Well, navigating through the topic of hydrogen isn't always easy! So, we've compiled some information to make things clearer for you.
The energy transition is at the heart of the fight against the climate emergency, and green hydrogen is one of the solutions for a sustainable future. Here's the story and vision of Louis-Arnaud Péchenart, Senior Consultant at ACE Energie.
I worked in the hydrogen field at Atawey. It was a formative experience for me, as it raised my awareness of environmental issues and the potential of hydrogen. It was also decisive in my subsequent career, enabling me to question the relevance of hydrogen solutions and determine the contexts in which they are best suited.
Today, I'm a senior consultant at ACE Energie. Our main mission is to support our customers in their energy and climate-related challenges, for example in defining a decarbonization strategy or optimizing their energy performance. We also explore regulatory issues, such as the EU-ETS, Europe's carbon allowance market. We help our customers to find the best solutions, for example by putting decarbonized hydrogen solutions in competition with other options such as batteries, biofuels or renewable gas. For example, in the steel industry, we helped a customer determine the best solution for replacing coal, by comparing natural gas and hydrogen. In short, we support our customers on complex issues to accelerate the ecological transition.
My “spider bite” was my growing awareness of climate change during my time at Atawey, thanks in particular to my discussions with the CTO, Pierre-Jean Bonnefond. These discussions enabled me to broaden my vision on these subjects.
What made me want to specialize in climate and energy consulting was the potential of hydrogen, which seemed promising to me, but only for certain uses. Sometimes hydrogen isn't relevant, because there are more competitive alternatives. That's why I'm now working in consulting: I want to identify the best solutions for achieving France's decarbonization objectives.
Time is our enemy. We're in a race against time in the face of global warming. Having more time would enable us to do more, to help more people and companies plan long-term strategies, which would enable us to better manage a complex situation.
Hydrogen is a major issue in France's energy transition policy. Today, all solutions are put into competition in order to determine, in each case, which is the most economically efficient, the one with the lowest environmental impact and the most suitable.
My mantra is to prioritize the use of hydrogen for decarbonization, because some sectors have no real alternative for achieving zero carbon. For example, in the steel industry, there are two possibilities: carbon capture and storage or the use of hydrogen.
If I had to pick just three, I'd say:
At ACE Energie, we take a holistic approach. We look at every opportunity. Our technical expertise and our commitment to the fight against global warming are important to us, and we always approach issues through this prism, which is our corporate identity.
We don't simply promote hydrogen as an alternative, but rather examine the environmental relevance of the available solutions in relation to each other. Our recommendations are and always will be focused on the most relevant decarbonization solutions for our customers' specific needs.
If I were a superhero, I might be Flash in the context of my work. The issue for me is time. To combat climate change, Flash's ability to think fast, run fast, produce fast and work harder would be a good metaphor for my commitment to trying to accelerate the energy transition. I'm working to achieve emission reduction targets within tight timeframes. The more time passes, the more you realize that it really is a race against time.
To conclude, hydrogen is part of a set of energy solutions that are crucial to our future, in order to make a success of the energy transition while taking into account environmental and economic imperatives. I invite all stakeholders to work together to find the best solutions to combat global warming. We must not close doors or rush headlong into solutions. It's important to take the time to identify the challenges and opportunities associated with all solutions, and to be a driving force in this transition.
It's easy to wait and see what others are doing, but it's more difficult and rewarding to see an industrialist take the initiative to adopt a solution because it has proved relevant, even if this means taking risks and being a little ahead of the game.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
