much for the opportunity. And
the results of the poll, I tend to agree with your results. In Chile, we have enormous renewable
energy potential, so we're working aggressively to develop green hydrogen. The use of renewable
energy, naturally produced with the sun and the wind to be a leading exporter of green hydrogen
to the world and also to achieve our own carbon neutrality goals. So the two main opportunities, I
would say. First is to decarbonize sectors of the economy that are hard to electrify, right? We're
going to use cleaner electricity in many areas, but there are other areas we need other solutions.
For example, steel, cement, and also heavy transportation. Right? The first opportunity.
Green hydrogen will contribute possibly 25% of CO2 reductions. And I think the second
opportunity for us is to take advantage of our enormous resources through hydrogen.
Other countries goals and also to develop infrastructure, create jobs, and have the recovery
in areas of our country that have the natural resources but don't have necessarily thriving
economies today. And the two main challenges. First one is to avoid partial solutions. We really
need to make sure that the change of production from the generation to the end consumer it's
really green. Right we don't want our people to ?? we want to make sure we make sure it
makes a contribution we expect it to make. And the second challenge is we need to reduce the
cost of producing and exporting green hydrogen and we need to scale up production and accelerate the
process of developing new technologies of storage and then to move it around. So I think those are
the two ways of dealing with the main challenge. Thank you very much. We will certainly return
to some of those points a little bit later on. Ladies and gentlemen, before I move to our
next speaker, may I remind you we would be very eager to hear your questions to our panel.
All registered users can send us questions via the chat function on our livestream, so
please do that. I'll go now to Minister Mesa also for that headline version of the biggest
opportunities but also the biggest challenges. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be on this panel.
So, talking about opportunities, I think the great opportunities arguably are for climate change
and to achieve that goal to get to Net Zero by 2050. From a country such as Colombia that is
a middle-income country, the biggest opportunities arise from our natural endowment that are needed
to produce green hydrogen. This is a country that is extremely rich in water resources. We're the
fifth country with the largest renewable water resources in the world. We also have significant
potential to produce energy from solar and wind, and we are developing these technologies very
quickly. We're growing from less than 1% of our power matrix made up of solar and wind to more
than 12% in just a four?year period. And so I think there is a great opportunity for countries
like Colombia to become exporters of clean energy. Thank you.
And I think for the challenges, the challenges are mostly on capital investment,
infrastructure and logistics to be able to distribute this clean source of energy which
could be used for different applications. Storage, transportation, obviously in the industrial
sector. So we need to make sure that we reconvert some of the infrastructure abilities in many
countries to be able to have trade in hydrogen, in green hydrogen that's able to reach specially
industrialized countries around the world. Thank you. Thank you very much for that. I'll
move along now to minister Jorgensen from Denmark. Again, please, that headline version,
challenges and opportunities. Thank you so much I'll start with
the positive side, the opportunities. Basically there are two of them. One is that we
will have the possibility to use renewables as part of our energy systems where it's not possible
today. That's maritime transport, aviation, heavy road transport. It sounds almost like science
fiction. Today it is just science. We can take the energy from the wind, harvest the energy from
the wind make it into hydrogen add some carbon and fly a plane from e-fuel out of that.
That's extraordinary. Second big thing is that with wind, for instance, and also other types
of renewables, we are dependent on the weather. So we need weather storing the energy.
And hydrogen is exactly that possibility. Now, on the challenges. Basically,
it's already been said. We need more scale. So we need green technology development. This will also
bring down costs. And also that the energy loss in the transformation through hydrogen and hydrogen
to other fuels and still too big. So when we bring that down, costs will also go down and the scale
will go up. So it's all interconnected. Thank you. Thank you very much. You mentioned
those transport sectors. In fact, if I'm not incorrect, I believe that you are
planning what will be the world's largest hydrogen powered ferry, is that correct? Yeah.
Yes, actually we have a big Danish maritime conglomerate. It is now part of a collaboration
that will help create new fuels based on PGX that can serve global. It's also working
together with the SAS, the Danish aviation company, and actually the biggest, the largest
project we have now will be making fertilizer for the agriculture sector. We planned a project
that will save the planet from 1.5 million tons of CO2 every year by making ammonia via PGX.
