With the urgent need for clean hydrogen to rapidly scale to meet increasing demand and achieve climate goals, World Hydrogen Leaders announce their enhanced World Hydrogen Week, taking place in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, from 9th to 13th October 2023.
The 5-day event is one of the largest and most influential in the industry and will host over 3,000 attendees from 800 organisations, representing 50 countries. Comprising of 4 major events including the highly popular World Hydrogen Congress, World Hydrogen Intelligence Day and the Global Hydrogen Projects Summit, the programme has now been extended to include a world-first event: “World Hydrogen Derivatives”. The inaugural derivative-focused programme is the only event across the industry to address the role hydrogen can play as an energy carrier, as a direct fuel for mobility applications, as well as providing clean supply chains for the fertiliser and chemical sectors.
“It is vital that the industry comes together to address the critical issues remaining around clean hydrogen in what is an increasingly narrow window to transition to a decarbonised energy system,” said Nadim Chaudhry, Chief Executive Officer, World Hydrogen Leaders. “While we are reassured that clean hydrogen and its derivative molecules are now a serious solution for hard to abate sectors, there are many challenges to be overcome to ensure full commercialisation and widespread integration across society. World Hydrogen Week is without doubt the single most influential gathering of industry leaders to drive these ambitions forward.”
With 70 percent of speakers and attendees at vice-president, director or C-level roles, World Hydrogen Week has demonstrated that it not only attracts seasoned experts within the industry, but those with the capacity for real decision-making. Prominent players this year will include
Airbus, bp, ExxonMobil, HyCC, Engie, Smartenergy, Kalyani Steels, TotalEnergies, Worley, Hydrogenious, Uniper, Green Hydrogen Systems and Iberdrola, among dozens of others.
The keynote speakers are well recognised hydrogen trailblazers and include Nicola de Blasio, Senior Fellow, Environment and Natural Resources from the Belfer Center Harvard Kennedy School; Michael Liebreich, Chief Executive Officer & Chairman Liebreich Associates; Valerie Ruiz, Group Hydrogen Vice President, Engie; Henrik Solgaard Andersen, Vice President Global Hydrogen, Equinor and Dominika Ermitsch, Director Valuation, Modelling & Economics, EY, among many others.
“Adopting hydrogen at scale and deploying the needed technologies requires close coordination between all stakeholders,” said Nicola de Blasio, Senior Fellow, Environment and Natural Resources from the Belfer Center Harvard Kennedy School. “For the first time in 150 years, we are considering investing in new energy infrastructure globally – a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! By bringing together global decision-makers, the World Hydrogen Week helps to foster the required system-level synergies and to avoid falling into the inefficiencies and mistakes of the past.”
World Hydrogen Week’s programme:
World Hydrogen Derivatives from 9th to 10th October
This world-first event will explore the developing opportunities, markets, supply chains and end use applications within the world of hydrogen derivatives, as well as a direct focus on the business models of alternative energy carriers such as ammonia, methanol, and LOHCs. Across two days, attendees will have the opportunity hear thought leaders debate critical issues on stage, network with first movers and innovators and meet potential suppliers on the exhibition floor.
World Hydrogen Congress from 11th to 12th October
Featuring world-leading speakers, World Hydrogen Congress will dive deep into the practicalities, implementation and acceleration of sustainable hydrogen into our energy system through interactive discussions and insights from experts across the entire value chain, from production to end use applications. Attendees can participate in one of the many networking opportunities, navigate the exhibition floor, or engage with cutting-edge industry insights.
Global Hydrogen Projects Summit on 10th October
A single day event, the Global Hydrogen Projects Summit will feature the most recent, innovative and advanced hydrogen project development case studies, showcasing projects spanning five continents and offering guidance on overcoming some of the unique regional challenges.
World Hydrogen Intelligence Day on 13th October
World Hydrogen Intelligence Day is the industry’s leading platform to hone practical skills and knowledge through interactive hydrogen workshops, masterclasses and roundtables. These sessions give attendees the opportunity to deep dive into vital topics and obtain solutions to pressing issues.
Some of the many topics addressed at World Hydrogen Week include:
· Delegated Act: The EU rules around defining taxonomy, what qualifies as renewable hydrogen and the criteria producers must meet to label their product as renewable.
· Colourless hydrogen: The shifting focus from hydrogen colours based on production methods to carbon intensity of projects regardless of manufacturing approach.
· Achieving scale: Despite advances in hydrogen production capacity, current projects in the pipeline don’t meet projected demand to achieve climate goals – but there are still technology and operational concerns in scaling up production. So, do we scale down big projects before scaling up further?
· Supply chains: How geopolitical challenges including the Ukraine war and energy security are disrupting supply chains and the new focus of near-shoring.
· Hubs, clusters and valleys: The approach of building local value chains that connect supply with demand on smaller scale with examples of new hydrogen valleys Estonia, Ukraine, Poland and other nations.
· Hydrogen auctions: The German government scheme of auction-based funding to ramp up value chains, including long-term supply side contracts, short-term aggregated demand-side contracts and compensate price differences.
· Offtake: The expanding scope of offtakers beyond heavy industry and mobility including data centres, breweries and other manufacturers and the power sector for long-term storage.
· Infrastructure: Rectifying the insufficient infrastructure to store and transport hydrogen to end users and the need for grid capacity to ramp up to connect to electrolysers.
· Hydrogen derivatives: Looking at the huge market for LOHCs, ammonia and methanol as the main solutions for long distance hydrogen transportation, its use as feedstock for industrial processes, plus the standards that need to be implemented.
· Export markets: Who the big players are, the competition for demand and the uncertainty around subsidies.
· Skills: Addressing the deficit in workforce skills related to hydrogen, the need to “upskill” existing energy professionals plus the need to drive academic institutions to offer hydrogen courses
· Safety: Why health and safety remains a concern for new entrants to the hydrogen market and how knowledge transfer, expertise and training will still be important going forward.
· Rare metals and earth materials: Looking at the scarcity and geographic focus of material resources needed to support hydrogen’s role in the energy transition, plus the extraction and production approaches needed to meet demand.
About World Hydrogen Leaders
World Hydrogen Leaders (WHL), launched in 2020 by green energy veteran Green Power Global, is the go-to intelligence and networking platform for hydrogen executives and professionals. With over 1,000 members from all parts of the value chain, the hydrogen sector trusts us as a source of industry intelligence.
The WHL platform includes:
· A global portfolio of premium content-rich hydrogen events, including proud organiser of World Hydrogen Congress – the go-to commercially-focused deal-making global event accelerating hydrogen projects to achieve final investment decision (FID)
· World Hydrogen Training Academy with 450 hours of 50+ hydrogen upskilling and training courses
· A bank of online hydrogen webinars and conferences available on demand reflecting the latest developments in the market
About World Hydrogen Week
Leading the change to clean and sustainable energy – World Hydrogen Week has been born out of the industry’s desire to unite WHL events, training courses, intelligence and members into
a week-long spectacle of global hydrogen events and networking functions to drive forward the transition to clean energy.
Join the largest global community of hydrogen professionals to hone skills, learn, debate and network with industry leaders driving the commercial deployment of hydrogen projects forward to reduce our reliance on carbon and to build a sustainable and reliable future clean energy system.
