Can you imagine a Hydrogen Ecosystem being created and organized, that needs to influence and shape national strategies for energy, provide education and understandings, suggest and provide regulations, standardization, infrastructure, and incentive suggestions and encourage solutions that need to scale?

Enter the Hydrogen Council to galvanize change within the Energy Transition and bring its promise to realization; to make our transition away from fossil fuel dependence into clean ones based on Hydrogen?

A shift to a high level of dependence on a critical energy vector is undoubtedly no easy task in a short period of giving the required momentum over the next 10 to 20 years. Our world is under such global warming threat we need to urgently make some real changes to our energy systems.

The Hydrogen Council has designated the current decade as “the H2 decade” to provide Hydrogen with the momentum, the pathway to scaling, and focus it needs, so it can be an irreversible force by 2030, to gain global recognition and adoption.

The building of a unique ecosystem in design is the formation of the Hydrogen Council.

What makes this Hydrogen Council Ecosystem Unique?

The Hydrogen Council concept was formed in 2016. Today it is a consortium of 80+ of our global companies at the CEO and board level to become the global voice of Hydrogen. So what makes this a unique ecosystem design?

Complexity needs intense coordination. To imagine how complex this change to delivering a shift of this magnitude that is away from fossil dependence into the Hydrogen economy in such an ambitious time scale of thirty years needs an exceptional design to give the Paris Agreement a chance to achieve its goals.

The Hydrogen Council is fast becoming the global voice of Hydrogen. To summarize its uniqueness:

• The Hydrogen Council is expressly set up to be the leading advocate of Hydrogen.
• The council provides the neutral meeting point of these senior executives to set the tone and make Hydrogen happen; to simply be a catalyst in the energy system.
• It seeks to increase the visibility around hydrogen solutions currently available and the progress in a hydrogen roadmap of new solutions and technology breakthroughs.
• It offers this unique Ecosystem to build the Hydrogen environment that requires changing to realize its potential
• The Hydrogen Council’s role is to gain the recognition that Hydrogen significantly contributes to meeting climate goals.
• It advances energy security and seeks to harmonize ambitious targets to achieve better deployment conditions.
• The intent is to deliver innovative solutions that scale, provide a pathway to cost reductions that bring about competitive change, and to accelerate significant investments in large-scale commercialization of hydrogen solutions across industries worldwide.
• Engaging all parties, including Governments, industry, and investors, allow for growing identification and concerted efforts to bring about this energy change.

To achieve this range of goals, the Hydrogen Council works across critical stakeholders, such as policymakers, diverse business communities and energy users, international agencies, and civil society across Europe, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas, to create an intense, global coordinated and collaborative call to action.

The drivers of Hydrogen’s momentum are summarized here.

Getting Everbody into the Same Room

In the approach by the Hydrogen Council, they take a somewhat unique approach; they have the incumbents and the disruptors in the same room. This is meaning, for example, the Oil and Gas giants (incumbents) working with the disruptors offering clean energy based on Renewables. Both share a common purpose; each has the overarching need to lower carbon emissions through significant technology and system design changes.  It is the infusion of Hydrogen solutions that ‘mix and match’ and progressively allows change across the whole energy system to take place. Who usurps who is highly dependent on the race to the same and common goal, applying the constant mantra to “reduce carbon, achieve zero emissions” as soon as possible. Those that choose to ignore this will eventually become history.

To have everyone agree that the least possible carbon within all the Energy System is the aim allows for these different “forces” to push in the same direction. There is no quick solution; the objective is to move consistently towards low carbon and then no carbon through green Hydrogen.  The time scale is determined by the complexity of this shift, to eradicate fossil fuel and greenhouse gases into the clean solutions that Hydrogen offers.

So working on low-carbon solutions based on fossil fuels and CCUS and other sequestration of greenhouse gas are working alongside the clean energy derived from renewable energy. This is a “dual” pathway and will take decades to complete. We cannot directly “jump” to Green energy solutions ‘overnight’; they need phasing and planning over decades of focused work, but its potential is vast.

 Stradling across the Hydrogen Ecosystem, generating intense focus and momentum to bring about change.

Through this higher construct of the Hydrogen Council, the meeting place for CEO’s,  this has allowed many other Energy Institutions to link their work, exchange, and participate in this higher order of “Bringing Hydrogen to Market.”

Each institution (IEA, IRENA, the EU, Hydrogen Europe. World Bank, etc.) feeds into extracts from and is finding adaptive ways to collaborate, feed off different research, insights, and understandings. They operate in the energy transition but co-exist on a growing interdependency. The leadership within the Hydrogen Council is a catalyst for others to determine, frame, and deliver on their broader remit of the energy transition with this powerful enabler.

Each partly nourishes the other, to makes it a more fertile Ecosystem, where the linking of knowledge, experience, and sharing into this Hydregoen Ecosystem grows in more highly collaborative ways when you have the level of trust, respect, and understanding. There is a greater strength to bring about the needs within the broader Energy System. Each helps bring “shape and enable a co-productive environment.

To break down and attempt to de-construct the existing energy system, built up over 100 years or more, and replace it with an energy system built on renewables and an energy vector in Hydrogen is complex and challenging. Having the potential of Hydrogen as such a versatile energy carrier alongside electricity generated by renewables gives the World a chance to decarbonize the planet. Hydrogen solutions, in its solutions and fuels, offer such a complementary and a source of energy that is clean, abundant, and greenhouse gas-free. Hydrogens potential cuts across today’s approaches to fuel, heat, and feedstock.

Hydrogen is the future energy carrier that can deliver clean energy. Examples are shown but not limited.

Recognizing the Ecosystem within the Hydrogen Story

I believe this Ecosystem approach achieves an even more significant ‘networking effect’ to build this constellation of interested parties even further.  It needs to evolve even more; otherwise, this level of Energy system change within very limited time horizons would be virtually impossible without this cooperative approach and agreed to pathway style approach.

Designing around ecosystem principles may not have been the original intention when the Hydrogen Council was formed. Still, the design has evolved by its very need. There is this need for a highly collaborative, engaged, inter-dependent environment that allows evolution to take place, but in this case, in short, imposed time scales due to the sense of urgency the world is facing with climate warming.

A Collaborative Design that can bring about the changes necessary

As I see how the Hydrogen Council has structure itself through this ecosystem design, you recognize the importance of it. Changing any Energy System, especially the energy carriers, such as Hydrogen replacing fossil fuels of Oil, Gas, and Coal, that you recognize that a change of this magnitude is so complicated.

Collaborations, relationships, networks, and having an Ecosystem design gives us a higher chance to change the Energy System. The example of the Hydrogen Council is undoubtedly unique in the design of the intent of bringing together 80 plus Global CEO’s from some of the biggest companies in the world to undertake such a transformation of an Energy Vector. See their website here.

To get to solutions that meet the climate imperative of achieving a world that will keep global warming below 2degree C by 2050. To transition to this, we need a carbon-neutral world. The role of Hydrogen is the critical lever for achieving deep decarbonization. Still, it is a tough and arduous pathway to construct, but taking an ecosystem evolutionary approach gives it a greater chance of success, to galvanize all engaged in the energy transition to eventually a zero-carbon world.

***The initial framing post for exploring Ecosystems within the Energy Systems was the post: “Creating a Unique Nested Hydrogen Ecosystem for the Energy Transition“

***You may like to visit and follow my dedicated #energytransition site for my thoughts on a wide range of topics related to the energy system @ innovating4energy.