Thank you for that addition. Let me go to Deputy Minister Galamba for the same question as to the
chalenges and opportunities. can you hear us? He's frozen. We will go to Scotland and come
back to Portugal. Let me go then to Kersti Berge, again with that same question,
challenges, opportunities, how you see it. Thank you very much. Can I make
sure you hear me all right? Absolutely.
Hydrogen transition is very important part of our goal for Net Zero. It's a
very important part of our green recovery and from the crisis that COVID has caused.
Scotland's vision for hydrogen is unashamedly ambitious, and that ambition will need all of
us here today to work together to realize it. We set out our hydrogen policy statement
just before Christmas, and in that we were clear we wanted Scotland to become a hydrogen
nation. And strong international partners in the production of sustainable hydrogen. So our aim is
to generate 5 gigawatts capacity of renewable and low?carbon hydrogen by 2030, which is an ambitious
target. Supported by our stunning track record of hydrogen demonstration projects and maximizing the
opportunities presented by our extensive natural resources, our existing infrastructure
in Scotland and our skilled workforce, our intention is for Scotland to become a producer
of the lowest cost hydrogen in Europe by 2025. Scotland's no longer a member of the European
Union. We an keen and ready to work with EU partners as well as others to overcome some of
the challenges of safe, rapid and cost?effective deployment that I know other ministers have spoken
about. Scotland has the potential to produce, firstly, large?scale blue hydrogen. More
significantly, internationally, green hydrogen for onshore and offshore. In Scotland, we have 25%
of Europe's offshore wind resource and we've got the largest seascape for development. It's
a huge potential for green hydrogen today. And as we work together, one of the challenges for
all of us will be to improve our understanding of the global nature and supply and demand for
hydrogen. Some perspective, we're very well placed in terms of proximity and infrastructure
connectivity to a number of other European nations and would be able to produce efficient
hydrogen for their own decarbonization. The last thing I wanted to say, and I have to
say that because I'm sitting here in Glasgow, is that later this year Glasgow will, of course,
host COP26 UN conference, the most significant climate change conference since the Paris Climate
Conference four years ago. Work towards our Net Zero ambitions and also work collectively on
the huge opportunity hydrogen provides us. Thank you very much for that. And exciting to be
there in the Glasgow in the run?up to COP26. Let me go back to Deputy minister Galamba. Headline
view and then we're going to dig a little deeper. Well, the opportunities have already been
mentioned. We believe that the renewables present us all with an opportunity to go deeper
in terms of decarbonization and green hydrogen for Portugal strategy is a perfect compliment to
our main strategy. We want to leverage our very competitive resources. Portugal is blessed with
a huge solar resource and wind resource also. So the two combined will give Portugal a
significant edge in terms of its competitiveness in renewables in general and in hydrogen in
particular. We've already changed Portuguese legal and legislative framework to enter our
energy system. We've already changed the law to allow the guarantees of origin, initially only
for electricity, to broaden into renewable gases, and we are currently in Portugal preparing our
first hydrogen option to support end users. We will do an option, carbon CFD, that will
basically pay the difference between existing carbon prices in international markets and
that theoretical carbon price that will make hydrogen users in whatever form commercially
viable. So we are preparing it, and we want to launch our first hydrogen to provide support
to decarbonization transportation this year. So in Portugal, we believe we have the right
framework at the moment to kick start this. We have the legal and regulatory frameworks.
We have the instruments to provide support for investment and we are currently developing to
support users who want to switch to hydrogen. The challenges. The challenges I believe one that
was already mentioned, one of the challenges is scaling up. There are huge advantages in terms of
costs, which are the main barrier to adoption of the green hydrogen, are costs. So scaling up is
crucial, but we believe that the main challenge is collaboration. We are here on the panel
with Chile, Colombia and Denmark, Scotland and Portugal. And the opportunity for hydrogen is
so vast that we actually are not competing against each other. We must collaborate because either
we succeed collectively or we fail individually. This is a very complex market that has to be
tackles simultaneously from the supply side, and that can only be done nationally through
strong collaboration, but mainly international through strong collaboration and partnerships
between governments, international institutions, across all partnerships around specific
projects. We believe that this is the main challenge. To look at an area that has been
competitive from the start and look at it more from the angle of collaboration. So, this
is, from our perspective, the main challenge, but we believe that we have the conditions
to tackle it and to overcome it. Thank you. Thank you very much. And, in fact, when I
was researching this panel, I did encounter a number of collaborations just amongst yourselves.
