Remember that old saying, “Don’t put the cart before the horse?”
According to Katie Ellet, president of hydrogen energy and mobility for Air Liquide, this old sentiment is especially true regarding the concept of hydrogen-powered cars joining the fleets of alternate fuel vehicles.
Appropriate infrastructure really needs to be in place, Ellet said, before consumers will widely adopt their own hydrogen-powered modes of transportation. Heavier duty uses, such as semi-trailers, will give it the use case that drives that infrastructure development on a large scale (volume, magnitude and reliability) followed by the wider scale, passenger vehicle acceptance. “But I absolutely believe that it will happen,” Ellet said.
Despite her confidence in the inevitability of hydrogen-powered vehicles, Ellet added, “It would be my preference to drive a fuel cell electric vehicle.”
Chevron, Air Liquide execs discuss development of hydrogen economy
Katie Ellet, president of hydrogen energy and mobility for Air Liquide
She further stated it’s important that the industry talk about different types of hydrogen, “whether it’s green hydrogen or blue hydrogen, and how we all work together to get where we need to be as an industry.”
“We absolutely believe that electrolysis and the creation of green hydrogen is part of it, but we must also have existing infrastructure that we can put carbon-capture technology on,” she said. “I think about it like this:, if a building is not energy efficient, we have a couple of options. We can tear it down and build an energy efficient building on top of it, or we can take the steps to make the existing building more energy efficient, and greener.”
There’s a need for both, Ellet said. “If we’re really going to achieve our carbon intensity goals, we need to push all available options. We have to make sure we have a very safe infrastructure, going forward.
Further, Ellet stated strongly that she believes experienced, long-term industry leaders must recognize that they “have a responsibility to follow these protocols and work hand in hand to make sure that we lay out the standards that make this environment work for all of us.”
Joining Ellet as a speaker at the Hydrogen North America 2022 conference held recently in Houston, Austin Knight, hydrogen vice president at Chevron New Energies, emphasized that it takes mindful collaboration among all its partners, from the top down, for the industry to achieve business goals.
Instead of concentrating on, and possibly being distracted by, “the age of hope and hype,” Knight said he believes industry leaders would be wise to be more focused on what’s here and happening now.
“It takes that full value chain,” Knight said. “We’re really good at working with a lot of people to make that whole value chain happen. We want the right partners in the right places to deliver the right proof points in this market.” Knight said he accentuates this point every day with his team.
“We will not try to do everything, nor should we,” he said. “It’s about getting leaders together to line up the value chain in such a way that we’re each really bringing our strengths and making this market real.
“It’s an exciting time to be in energy,” Knight concluded. “We know we have energy security needs, but we also have energy transition needs, and it’s really exciting to be able to do that collaboratively with a strong group of partners at the table.”
Ellet concurred with Knight’s enthusiasm. “We have a lot of interesting technologies in place, and now it’s a matter of scaling them for these new applications. We’re going to try to do that in the next 10 years, as opposed to what’s taken 100 years before. But we have the capability to do that, and if we work collaboratively I have no doubt that it can be done.”
