'No hydrogen is even more dangerous'

Peter Elk - General Manager Pilz Netherlands

In my daily work, everything revolves around safety. Machine safety, human safety, cyber safety, ... To ensure this, we often reach for technical solutions in the form of sensors and controls. Or at least "something" that puts dangerous processes or situations in a safe mode. Either by abrupt shutdown or by a so-called controlled slow-stop.

However, technical solutions alone are not enough. I also look forward to the decisions and actions needed to combat climate change, halt global warming or, if necessary, to "slow-stop" it in a controlled way. In short: decisions from the government and other stakeholders that will enable a large-scale rollout of hydrogen.

Hydrogen? Those two linked H atoms? Why hydrogen? Those questions are easy to answer. Hydrogen is an excellent energy carrier in which we can store a surplus of sustainably generated solar and wind energy. A gas that is easy to transport through existing (gas) pipeline networks. A medium of which practically everything is technically known; not only the chemical properties, but a safe and efficient application. The plants to convert hydrogen into heat and back into electricity are just waiting in the storage rooms, wondering when they will be deployed.

Talk about safety, talk about hydrogen. Because without (green) hydrogen, we won't save the world. Wind and solar alone are not enough. They might be enough to produce enough electricity to electrify everything, but the place and time at which this energy is generated rarely corresponds exactly to demand. So we need storage capacity and transportability. Did I mention that hydrogen is an excellent medium for this?

And of course it is not a "holy grail," in fact that is not true of any solution. Of course we have to deal with the fact that hydrogen is highly flammable, odorless and tasteless. That it is transported by trucks under high pressure and at very low temperatures. And that it has to be brought to the right pressure at filling stations to be used in a car. But you know: excellent solutions have already been developed for that too. Solutions that have long since proven themselves in practice.

If we want to preserve the world for our children and our children's children, then not applying hydrogen is far more dangerous in the long run....