News

HFI Net Zero Technologies is set for a very active June with participation at the EIC’s Energy Exports Conference 2023 in Aberdeen, UK Renewables’ Global offshore Wind 2023 in London, DMG Event’s Global Energy Show 2023 in Calgary and the India Energy Leadership Summit in Delhi as opportunities for net zero technologies surge in the Middle East, India and the Mediterranean.

India’s first offshore wind seabed leasing round from the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy is imminent as Tamil Nadu and Gujurat lead the way with 7,600 km of national coastline and ambitious 30 GW targets by 2030.  RWE and Tata Power has already launched a collaboration partnership combining RWE’s track record as a major OW developer in North West Europe and Tata’s local presence in India.

It was privilege to meet Ann Robertson-Tait of SLB Geothermal last week to discuss geothermal opportunities in the region and Ann made specific mention of the “hot” Red Sea locations close to the NEOM City project in Saudi Arabia. Ann presented at OTC in Houston and will be presenting at the SPE Geothermal event in Aberdeen coming up in September.

It was great to catch up with Energy Dome’s Paul Smith in Dubai as part of Paul’s attendance at the EPRI-GCCTA Summit. Paul has been showcasing Italy-based Energy Dome’s closed circuit C02 driven energy storage system which has been attracting top tier investors recently. The highly successful India Energy Storage Alliance, who recently hosted India Energy Storage Week in Delhi, is pushing west with the establishment of a parallel organisation in MENA.

Meanwhile Egypt, has published a new draft law which law offers up a wide range of initiatives, including the establishment of green hydrogen production plants, desalination plants that allocate a portion of their production to green hydrogen, renewable energy facilities dedicating at least 95 percent of their output to green hydrogen and desalination plants. The scope of the law also includes  projects focused on the transportation, storage and distribution of green hydrogen and businesses  engaged in manufacturing raw materials for green hydrogen plants.

However, the hydrogen/CCS world was given a jolt recently by Saudi Aramco’s announcement that it was struggling to find a buyer for its blue hydrogen on the grounds of cost, confirming that incentives will be needed to support the continued roll-out of CCS technologies until cost reductions can commercialise the field. The Global CCS Institute’s work, however, continues to track the successful expansion of CCS.

With nuclear small modular reactors now operational in China and Russia, the rest of the world is playing catch up and it will key to see how Canada’s ambitious for SMRs has rolled out in the last 12 months since the last GES.