The Green Hydrogen Revolution

On 12 November, we had the great pleasure of listening to Partner Nick Buckworth and Senior Associate Samuel Ogunlaja of Shearman and Sterling. Who shared with us on this emerging concept and talk about how we can prepare ourselves as practitioners, financers etc for what lies ahead of us.

With several decades’ worth of legal experience and exposure to projects, we were in for an insightful presentation on the trends towards the transition from hydrocarbons to lower and zero carbon alternatives with green hydrogen projects emerging as part of the revolution to a net zero carbon world is accelerating.  

If successful Hydrogen can be used in a variety of areas like Transportation, electrification etc and as such will be included in the global energy mix. Hydrogen’s benefits are incomprehensible along with its ability to be stored, marries the low potentially zero carbon benefits of conventional renewables with the scalability.

The fundamental drivers for the production and inclusion of Hydrogen into the Global Energy mix will be the access to equipment for the production and Electrolysis of Hydrogen, Support from Government through policy formulation and creation of incentives packages, along with the ability for a collaboration between the Renewables industry and Government.

The session led to a wide interaction from both the staff and students on how to support the Hydrogen Revolution. Questions on who stands to benefit most from the emerging technology, are all nations leveraged to benefit from the scope of this transition. Financing and Policy Formulation emerged as the key concerns arising from the main prohibitive factor being the current cost of green energy and hydrogen production equipment. At the end of the day it was concluded that this is an area that requires great collaboration from all key players, Government Support to drive the shift from fossil fuel consumption as well as creating a value chain that runs from the production to the end user.

We ended the session with a commitment from the speakers, staff and students to participate in this evolution and achieving the main goal which is a low carbon sector and a virtual family portrait was taken to commemorate the day.