Hydrogen Week - Moving On Up at Heriot-Watt --

Hydrogen 英国赫瑞瓦特大学 -- Making it Happen: Making it, Moving it, Using It, Making It Acceptable

I was delighted to have represented? WesterHayes Impact Advisory at the iNETZ+ event and the panels in the morning were augmented by the breakouts in the afternoon with a wide range of contributions. The “Dawn of Commercialisation” was an extremely apt title in the publication by my colleague Ling Sin Fai Lam, CFA in the autumn, and came during a time of what might be described as “hydrogen fatigue” with a type of "Waiting for Godot" mindset developing in some locations.

A lot had been going on in what had seemed almost to have been under the broader radar in terms of publicity. But now there are clear signs of progress in a number of areas, which thankfully is being broadcast more loudly (we would like it to be faster) and one does expect momentum to grow.? Hydrogen Week simply served to indicate the range of activities being undertaken, with more noise being made, projects and technologies being announced and awarded, and the desire to accelerate. Progress has been made in the last 6 months, with a whole range of announcements and funding, and although we are still close to the dawn it is definitely getting brighter. Everyone involved wants to break free...

The upcoming General Election should have the Energy Transition as one of it's key themes. Whether that gets lost in political noise remains to be seen. The political levers for Hydrogen are continually being pulled Internationally and the UK cannot afford to have "signal failure". There is a clear need for the discussion and progress to continue amidst the Election process.

The Long and Winding Road --Looking for those Yellow Bricks...

Some great morning speakers discussed where we were on the Long and Winding Road, and the learnings thus far. Stuart Mckay Nigel Holmes David Hogg

Learning by doing is also helping, and some key insights from some presenters about increased collaboration from initial beneficiaries spreading the benefits to others. Kim McCracken from Protium talking about Islay distilleries cooperation was one such example.

The workshop choices I participated in were sessions on Moving It, and then Using It which fascinatingly brought in a wide range of knowledge spread across a range of skill sets and backgrounds, ranging from Academic expertise right through to commercial and financial.

"Moving it" The Pipes are Calling

Lots of ideas were thrown into the mix with a clear identification of the requirement by the Government to make key decisions on Projected Returns, Regulations, and Blending, and whilst also awaiting upcoming results of the Future Grid trials.

Prolonged discussion took place too about trailer transport whilst we await the pipes, including challenges of rural delivery and access. As we have seen from the raised turbine blades saga at Pines Burn Wind Farm things don’t always go to plan when coming to the practical uses. Community perception is clearly not helped if amenity is significantly adversely impacted.

?"Using It "

Plenty of topics covered as one can see from the white board below. Decarbonisation thoughts ranged across a variety of topics and how to optimise resources. Obviously the phrase “getting the best bang for your buck “ doesn’t give the right connotations in a hydrogen context. Language matters too.

Plenty to work with, and I look forward to joining in on further discussions and debates, not only with the "Dark Blue Dot" team, but obviously in wider context. Collaboration is key. Not only do we need to continue to feed the TRL pipeline with innovation at the bottom, but accelerate the number going into the broader commercial, investible, "shovel ready", operational categories of TRL's 7-9 (dark blue in the chart below).

Pulling more of those levers will help the "Dawn of Commerciality" emerge into "A Beautiful Day" . It is time for Hydrogen to be Tripping the Light Fantastic as part of the Energy Transition.

David S. Simon Nesbitt Paul Young (IEng MIMechE) Lucy Tease James Walbrin MARIA GRAZIA DE ANGELIS Yen Tran, PhD Wenjuan Wang Dr. Nilton Chan Peter Cummings Raffaella Ocone Iain Shirlaw David Hogg SHIVANGNI PUNDIR

Philip Kerr MCSI

Director

WesterHayes Impact Advisory

+447768636919