Transcriber: Laura De Carvalho Reviewer: Emma Gon
The telephone and the incandescent light bulb
were both invented in the 1870s by two men,
who were born in the same year, one month apart,
although in two different parts of the world,
one in the United Kingdom and the other in Ohio.
However, 30 years before that,
these were commonplace across the northeast and in homes in Connecticut.
These two heating oil tanks are actually the tanks
from my home here in Connecticut.
Who knew? Here I am,
a clean tech energy company CEO moving to Connecticut
from Houston, Texas, the oil capital of the world,
only to find two heating oil tanks in my basement.
If Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell could return today,
they would be amazed at how far their inventions have come.
In fact, you can use a telephone in Ohio today to turn on a light bulb in the UK,
but they would be less impressed
with just how far the heating oil tank has not come.
And why hasn’t it advanced more?
In fact, a heating oil tank has 40% more carbon intensity than even natural gas.
A heating oil tank works just like a battery.
You see, you store oil in the tank
and that oil is there until you need that energy
and then it is converted or combust it to heat,
to provide heat in your home or perhaps hot water to take a shower.
The same way a battery in your phone works
or other electronic devices that you use each and every day.
Energy storage is essential to the energy transition
and we need to do it in a clean way.
And the way to do that is with hydrogen.
Let me just take a moment to put on my science teacher’s hat.
You see, hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe,
and it’s first on the periodic table.
I’m sure everyone is aware of H2O. the chemical formula for water.
However, you might be less familiar with the word hydrocarbon,
which references hydrogen,
which is part of a larger molecules like propane and butane and methane.
We very rarely come in contact with hydrogen
because it is so light that it can actually float away
and escape the Earth’s atmosphere.
However, did you know we can actually pin it down?
We can store that hydrogen.
We can use wind and solar and fuel cells to convert that energy into hydrogen
and to store it until we need it later to recreate electricity.
When I talk about producing hydrogen in this way,
I’m talking about taking wind and solar or hydro
combined with a fuel cell to use that electricity
to actually split apart water,
to release the hydrogen molecule, to store that hydrogen.
That process is something that’s called electrolysis.
And when we do this, we have the ability to store that energy
in tanks or pipelines or in caverns
until we need that energy again, just like a battery.
The University College London actually forecasted that between 2010 and 2050,
we needed to keep one third of all oil, one half of all natural gas,
and actually 80% of all coal in the ground.
If we were to achieve the original climate Paris goal
of limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius.
But this is hard to do because we need access to continuous energy resources.
Many of you, I am sure, are aware of why renewable energies
like wind and solar can’t replace fossil fuels totally.
The reason for that is because we need the sun to shine or the wind to blow,
seven days a week,
365 days a year, 24 hours a day.
In fact, recently in the EU,
the wind actually stopped blowing in the North Sea for several days.
This created a significant problem in the United Kingdom.
It caused energy prices to increase, food prices to increase,
and the UK actually had to convert to coal
to provide energy resources to its citizens.
In fact, if you look at the tragic events
that are taking place today in the Ukraine,
most of the EU today is relying on coal as a way
to provide renewable or reliable energy resources.
However, this is where the private sector comes in.
The private sector is investing money today to create technology
and to scale those technologies to convert renewable energy into hydrogen
and to store that energy in caverns like the one you see here.
So unlike your cell phone, that may only last a half a day,
here we’re talking about storing enough energy for days, weeks and even months.
And the good news about storing hydrogen in a cavern
or using electrolysis to create hydrogen is that it's regenerative.
And we can continue to make it over and over again.
It acts as a renewable resource and has an everlasting battery.
But hydrogen is important to many aspects of our lives.
We can use hydrogen to convert shipping to zero emission ships.
We can use hydrogen to power our factories,
and we can use hydrogen to empower our transportation to zero emissions.
In fact, heavy duty truck manufacturers
are using fuel cells and small batteries in hydrogen
to convert their fleets that we use to transport goods
all over the country and all over the world
to convert those fleets to fuel cell electric vehicles.
Today, in the US alone, the heavy trucking industry
uses about 36.5 billion gallons of diesel fuel every year.
That’s just in the US and it emits significant emissions.
Steel production is also essential to our lives.
Still is very hard to electrify.
Why? Because you need high grade heat,
a 1700 degrees or higher to actually make steel.
However, we can use hydrogen as the fuel
to make that heat that we need to continue steel production.
Today, steel manufacturing admits about 2.6 gigatons of CO2.
