#TouchingHydrogenFuture - #UAE

#TouchingHydrogenFuture – tour across the globe in Jules’ Verne style

Short series of stories on global Hydrogen future, written by a group of Hydrogen passionados and energy realists, making concepts accessible to wider audience, allowing both entertainment and education including readers from all continents for whom affordable and clean energy is key.

Imagining the future is delivering it.

How hydrogen will change our lives. Next stop: UAE 2040, what can happen in the race for decarbonisation.

Author: Robin M. Mills. Editors: Erik Rakhou and Rosa Puentes Fernández.

His Plan: The OHEC Meeting of 14 September 2040

It was a pleasantly warm day in Neom on 14 September 2040[1], just over 50 degrees. Ziad Al Shammary was there for action, not vacation, and his pilotless plane was first in the swarm. The followers buzzed near-silently over the hazy coastal plain as they delivered the constellation of ministers and robot assistants[2] to the floating hotel. The fifth annual meeting of OHEC[3] was in session.

Ziad, only just appointed his country’s second hydrogen minister, appeared more relaxed than he was, as he hopped out of the fuel-cell flyer and greeted his colleagues and rivals. Some seemed a little dismissive of the young man whose ability they had yet to gauge. He exchanged a few words with the unsuspecting representatives of Chile, Iran, Russia, Libya and Namibia. They murmured polite expressions, and he expressed a slightly naïve question or two to disarm them. He who estimates last, estimates best.

They’d given him the third most splendid suite in the hotel, walls in pastel blue and green, real glass windows, not electronic projections, facing all four compass points. Sunsets are redder, more infernally magnificent than when he was growing up. The forest of wind turbines, solar panels and electrolysers to the east was only fifteen years old, but already seemed faintly antiquated.

He had visited Neom as a young engineer, when a choice of a career had been a gamble. “Hydrogen,” his aunt had advised, and been proved right. In the 2020s, he had been looking for a way out of the disease, drought, depression, depopulation and dissension across south-west Asia. The primordial element had seemed an escape, not a return.

Westwards, the modern blades floating on the Red Sea, each towering twice a Great Pyramid[4], were turning vigorously in the evening breeze, powering cavernous fans sucking a two-century carbon legacy back into the ground.

His robot parked itself unobtrusively in the corner of the room, taking his instruction on coordinating meetings. The chief hydrogen buyers had come personally, the two-hour hyperplane hops still a remarkable concession in a near-virtual world. India, Germany, Korea, America, Bangladesh and other economic heavyweights. But they could sweat a little; he would see them later. Only the uncertain reaction of the Chinese delegate to his little coup worried him slightly.

But first, he had a few details to settle. He concentrated intently for a few moments so his neural circuit would make him appear in Sydney, just as the holographic projection of Savreen Kaur twinkled before him. In the Australian winter, she sat in front of a fireplace warmed by a near-invisible blue flame.

“We will make hydrogen so cheap that only the rich will burn wood,” she commented drily. Indeed, the fireplace was an affectation. Electric heat pumps instead of crude fuel heat almost every home around the world outside the chilliest northern climes these days in 2040s.

“If we still allowed burning wood, you know you’re one of the few who could afford it,” he responded. Since their PhD days designing electrolysers in Cambridge together, they had stayed close. Scion of a wealthy Australian mining family, Savreen had hardly needed the qualification, but the knowledge she’d acquired had taken her from rich to true plutocrat. The historically wealthy figures, Rockefeller, Gates, Getty, Musk and the others, were quaint beside the hydrogen trillionairess.

“So our AI has okayed the legal code,” he told her. “Our lawyers will approve the human language précis this evening, not that they’ll find anything to object to. Tshwane has cleared the transfer of the platinum assets. Congress is holding up the photoelectrocatalysis IP, but they’re shooting themselves in the foot if they deny its use in the US. I don’t believe anyone else knows what we’re up to, apart from the Russians. I’m just concerned about Mingxia’s reaction.”

She arched her eyebrows. “That is the one slight worry. It’s only them, and your friends over there, that might get in the way. But I will handle Mingxia through the diplomatic channels. In the end, they won’t dare risk their supply. Siberia isn’t enough to replace the Gulf and Australia together.”

“I can handle the people here. They won’t like it, of course, but they will go along for a cut of the pie.” Indeed, a pie worth half a trillion a year, that would triple within a decade. And, more than the simple figures of euros, the electricity that kept nearly every vehicle droning down the world’s roads and rails, the basic materials forging the new global economy, it was the control of the climate puzzle.

