Germany will invest 9 billion euros in hydrogen. How much of it would you like to get? I am sure you’ve heard it before: Germany has finally published the National Hydrogen Strategy and will invest €9bn to make it happen. If “€ 9 billion” sounds like a lot of money to you, then it’s because it actually IS a lot of money.
I like it. Here’s why:
The Shell refinery in Cologne produces around 10% of the German fuel. To do that, they use around 180,000 tons of hydrogen per year, according to their website. This hydrogen is produced from natural gas. This process called steam methane reforming produces around 9 tons of CO2 per ton of hydrogen. And this means: For the production of the German fuel, every year 180,000*10*9 = 16 million tons of CO2 are being emitted – just for the hydrogen production step. And at that point, not a single car has traveled a single mile.
It’s certainly a problem that the CO2 reduction in a refinery does not help the OEMs, since the law only takes tank-to-wheel into account. Why? I have no idea.
If Germany builds some 5GW of electrolyzer capacity including the renewable energy production, it saves a lot of CO2 from day one without affecting the automotive industry and without losing jobs in Germany. The opposite is true: ThyssenKrupp has published a press release three days after the 9bn announcement that they have increased their electrolyzer capacity to 1GW per year. What a coincidence…
How can you profit from this investment? Well, just send your bank account number to angela.merkel@germany.gov, then she will transfer the money immediately. No, just kidding. Here are the serious recommendations:
1. Learn more about the background. E.g. by participating in the webinar with Werner Diwald, President of the German Hydrogen Association and Thomas Bareiss, Member of the German Parliament. Those two gentlemen will share more background information with you: https://event.webinarjam.com/register/44/1zlyrbpn
2. If this is too low level for you, you may ask Andreas Scheuer, German Federal Minister of Transport and Digital Infrastructure. You can do that in the IPHE webinar on Thursday: https://mission-hydrogen.de/iphe-webinar/. Other speakers include Fatih Birol (General Director of the International Energy Agency), Kadri Simson (EU Commissioner of Energy), HE Aziz Rabbah (Moroccan Minister of Energy) and others. MUST! https://mission-hydrogen.de/iphe-webinar/
3. Book a booth at the largest hydrogen conference and exhibition in the world, Hydrogen Online Conference. Mission Hydrogen will bring some 10,000 potential customers straight to your desk. Please find more information here: https://hydrogen-online-conference.com/exhibition/
4. Book me for a hydrogen strategy workshop with your C-level management. I promise: If you are good, the hydrogen industry offers great opportunities for you – and I will show you what you have to do, whom your sales team has to talk to and what the exact steps need to be. Interesting? Just send me a message, and my assistant will organize a first web conference (for free of course).
Let’s get it done.
David