Chile and Colombia as I mentioned at the outset, but also Denmark, I believe I mentioned you're
collaborating with Norway, if I'm not mistaken. So clearly a lot going on in that space. I'd like
to drill deeper on a few of the challenges you have all mentioned, and also some of them being
brought up in the ?? by the audience in questions. So, I'm just going to put a few things out
there. And whoever wants to speak to it, just give me a hand signal, if you would. That
way we get to make this last panel a bit more interactive, even though we're virtual.
So, one of the things that is often said is that the development of infrastructure has
to proceed much more quickly than it is doing right now. And I have an audience question
that's come in that says, large?scale storage of green hydrogen must be addressed so its
production and usage timelines are not aligned. How do you solve this? Large?scale
storage, who would like to speak to that? Nobody? No takers. Okay, please,
Deputy Minister, please take it away. Yes, we are currently addressing that specific
challenge in terms of injection because the production ?? the injection cannot be designed.
You have to have a permanent flow. The way we are addressing is trying to socialize the investment
cost necessary for storage. So, joining several projects and ensuring that the storage investments
are shared. Also, Portugal has salt caverns used to store natural gas. We plan it in our
law to evolve gradually. It will not be a sudden switch, but we've included those assets as
part of our natural gas system that will gradually evolve to store green hydrogen. That's
the approach that we are taking at the moment. Thank you very much. Another question that comes
up frequently is the question of standards. Because, of course, green hydrogen is only as
green as the power source that it used to make it. So, some one of you or a couple of you
did mention the need for standards. The see Minister Jorgensen raising his hand. I also
see Minister ?? I'm sorry, Jobet, I'm probably not saying your name correctly.
We'll go to Minister Jorgensen. I think you're on mute again, dear sir.
I think that is an important question. It's also, unfortunately, something that the European
Union will be dealing with in the near future. The UN commission, as you probably know, has stated
that they will form a package later this year. How do we achieve the 55% reduction in 2030 that we
decided? How do we facilitate the transformation to a hydrogen economy? How do we define the
different types? What types are we then willing to subsidize? Which should we maybe not subsidize
so much? I think that is a very safe step. Thank you very much. Can I just ask you ??
you say within Europe, but do we actually need international standards on this to ensure
some kind of a level playing field? Well, in the perfect world, we would have
international standards. In the perfect world, we would have a global carbon tax or
some other kind of pricing mechanism. I'm a little bit hesitant to recommend that
because I don't think it's feasible to achieve that within the next couple of years. Which is
when we need it. So maybe it's a good idea if we try and set standards in Europe. Other countries
can collaborate in their regions to do the same, and then hopefully ?? and then later maybe we
can see whether or not we can make that happen. Thank you very much. We'll go to Chile and then
Colombia. I see Portugal would like to weigh in as well. First of all, to you, Minister Jobet,
would you tell me one time to say your name so I say it right? Oh, okay. That makes it
easy. That makes it easier. Thank you. So basically I think international standards,
right? The more common standards we have, the faster we can development this
industry. And the faster we get evolve technology that is developed in one location to
be used in different locations. As it was said, standards all over the world. So I think this is
an area in which international cooperation can play a key role. We are a small production.
