It's time to level the playing field: breaking free from fossil fuels.

Scott Lanphere, Chief Investment Officer of clean energy investment fund HYCAP, says regardless of the price of hydrogen the world will have to stop its reliance on fossil fuels sooner rather than later.?

“This isn’t a level playing field,” says Scott, who has worked in private equity for more than three decades. “We need to get our heads around the fact that wherever you look across the globe we are unequivocally subsidising the cost of fossil fuels.”

Despite a portfolio across the energy transition spectrum, his investment group has a keen interest in hydrogen. And while he admits that the fossil fuel dynamic makes hydrogen a tricky bet in the short-term, he’s confident of a correction.

“Fossil fuels are artificially low because there’s no other remediation in the mix. But the cost of alternative energy isn’t the problem, it’s that we are actually struggling to countenance the reduction of the inherent and systemic subsidisation of fossil fuels.

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“If you're really good at extracting fossil fuels, which the world is, and then you're really good at turning all of that fossil fuel into vital products, like plastics or petrol, then you've got the advantage of post-industrialisation economics. And while this has been great for as long as most people can remember it’s also causing inordinate harm to our planet. How, then, do you reverse that???

“Added to this we have some significant timeframes - a situation where we have strict Government targets for 2030, 2035, 2050, and anywhere in between, that says we've got to stop this. We’ve got to stop our reliance on fossil fuels. So, in some respects, the nearer we get to these milestones we're still arguing amongst ourselves and struggling to find an enlightened path. It is clearly depressing when you think about the implications.? Of course, electricity is cheap, but we can't produce it in that way – and the effect on the plant will be a monumental expense for us all.

“Sure, at the moment it's expensive to make alternative forms of energy as well as the fuels like hydrogen but the difference in price will be dramatically reduced when the cost of fossil fuels is levelised, as they surely will be.

“Hard to abate sectors such as airline fuel requires extraordinary measures, resulting in the recently announced quotas on the percentage of fuel that must be sustainably produced.? ?Airlines are being told that from 2025 SAF will make up 2% of total UK jet fuel demand and then increase to 10% in 2030 and then to 22% in 2040. But right now sustainable aviation fuel is roughly triple the price of traditional jet fuel and airlines have already said they’re going to put these prices straight onto the customer. Yet the more SAF becomes the norm the cheaper it will become.

“It all comes back to the issue that until we confront the reality that we are subsidising fossil fuels, and while we can't just snap our fingers and change it overnight, we have to be really frank about the conversation. A level playing field it isn’t.”

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