Sustainable Energy Council celebrates the 2nd World Hydrogen Summit

By Carlota Pano

Electricity, pipelines and energy carriers: The international conference on hydrogen power returns for a second time.

Virtual Summit hosted by @HydrogenFSummit

A new round of global hydrogen talks will take place between 9 and 11 March, organised by environmental event producer Sustainable Energy Council in partnership with the City of Rotterdam.

The 3-day meeting between government ministers and energy companies will discuss the commercial rollout of clean hydrogen power. This follows discussion at the first summit, where an international supply chain was agreed, but not its distribution.

The lack of joined-up policies has blocked hydrogen being more widely-adopted as a fuel by the public sector, the International Renewable Energy Agency has found.

Private investment into the hydrogen industry has grown since 2018. The global market is expected to reach €10 trillion (£8 trillion) in 2050 according to predictions by Goldman Sachs.

In the UK, Boris Johnson’s government has published plans to create a £240 million Net Zero Hydrogen Fund to support the development of technologies. With projects also in Europe and Japan, it is thought that a fully developed hydrogen economy will reduce 6 gigatons of the world’s annual CO2 emissions.

“Hydrogen can be a bridge between electricity and gears,” says Willem Hazenberg, board member of NEN’s H2 committee. “In this field, hydrogen can be a buffer: we can use it in its basic form, but we can also reuse it as electricity. Not many energy sources can do this to such a scale.”

From the UK, only the Minister for Business, Energy and Clean Growth, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, will attend.