Every hero has an extraordinary story, and this is even truer for our hydrogen heroes. This is the story of Laurence Grand Clément, founder of Persee and involved in the world of hydrogen for 10 years.

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Can you tell me what you did for a living before entering the world of hydrogen?

I had a classic career after my studies at X and Insead, with positions of responsibility in major groups in France and abroad. In 2012, I decided to change direction by taking part in the construction of an energy transition laboratory whose mission was to think about energy in a global way, to get away from the silo view by type of energy, in order to bring out new cross-disciplinary and sustainable solutions.  

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Peter Parker became Spiderman because he was bitten by a radioactive spider; who bit you with hydrogen?

In this laboratory, OPEL, one of the active members, had just put its first H2 vehicle, the Ampera, on the road and, if not bitten by hydrogen, at least put me on the road to this energy for mobility.  

As part of this working group, I quickly realised the need to think about hydrogen in a systemic way, and that's when I set up my own company, Persee. I immediately found a customer and funding to support the development of our first TedHy tool, and that's when I really got my feet wet in the world of hydrogen!  

My first customer was Enertrag, a manufacturer of electrolysers, which used electrolysis to store energy on its wind farms. In East Germany, they were sometimes obliged to disconnect wind turbines from the grid, which represented a net loss of producibility of around 20%. At the time, they had the technology to produce hydrogen from this surplus wind power, but they had not yet developed any uses for it (offtakers). So they were trying to think about the downstream side of their production, and Persee piloted one of these projects to develop renewable hydrogen from electricity that could not be fed into the electricity grid.

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What makes Persee a pioneer in its field?  

At Persee, we take a systemic approach to the deployment of hydrogen infrastructure. In concrete terms, we help to answer the following questions simultaneously:  

Where should hydrogen infrastructures be deployed?  

What type(s) of infrastructure (technology, sizing)?  

What timing?

What scale of infrastructure (short and medium term)?  

The two main difficulties in answering these questions are the constantly changing technological context and the uncertain market.  

Our role is to help decision-makers, with our 100% Hydrogen expertise and our ability to model in great detail how hydrogen technologies, hydrogen logistics, etc. work.

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Batman has his Joker, Peter Pan, Captain Hook: what are you fighting against on a daily basis?

I 'fight' against those who seek to perpetuate the carbon status quo, favouring the valuation of existing polluting assets, rather than reinvesting their considerable margins in clean energy solutions, even if they offer more uncertain financial returns. I don't know whether what horrifies me most is the greed or the lack of humanism. I hesitate...

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Is hydrogen the future? 

In my opinion, hydrogen is clearly part of the future. But I would like to remind you that we must first work on :  

sobriety,

then efficiency,

then renewable energy,

and only then will renewable hydrogen find its place.

What is certain is that a zero-carbon future without hydrogen will be very complicated, and a future without zero-carbon will also be very complicated.

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If you were a superhero, what would be your superpowers?

Robin of the seas, I would steal oil and gas revenues at their source and redeploy them as floating pearls of the seas (islands made up of wind turbines and hydrogen production).

Digital innovation is key in the new green hydrogen market. Here is the point of view of Konrad Uebel, CEO of FI Freiberg Institut GmbH and Edgar, a cutting-edge platform utilized by hydrogen refueling station manufacturers to simulate, dimension, and optimize HRS configurations.

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According to you, what is the place of hydrogen in our energy system?

Green hydrogen holds a pivotal position in transforming the energy sector towards a future of zero-emission energy supply. Its importance lies in being a reliable, transportable, and affordable energy source with the capability of long-term storage. Moreover, green hydrogen plays a crucial role in industries' decarbonization efforts, heavy-duty mobility applications, and serves as a major component in the future circular economy with zero-emission hydrocarbon cycles.

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In your opinion, what are the challenges to overcome in the hydrogen market?

To fully realize the potential of hydrogen, there are several challenges that demand our attention. First, it is crucial to decrease the system costs (LCOH) by scaling up series production and expanding the installation of cheap renewable energy sources. Second, we need to develop a robust market for green hydrogen trade and usage, including its application in hydrogen refueling stations (HRS) for various mobility solutions. Lastly, evaluating data from pilot plants and simultaneously upscaling projects to MW scale, with the support of public funding in the early market phase, holds immense importance for driving growth in the hydrogen sector.

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How do you see the market growing?

The hydrogen market is poised for substantial growth, driven by national hydrogen strategies and corresponding legislative boundaries, such as the Clean Vehicle Directive and EU infrastructure regulations. Additionally, the emergence of promising technologies will fuel rising demand for green hydrogen across various sectors, including chemical industry, industry, mobility, and housing. Currently, we witness small, localized hydrogen clusters with decentralized supply and consumption, which will eventually be connected through hydrogen pipelines, creating a global market for supply and distribution networks utilizing ships, pipelines, or rail.

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Could you tell us why digital and intelligent tools are needed in the hydrogenworld?