That’s a lot of CO2. In fact, to put it in perspective,
that’s about as much CO2 that gets admitted across the entire EU.
And we can decarbonize this industry by using hydrogen.
I am sure many of you love to go to concerts or sporting events
and you likely see portable generators just like this one.
Well, these generators are actually powered by diesel fuel,
the same diesel fuel that I just talked about for the heavy trucking industry.
But we can convert these portable generators to hydrogen
and we can make them zero emission power sources
while we continue to enjoy the things that we like to do,
like a great concert or a great sporting event.
These portable generators can also be used to support areas
that are torn apart by devastating hurricanes
like Houston, Texas experiences where I came from,
or along the Gulf Coast in Louisiana
or even in places like California that experiences frequent blackouts,
because of a lack of energy resources.
And we can do this in a way where we can create many microgrids
and provide this power to critical resources like hospitals
and schools and police departments.
And we can do this without admitting any carbon.
Hydrogen also extends the life experience as we know it.
The same way your combustion engine car works today,
a fuel cell electric vehicle, you pull up, you fill up and you go.
And by using renewable energy to create this hydrogen
and using fuel cells in the electrolysis process,
we can store that hydrogen exactly at the point of consumption
like you see here at this fueling station.
And because we can produce hydrogen locally and we can store it locally,
that actually enables us to scale hydrogen around the world.
And it has another benefit that gives countries around the world
more energy independence,
more energy security and more energy reliability.
The WHO actually estimates that roughly 3 billion people today
still don’t have access to electricity.
And of that, about 4 million people die every year from lung cancer
or other diseases as a result of the way they cook food
using cow dung and wood chips.
But we can solve these issues.
We can deploy solar arrays in fuel cells,
and we can take that energy and convert it to hydrogen and store it.
So at night, when the sun’s not shining,
we can use that hydrogen again with a fuel cell to create electricity.
So the kids in this village can actually study at night the same way we do.
And their parents can cook healthy meals
without creating issues around carcinogenic and lung cancer.
We must eradicate energy poverty and we can achieve this with hydrogen.
Hydrogen energy and hydrogen storage
is and will be essential to the energy transition
and essential to our ability to continue to have
continuous power generation in the electric grid.
Hydrogen will also enable us to make grids
around the world renewable and more reliable.
This idea is fundamental not only to America
but to countries around the world.
As the population growth continues and as we work to electrify
everything or most things, electricity demand will actually increase,
not decrease, adding to the challenge.
We need to have continuous power
or this energy transition will stall.
But we can make this happen with hydrogen.
It’s important that we maintain the quality of life that we have today,
but not just here in America or in developed parts of the world,
but everywhere in the world.
We need a reliable energy storage solution and that solution is hydrogen.
As a public company CEO, I’m very well aware of the challenge.
In fact, I used the two heating oil tanks in my own basement
as a daily reminder of the colossal challenge that we face.
However, I’m not daunted by that challenge,
I know we can achieve it.
We built infrastructure to extract oil and gas
and transport it all around the world.
We’ve snaked pipelines under cities and oceans
in America and across the world.
We’ve built hydroelectric dams.
We've connected power lines across mountains,
and we’ve built water tanks in every city across America.
I know we can build a clean energy infrastructure
to allow this transition to take place.
But core to that is our ability to produce hydrogen,
store it and use it when it's needed.
Just last year, a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill
was passed in the United States.
And in that bill, it made it clear
that hydrogen is essential and a core part of the energy transition.
But it’s not just happening here.
Countries around the world are doing the same thing,
making the same kind of investments to enable hydrogen.
In fact, of that trillion dollars,
9.5 billion dollars were dedicated to hydrogen.
To enable hydrogen hubs to be built across America.
To enable infrastructure to be built to safely transport hydrogen
to where it is needed across the country
and to advance research in hydrogen.
All of those things will contribute to our ability to drive
an accelerated adoption of hydrogen as part of the energy transition.
So I hope by now you agree with me
that hydrogen is essential to the energy transition.
I hope you agree that hydrogen can help us decarbonise transportation
and decarbonize industry and that with hydrogen
we can integrate wind and solar and make it more reliable.
And that will enable us to make more grids
around the world renewable and reliable.
But if we’re going to electrify everything or most things,
we need to take advantage of the most abundant resources we have.
We need the quad factor - we need the sun,
we need the win, we need water.
And of course, we need hydrogen.
Thank you.