The next day, he rose before dawn and ran a virtual 5k along the beach. The nearshore green water over the dead corals gave way to the deeper blue offshore. The immersive reality could render the sounds and smells, the balance, and the rosy vistas of sea and mountains, almost perfectly, but still not the feel of sand under your feet or dewy morning air in your lungs. Outside, the wake of the Jupiter was washing on the shore, as the world’s largest hydrogen carrier ran silently west to Suez and eager customers in southern Europe. Close to the morning Venus, another bright star was probably the international space hotel.

He was first of the ministers to the conference chamber, as his country was first to seize the potential of the first element. The others drifted in, expecting routine. They were served coffee synthesised from hydrogen and captured atmospheric carbon dioxide, a reasonable approximation to the bean version[5].

First came the technical presentations. Strong demand to replace remaining fossil fuels, to make synthetic food, manufacture graphene for hyperjets and orbital vehicles, kept demand booming. Two more countries had reached net-zero this year, gearing up hydrogen purchases to keep their grids running through sweltering, stuffy, still weather. OHEC’s low production costs gave them the edge over competitors.

But were they pushing H2 and C prices too high? There was talk of new hydrogen manufacturing in the Sahara and the Gobi, and on giant floating islands, populist Chinese politicians promising to break OHEC. Maybe they could entice some competitors to join the organisation?

The ministers’ finance colleagues in Canberra, St. Petersburg and Isfahan were all itching to raise output, talking of hastening decarbonisation and releasing the brake on the global economy. But the hydrogen arbiters quickly reached agreement for only a moderate boost in the 2040 targets. That seemed to conclude matters. But on the delegates’ retinas appeared a new agenda item. Ziad spoke.

“Before some of us were hydrogen ministers, they were hydrocarbon ministers, and will know their history. Rockefeller controlled the transport of oil, and the club of Vienna controlled its supply. Eighty years on, we cannot repeat those approaches: the sun, wind and waves are everywhere. Last year the price was half what it is today. Next year, it may be half again or twice. This volatility is not good for those who rely on hydrogen for our economies, it is not good for consumers who need predictable affordability, and it is not good for anyone who desires a liveable climate.”

“We have a new vision, that will bring order to this chaos. When our system here writes the final communique, it will announce that my government is buying H To Mining and merging it with our hydrogen industry. The combination will control thirty percent of world hydrogen production capacity, a quarter of atmospheric carbon sequestration, seventy percent of the key catalytic metals, and, most of all, all the essential IP on ultra low-cost hydrogen manufacturing and conversion”.

He had been waiting to be sure it came as a surprise, and his fellow ministers were silent, hovering between the need to hear more, and their desperation to get out of the shielded room to communicate home for instructions.

“We prefer not to do this unilaterally. For true market stability, we need your cooperation, and you will all have the option to take a stake in the physical assets, the material synthesisers, the renewable energy fluxes, and, for those who want it, the oil and gas reformers and the carbon dioxide reservoirs.”

Mendeleyeva nodded a quick apology and slipped out, probably to broach a separate deal with Mingxia. That was expected. He watched the others in his peripheral vision, leaning back with half-feigned insouciance. Despite the conversation of yesterday evening, he was not absolutely sure of the Chileans.

Nobody else moved, though, and he sensed some visible relief that they were not being cut out, some jealousy at being demoted to second place behind a young upstart minister. That was the best he could have expected. The struggle of the 2020s, the cloudiness and false starts of the 2030s, had been replaced by hope, then clarity, optimism, perhaps now even a touch of hubris. For now, he had put his region firmly back in the global economy’s nucleus.

[to be continued...]

Disclaimer:

The opinions expressed are purely those of the authors and in no case can they be considered as an official position of the organizations.

The information presented here is based on available public information from announced projects. In any case can be considered a guarantee of what may or may not happen in the future. The author(s) reserve(s) the right to include additional fictional projects or features for the solely purpose of this story.

This is just the beginning of a potential book that we are planning to write. The book would consist of several chapters, each of them highlighting how life would be in different countries if the current announced H2 projects/H2 valleys/IPCEIs had developed. The purpose of the book is mainly educational.

As this is a proof-of-concept, we appreciate your honest and constructive feedback.

References: a number of references presented below; for further references please contact Robin M. Mills. Robin M. Mills is CEO of Qamar Energy, and author of The Myth of the Oil Crisis.

[1] See NEOM: Made to Change

[2] See context for rapidly developing robotics - 27+ Robotics Industry Statistics To Show You How Big It Is In 2022 (techjury.net)

[3] This organisation, with a name left for reader to guess, is at present a fiction for avoidance of doubt, yet a plausible fiction – see Opec member urges oil producers to focus more on renewable energy | Fossil fuels | The Guardian

[4] See Pyramids of Giza | History, Location, Age, Interior, & Facts | Britannica

[5] See Finland serves coffee in machine powered by the air we breathe at Expo 2020 Dubai (thenationalnews.com)