Today I participated in the Future Energy Leaders Europe webinar “How to get to net-zero in heavy industry”.

The webinar’s opening presentation by the Executive Director of WEC Germany, Dr, Carsten Rolle was quite interesting.
Usually, most talk of decarbonization of industry is #hydrogen #hydrogen #hydrogen

However, he begun the presentation by stating that the future of hydrogen and the extent of Power-to-X is uncertain, although there is a lot of talk and developments around it.
This instantly got my attention, because “Wait a minute - this isn’t how these presentations usually go!”

I must say, well-chosen opening remarks right there.
Later, he did revisit hydrogen thoroughly by presenting how multiple countries have their own hydrogen roadmaps and strategies. It is a definite part of the future energy system.
The most interesting (and in my mind, most important) slide of his presentation was this iceberg.

This is a great way to visualise how decarbonizing the power system is only scratching the surface a little little bit. Modern society is built on #fossil-fueled foundations.
His thoughts on possible future policies to enable the decarbonization of heavy industry were very interesting as well.

It is relatively run-of-the-mill list, except for the carbon border adjustments (CBA).
CBAs would level the playing field when Europe progresses on a faster decarbonization track than most of the world.

With no CBAs, European industry competes with imported goods which, in the worst case, paid no emissions cost at all.
Of course, CBAs also complicate global supply chains of multinational corporations.
My significant disagreement is about his last slide.

“Renewable and fossil-based hydrogen (with and without CCS) are generally considered viable medium-term sources”
First of all. Fossil-based hydrogen without carbon capture (grey H2) has quite heavy greenhouse gas emissions. Thinking of grey H2 as a medium-term solution is in my mind, unacceptable.

If it is “generally considered” a viable option, this needs to change!
Second, he lists freely emitting #fossil solutions as viable solutions. Yet, he omits low-carbon #nuclear hydrogen completely from his list!
I understand this is more complicated in Germany.

But even Germans should understand: it is in their best interests to be able to buy low-carbon nuclear hydrogen from their dear neighbours in France. Germany is very open about their needs to import H2 in the future.
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