Hillmont Partners Co-Hosts the AEEC Webinar on Investment Opportunities in the Hydrogen Sector
On 12 April 2021, Hillmont Partners, together with leading German law firm Becker Büttner Held, and international consultancy and engineering firm Bilfinger Tebodin, co-hosted a special online discussion to discuss the growing levels of investment into renewable hydrogen and fuel cells technologies. The webinar was held under the auspices of the Association of European Energy Consultants (AEEC), a reputable organization uniting pre-eminent energy law specialists throughout the European Union and beyond.
Over 70 guests joined the webinar and addressed their queries to the speakers during the Q&A session. The attendees represented top-tier private and state energy companies operating in both conventional and renewable energy sectors, banks and financial institutions, investment funds, state regulators and consultants.
Tetiana Mylenka, Counsel at Hillmont Partners, Head of the firm’s Energy Practice, acted as a headline expert speaker and moderator of the online discussion. In her opening remarks, she outlined the significant potential that energy experts and policy-makers across the world see in hydrogen technologies and its expected role in reducing emissions by replacing or complementing fossil fuel-based infrastructure.
Despite the expected commercial attractiveness of the sector, supported by the EU’s Green Deal, a well-structured regulatory framework, the technical side, including transportation and other supporting infrastructure, is yet to be developed.
Johannes Nohl, Partner Counsel at Becker Büttner Held, addressed the major issues impacting the needs of tomorrow’s hydrogen market in the EU markets. These constitute the EU Hydrogen Roadmap and cover renewable and low-carbon production, liquidity and efficient price benchmarks, facilitating regulatory frameworks for competitive markets, integration into the global and European markets, in particular cross-border trading. In his presentation, Johannes emphasized that infrastructure was a prerequisite for linking hydrogen production from renewables and demand in the industry, mobility and heating sectors. According to the speaker, the share of hydrogen in Europe’s energy mix is projected to grow to 13-14% by 2050, offering new opportunities to re-design energy partnerships and cooperate on clean hydrogen with Eastern Europe and Ukraine in particular.
In their joint presentation, Tetiana Mylenka and Bohdan Novyk, Associate at Hillmont Partners, discussed the potential of hydrogen deployment in Ukraine and investment opportunities in this sphere. They shed light on the current status of cooperation between the EU and Ukraine and political steps which have been taken to date, the role of Ukraine in implementing EU’s Green Deal and ambitious targets for Ukraine which are set in strategic documents of the EU. Additionally, they provided their vision on perspectives of current workflows for policy-makers and outlined pilot hydrogen projects in Ukraine.
They highlighted Ukraine’s market prospects in the production and transportation of hydrogen to the European Union member states, with around 1,000 sites for electrolyzed hydrogen storage identified across the south-eastern regions of Ukraine. Thus, the short-term perspective envisages the transportation of compressed gaseous hydrogen for short distances (up to 250 km) by trucks and rail. The medium-term perspective provides for the possibility of higher volumes of hydrogen being transported in the form of Liquid Organic Hydrogen Carriers (LOHC) by trucks and rail for distances of up to 1,000 km. The long-term perspective envisages that a pipeline network would be the most feasible option for large quantities over long distances of more than 1,500 km.
The next speaker, Oksana Roman, head of management consultancy & BD at Bilfinger Tebodin in Ukraine, a company with an impressive portfolio of implemented and ongoing hydrogen-related projects, addressed her company’s practical experience in the implementation of hydrogen projects and investment prospects in Central and Eastern Europe. She touched upon key aspects of hydrogen project planning, funding and execution. This covered business case evaluation, investment scenario, securing government support, arranging private and public funding, and engaging customers. The guests were particularly excited to learn from Oksana about two ongoing hydrogen projects by Bilfinger Tebodin in CEE – the first one is for solar and wind-based hydrogen production facilities in Poland, and the second one referring to hydrogen injection into the natural gas grid in Slovakia.
Watch a recording of the webinar at: https://youtu.be/8dP9zgyW5NM
The presentations of the webinar can be downloaded at:
