Our CEO Ahmed El-Hoshy spoke with the Hydrogen Council about why ammonia and methanol are crucial to the hydrogen economy and how platforms like the Hydrogen Council are central to driving forward collaboration in the energy transition. Read and watch his interview below.
How have you collaborated with other council members to power forward hydrogen?
I’ve been part of the Hydrogen Council, and OCI Global has been, for a little over a year now. We have already had a very clear example of collaboration with other council members in action. I met the CEO of Linde in a Hydrogen Council meeting in Washington DC in 2022 and that meeting helped spur several discussions between us that ultimately led us to reach FID on our major hydrogen and blue ammonia project in the US later that year.
Are there any emerging applications of hydrogen that you find promising?
For OCI specifically, we’re the third largest ammonia producer and fifth for methanol, so ammonia and methanol are two hydrogen derivatives that are near and dear to our hearts. We see in both those markets very promising outlooks. For example, ammonia is a good transporter of hydrogen given its high energy density and high boiling point relative to pure hydrogen. So, it can be used to move hydrogen and also be consumed in its own right as a power source, eventually displacing coal and natural gas to decarbonize power.
What role can international collaboration play in advancing the global hydrogen sector?
In the recent council meeting we discussed the importance of simple regulation that provides certainty. so that we in the private sector can make the necessary investments to drive and develop the hydrogen economy.
Projects like ours are always going to be bold and have some element of risk-taking but with regulatory support we can at least mitigate some risk so that we can go ahead with these projects, because low carbon alternatives are more expensive than fossil fuels today.
So, global collaboration is important in to provide that simplicity and certainty, for example, in terms of certification. With certification what we’d like to see is a third-party, trusted certifier all can rely on, meaning we’re all working together rather than across 25 different paths in parallel which creates confusion in the markets.
Find out more about our hydrogen growth projects and how we’re working with partners across the hydrogen economy to power a cleaner future sooner here.
