Powering a Historic COP27 Moment for Egypt and Africa

A hallway topic at COP27 was tips on quick diversions, whether snorkeling, museums, or desert adventures.?Hands down, I came in first place for best field trip in Sharm El-Sheikh.?I got to visit the local power plant and witness?a historic moment for Egypt and the African Continent.?

GE took seriously Egypt’s focus on COP27 as the Implementation Summit.?We wanted to prioritize action over words in Sharm El-Sheikh.?Five months ago, working with our partners, we decided to rise to the challenge of blending hydrogen into?the fuel mix for?an LM6000?aeroderivative?gas turbine during COP27 for the first time not only for Egypt, but for the African continent.?We wanted to fulfill our three proof points for COP27 at once:?(1) emphasizing the importance of emerging economies; (2) demonstrating the feasibility of breakthrough technologies; and (3) strengthening public private partnerships.?

I couldn’t be prouder to report our success when, on November 14,?we successfully blended hydrogen?and natural gas in the fuel mix powering?GE’s LM6000 gas turbine, which feeds into?the grid that?supplies electricity for?both COP27’s Blue Zone, which is the?UN-managed space where?climate?negotiations are hosted, and surrounding facilities.?https://www.ge.com/news/press-releases/a-first-for-africa-eehcs-ge-lm6000-unit-generates-power-using-hydrogen-blended-fuel

GE has?more than 100 gas turbines worldwide using?hydrogen and associated fuels for power generation with about 8?million operating hours in aggregate.?But the project in Egypt is?unique because?it is?a dramatically different environment than where we typically innovate breakthrough technology.?In that spirit of learning, I want to use the space below to share what I saw and experienced.??

Starting with Safety

The first lesson went to safety.?As eager as I was to want to see everything hydrogen related, every discussion started with safety.?I thank the team for this critical reminder and vigilance.?They reinforced to me that as we venture into new technologies and experiences, we?have to?solve for safety first. They developed a?46-item check list for managing site operations with hydrogen present.?And they embraced a “stop work” culture where leaders empowered any person working anywhere to stop working with any concern for safety.??

The H2 Journey

The first?challenge?the team had to tackle was getting hydrogen to Sharm El-Sheikh?at the far south of the Sinai Peninsula.?Like everything else, this took unprecedented ingenuity and creativity.?The?most?feasible mode of transport were trucks, which were?specially requisitioned?from?Kuwait?and equipped with storage cylinders.?And then came?the actual hydrogen, which was sourced from?Cairo.?So?we worked to move the trucks from Kuwait to Cairo, fill the?cylinders with?hydrogen,?and?then get the trucks to Sharm.

Building the Infrastructure

The next step involved building the infrastructure for the hydrogen distribution and blending at the site.?This involved three main elements from three continents.?First, the team had to?connect the trucks to a?custom-made?manifold to?regulate?the pressure?of?hydrogen to blend with the natural gas.??Much of this equipment came from India?and the UK, where we had similar learnings to draw?from.?Second, the team?constructed?a blending rack to combine the natural gas and the hydrogen. Here, we had experience in?New York State.?We were able to duplicate the skid from Long?Island?and build it at Sharm, bringing our innovation from the United States to Egypt.?Third, we had to add devices to manage and monitor the blending from the control room, which?involved both physical and digital elements as shown in the pictures.?

Flipping the Switch

On Monday, GE?Vernova?CEO Scott Strazik, GE?Gas Power’s?Europe,?Middle East?& Africa?president?& CEO Joseph?Anis, and the GE team were honored to host?Egyptian Minister of Electricity and Renewable Energy,?H.E. Dr. Mohamed Shaker El-Markabi;?U.S.?Chargé?d’Affaires?to Egypt;?Daniel?Rubinstein;?and?U.S. Department of Energy?Chief of Staff Karen Skelton for the demonstration.?We?were?joined?by the senior leadership team of?our partners?- Hassan Allam, CEO of Hassan Allam Holdings, and Ahmed Ramadan, CEO of PGESCO.

Beyond the physical success of?actually seeing?the monitors show the hydrogen being integrated, the emotional experience was even more moving.?It was a historic moment for Egypt and Africa, and I was honored to bear witness to the palpable sense of pride from our local team who made it happen on the ground.?To the extent you can see it in these photos, it was even more present in real time.?Later that day, I returned to the Blue Zone where word was already spreading that the lights were on, perhaps to a very small extent, because of hydrogen helping generate the energy for the first time.

We were honored to later join the Minister on COP27’s Energy Day to celebrate the successful demonstration with our partners before a standing room only audience.?His excellency graciously?extended?the invitation to members of our site team—those who really did the work leading to this accomplishment—to join for this recognition.

Just the Beginning

This demonstration project is really the beginning. We delivered a proof point?that emerging economies?can contribute innovation and technology, that the technology can be demonstrated, and that partnerships are key to success.?Learnings from the Sharm El Sheikh experience will be studied and shared by EPRI, through the Low-Carbon Resources Initiative. EPRI’s engagement brings an element of global collaboration to the project that can inform future hydrogen blending power projects around the world.

We saw similar opportunities with?the Office of Petroleum.??H.E.?Minister?Tarek El?Molla?has been one of the strongest advocates I’ve encountered globally for demonstrating decarbonization projects for fossil fuels.?We were proud to sign two MOUs?witnessed by?the Minister on Decarbonization Day involving a mix of renewable energy, digital, and breakthrough technologies—all which prove our themes of emerging economies, technology demonstration, and partnership.?These commitments will continue past COP27.

Driving back from the plant to the Blue Zone, Scott and I already started challenging Joe on what he and the team have in plan to deliver more proof points and actions at COP28 in Dubai.?I’m excited to see what they come up with.