What bigger productions are working on ?? It's important to accelerate this
technology in different countries. Thank you very much. And I'll move
over to Minister Mesa from Colombia. Thank you. I fully agree on the need to
collaborate in order to have international standards that become the norm. And I think
one of the first issues we need to tackle is the so?called certificate for big hydrogen. As you
said, green hydrogen, the color of the hydrogen will depend on how green or how clean your power
matrix is. And I think here we need to make sure that we can trade hydrogen, that we can establish
all the links in the chain to be sure that it's green, and we need also to track CO2 emissions
for the production of hydrogen use. This will help us internationally have an agreement. That's
why I think countries like Colombia and Chile in which we're working towards a cleaner energy
system could take advantage. In Colombia, for example, we have more than 70% of our power
matrix that is clean, because we depend heavily on hydro generation, and with the incorporation of
renewable energy we're getting closer to 90 or 80% of our matrix. Is key and we have to collaborate
to develop those standards along those lines Thank you very much. Let me go now to Portugal.
If you care to speak to it, I would be very interested to know who can drive this standard
setting? How ?? do you do we make that happen? Well, willing nations that have an interest in
developing this market. But I have to say that, yeah, we have to work with what we have. Following
the Danish Minister. What Portugal has done in its law regarding guarantees of origin. It's basically
to use the certification that is currently being developed by a joint venture between the industry
and the European commission. The fuel cell hydrogen that they're taking because the standard
that is available, it is a European standard still being developed. And that's what we used because
that's what we have, but we are, of course, very committed to working with other countries to
work ?? towards international standards, but first we start with what we have, which is the beginning
of certification. That's what we have. That's what we used. Because we wanted to have something in
the Portuguese law that we could start working with. Yes, we are fully committed to working with
international organizations and coming to the countries to work together on
this. But I agree with the Minister that it's difficult to establish international
standards at such an early age. That's why we started with the certification that
we had, which was a European one. Thank you very much. And now also over to Kersti
Berge who also wanted to speak to this point. It's a hugely important point. Development of
hydrogen relies on global markets. For example, wind production was put for standardized
consumption. Absolutely critical to ensure a market for hydrogen developers. So with that
in mind, Scotland's position is I think also, you know, let's work with what we
have, but there's no reason why, you know, an approach an EU approach
to standardization can't progress, but there is a risk, you know, if you
wait for too long for the perfect system, it's not going to arrive in time and not be
what we need for the Net Zero transition. Can I just ask whether new technologies offer
some promising solutions along the issue of guarantee of origin and tracing? Because, of
course, we often hear that is well suited to such. Anybody have a few about technology's role
in all of this? Okay. Not off?hand. That's fine. I have another question that I'm happy to answer.
We've included block chain in the energy communities, but not yet in certification.
We will include peer-to-peer mechanisms regarding energy communities and self-consumption,
but not yet determination of an average. Thank you. I'd like to move on to perhaps not a
challenge, but often something discussed in the hydrogen community as an essential step that needs
to be taken. Mainly moving the use of hydrogen into sectors where it hasn't been employed here
to for. A couple of you have mentioned that. What would you say are crucial aspects of
that. Shipping, heating. Mentioned Scottish homes are going to be using this for cooking.
Minister Jorgensen, I see you raised your hand. I'm going to ask Minister Jorgensen to
start and then I'll come to you, thanks. I think there are some differences. One is there
is no subsidy which I think we need. So much research and development, science community and
the private sector. And now of course we shouldn't make the same mistakes as was done decades ago in
the fossil fuel segment. Becoming so dependent on subsidies that it became difficult to keep
up with people. But that is side, we need to acknowledge that we need subsidies. Second thing
that I think is really important is immigration. We need to put away the different challenges
that are there now, the red tape that are there now which basically has been necessary for a
different type of economy. For one example, for some of these issues you need to add carbon
to the hydrogen. So, that needs to be changed. So, there are so many things you need to do is
first we need to put a price on pollution. If we put a higher price on carbon production
the final technologies look very much different. Very much. Thank you. Kersti
Berge, I'll come to you. I very much agree with the Minister. It's very
interesting to hear from Portugal that they're already putting in mechanisms. We have been
very successful and the UK of using mechanisms for wind deployment so a 10?year?old can
play. We've got work to do on demonstration, and then quickly moving from demonstration to
employment. You mentioned opportunities for hydrogen in heat. So in Scotland, about 80% to
90% of our domestic housing is heated by gas. We see high opportunities to use hydrogen as heat as
well as other processes in Scotland. We've got a project we are testing, hydrogen supply to about
300 households and 5 in Scotland. Doing so that we can actually understand what's been done and
put into context what's been recorded as well. Thank you very much. I believe
Minister Jobet wanted to add a word. Yeah, very quick. If you want to use hydrogen
in new industry, we have to make sure it's safe. If we have a problem with safety, the
impact that could have on the street could be huge. So I think we are trying to
introduce free packages to our gas tanks. But realistically make sure that people
understand that this is safe. So, safety. I think that is very
important to introduce to the consumer. Thank you very much. I believe Deputy
Minister, you also wanted to add a point. I'm circling back to your question, how do we
again that some ?? basically what we want to do is find a quantity which we're willing to subsidize.
