At the largest & most senior global hydrogen event, we spoke to the world’s hydrogen and energy leaders about the future outlook for the hydrogen industry, including H.E. Salim Al Aufi, Minister of Energy & Minerals, Sultanate of Oman.
Watch the full video below!
“I’ve been in the industry for the last 30 years, predominantly in the oil and gas but extremely excited with the hydrogen economy revolution that is taking the world, not only in Oman.
We started the hydrogen alliance back in 2001 where we wanted to bring Academia, the Government bodies in charge of regulations and policies and so on together with the private sector so that we address all the challenges, be it technical challenges, regulatory challenges, policy challenges and so on, so that we put them all together and we use that as a sounding board to hear from the industry, also pass messages back again to them, and use it as a mechanism to really reach out to what’s happening around the world and bring it all back home in terms of ideas and activities.
I think the event is extremely import because we see Europe and particularly Rotterdam as a port as the entry to the huge economy when it comes to hydrogen and of course the entire transition and the different derivatives, so this is a major hub for us and a big market that we definitely want to be in.
What I heard from the industry yesterday is they are still complaining we are slow as regulators and we are slow as off takers and we are slow as developers and so on, and I thought today I tried to show that not everybody is slow, we are moving extremely fast, we are going from zero to three times what we’re currently producing in the country in five years. It took us 50 years to get to 10 gigawatt as a production for electricity production for Oman, and it’s going to take us five years to triple that generation. So it is extremely fast, everything is moving at a light speed, the infrastructure, water desalination, electrical grid, electrolyzes, renewable energy, wind turbines you name it.
There are still a lot of skeptics out there who think it’s going to be too expensive, the market is not going to accept it, and we say you need to start and it’s your goal to bring the course down, and it’s your goal to transform the electrical electrons into a molecules that can be transported and get it to the final customer, they’re not going to come crawling to you, you need to reach out and that is the strong message we keep passing on to them. Yes it’s difficult, yes it’s expensive but that’s exactly how we started the LNG business. It was expensive, it was difficult, and nobody was thinking of transporting liquid gas at minus 160 degrees, we did and now it’s becoming a second nature, and hydrogen is going to be the same thing and we will transport it.
Bringing everybody together from around the world, they all talk in the same language, they all have the same ambition, they want to hear strong messages from countries like Oman, Australia, my presentation that was before me, of course the different hydrogen alliances. The off takers want to hear from the developers what they’re doing, the developers want to hear from the off takers, what they’re plans are, we want to hear what the Governments are putting in place in terms of incentives and regulations and policies and so on. This is moving in the right direction but everybody wants to feel comfortable. At the end of the day, you’re going to be putting money, and you want to see that that money is put in the right place and we’re trying to give that comfort position to all of them.
It’s a great event, the exhibition is really good, there are different presentations, I would have loved to get a little bit more time to answer questions from the audience because I think they probably have more questions than I was able to answer during the 10 minutes, but I’m around and we will continue to network this is an extremely important event and it is a truly World Hydrogen Summit.”
Join us at #WorldHydrogen2024
Produced by the Sustainable Energy Council in partnership with the Port of Rotterdam, the City of Rotterdam and the Province of Zuid Holland, the global event welcomes 15,000 industry professionals, 250+ Speakers, 500 Exhibitors and 70+ sponsors to share latest news, establish key connections and sign business deals to accelerate the deployment of the hydrogen economy. Register your place among hydrogen pioneers.