Digital and intelligent tools are imperative in the hydrogen world due to the increasing complexity of future energy systems. The integration of fluctuating renewables and the need for short- and long-term energy storage demand sophisticated planning and operation. Dynamic simulations are essential for accurately modeling and evaluating these complex systems. The application of computational intelligence and powerful computing ensures timely and optimized solutions, leading to faster decision making and implementation as well as resource and cost savings.

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And this is where your product comes in?

Indeed, our product, Edgar, plays a pivotal role in the hydrogen world. Edgar is a cutting-edge platform utilized by hydrogen refueling station (HRS) manufacturers to simulate, dimension, and optimize HRS configurations. Leveraging algorithms, Edgar conducts rapid technical and economic calculations, resulting in the best configuration within a short timeframe. By utilizing predicted consumptions and cost data from our data manager, Edgar provides optimized planning, crucial KPIs, such as hydrogen demand andrefueling times, and a complete TOTEX analysis for customer projects. Additionally, we are excited to introduce Edgar HyPro at the end of September 2023, an upcoming application that will further enhance planning for entire hydrogen process chains.

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Every hero has an extraordinary story, and this is even more true of our hydrogen heroes. So here is the story of Flore de Durfort, CEO & Co-founder of Atmen (previously Point Twelve), a SaaS platform that enables goods producers to certify their green production.

Can you tell me what you did for a living before entering the world of hydrogen?

I have always been passionate about the energy transition. I studied energy markets and their regulation. And then I spent 10 years working for major electricity and gas producers and resellers, between Europe and the United States.

In this sector, I have always had a strong appetite for new business development and sales. And in 2017, I took a very tech and data turn: before founding Atmen, I was in charge of data monetization for E.ON, in a data team of 80 people.

Peter Parker became Spiderman because of a radioactive spider bite; Who bit you on hydrogen?

I worked at the crossroads of the gas, electricity and carbon markets, so all the ingredients were there for me to get into hydrogen!

Right from the start, I was driven by the fact that hydrogen is essential for decarbonizing industry. It has its place in the energy transition, alongside renewable electricity and carbon capture. And industry is going to have to produce, sell and buy certified low-carbon products - without it becoming a gas factory!

With Atmen, we are working to rethink low-carbon certification. Our focus is hydrogen, because it is an extremely interesting practical case for our vision: the automation of certification.

Today, certification is far too archaic!

And what would happen if we stayed with the existing certification system?

If we stay with a twentieth-century system, I see two major problems:

- A lot of time and money will be wasted on this. Verifying production, of hydrogen for example, requires a lot of manual data entry by on-site agents and, on top of that, audits which are both costly and less efficient than our continuous, real-time analysis solution (an audit only records a production sample).

On top of that, we are also losing time with the competition that exists today between different labels, and this fragmentation is dangerous. For example, imagine a green hydrogen producer in Spain who wants to export to another European country: right now, not all countries have the same certification system, so other countries don't necessarily "recognize" foreign certifications. That's why at Atmen we offer a digital passport per batch, which can be integrated into national registers as our projects progress. The aim is to automate certification across borders.

- There is a risk that players will lose confidence in less-than-transparent certifications. Today, there are few simple, reliable ways of proving that you are really producing something renewable and green. A lot of public money is being invested, many customers are interested in this subject, and the slightest failure on the part of one player could have an impact on all the others. Our solution is there to maximize the confidence of consumers, the regulator and the producers themselves in the sustainability of what they produce.

Batman has the Joker, Peter Pan has Captain Hook, all fight against an enemy... what do you battle against on a daily basis?

My daily battle: evangelism! A lot of people wonder why hydrogen has not taken off yet? Well, we have been talking about it for a long time now, and some people have been disappointed by a few announcements. Every day I bring them factual arguments to say that we have no choice but to turn to hydrogen, that it is not a gadget solution.

And then there are all those who are just starting out with hydrogen and don't yet understand the regulatory issues. We need to explain to them the complexity of the regulations (with the new European regulations on renewable fuels, we are reaching a level never before seen in oil and gas or electricity), the technical complexity of implementation and, above all, the financial impact.

If hydrogen isn't green, it will not be in demand, and it will not be subsidized.

What battles have you won that makes you stronger?

Every customer and every investor convinced that it is now and with us - it gives us tremendous energy. We are in the process of completing a fund-raising round that will enable us to redouble our efforts to get our decarbonized gas and fuel activities off the ground. We are succeeding more and more in making people understand that this certification issue needs to be tackled head-on now, that in 2 years of time it will be too late, and that we need to tackle it in a new way. Awareness is gradually building: customers are asking for it, regulators are asking for it, investors are asking for it... the subject is hot, and we have a solution!

What advice would you give to someone wanting to launch an innovative project?

Two things: "Just do it" and "Look for partners whose values are close to your own".

To elaborate a little, I find that the best way to convince is often to do, to take action as quickly as possible. Going fast means working first not necessarily with the "big names", but with partners who share the same values, the same vision and the same "doer" mindset.

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