Those end users that required at each moment in time the smallest state absolutely. Basically
that's what they're do so all end users can compete in the option, but the option requires
the smallest green in terms of ?? we think those are the most ways to attract heavy regions
of the city where ?? that's the way we are envisioning it, and we believe this is the best
way to ensure preproduction consumption. We are producers and we will provide resources with
the mechanism that we basically finance. Where the carbon price is not high enough
to make hydrogen commercials viable. If carbon prices rise, then the subsidies
will seize because that's the advantage of carbon CFT option. It's not a fill in. And
we believe this is the most efficient way to manage subsidies and to attract end users.
Very interesting. Thank you very much for that. I believe that Minister
Mesa also wanted to say a word. Yes, just to complicate what the Deputy Minister
said from pouring. We were talking about how to promote demand for hydrogen, which you also think
of the policymakers. If you have incentive on the supply side and they go to the production of
reliable ?? I think it's important to think about incentives for any users to make the switch
and an incentive to demand clean energy such as in hydrogen. It has to be well?balanced
between subsidies and taxes. I'm not only analyzing the consumption of some fields while
attempting to watch all of the supply side. Thank you very much. One last question. It came
in from the audience. There is really nobody from this region to address it, but I'm going
to give it to the two Latin American voices on the panel because the question
is this. What is your opinion on North America's opportunities to become
a green hydrogen export championship? So, Chile and Colombia, are you looking at significant
competition from the north? Minister Jobet? I'm not an expert, but we have a
company developing a product in Chile. It's very, very competitive nature.
I mean, you want a smart thing, there are certainly areas they think. For
example, Texas where the combination of solar, rain and wind. We're not out to whatever it was
per hour. That is very competitive to produce. And eventually export hydrogen. I think in
the US is changing, particularly in the last couple of months. We are convening, but we need
to get together so cooperation, this mixture of cooperation and competition, I think. If
a player invests heavily in this solution, it will accelerate its development.
So I think that would be good news. Thank you. I believe Minister Mesa also
wanted to speak to this point and then ?? I agree with what Minister Jobet said. We
can leverage some of the technology that's going to be possible with the new focus on
climate change in the US administration, but thinking about competition, I think we
could also leverage our natural, you know, competitive advantage in countries like Colombia.
Even though, you know, one of the main inputs for green hydrogen is viable renewable energy because
of our location, because we don't have seasons, even that variability can be more
predicted in a country likes ours. It's an advantage we have, but it's a
natural advantage, and, and we have to make sure we are more competitive
in the production of green hydrogen. Thank you very much. Let me go to Kersti,
who wanted to say something to this point. Yeah, thank you very much. I wanted to emphasize
we've got huge ambitions for hydrogen in Scotland. This is an area we need critical mass.
We saw what happened to a country when the US does it. We need the US across the
world will move to deal with the safety issues. And I can't speak for North America, that energy
commission is in California and they're looking really, really hard at hydrogen. I'm not
sure what extent they're looking to export. They use a lot of gas for their heating. In the
US and as well as other big global players on the hydrogen stage. Because we just need them.
Thank you very much. We're simply going to say thank you and good-bye to this excellent panel
looking at the future hydrogen economy. Many, many thanks to all of you, and
utmost success in your endeavors.
