Monaco Hydrogen Alliance: The Big Players Discuss Decarbonization
The Monaco Hydrogen Alliance is a not-for-profit Association to promote the use of green hydrogen in land, air, and maritime transportation. For the last three years, they have hosted a forum that attracts a mix of shipping owners, scientists, fuel companies, and innovative hydrogen-based start-ups. The event is opened by Monaco’s Prince, HSH Albert II, an advocate for environmental initiatives and green energy, making Monaco a leader in sustainable innovation.
As a patron of the Hydrogen Alliance, Prince Albert II opens the gathering, welcoming the attendees, many of whom are Monaco residents and heads of global companies. Over the span of two days, the forum provides a meeting of minds, networking, and round-table discussions about the latest trends, technologies, and challenges around the macro implementation, infrastructure, and funding of clean energy fuels.
This year’s forum, from 2 – 3 December, was held at the Hermitage Hotel in Monte-Carlo. Amongst the guests was Scorpio CEO, Emanuele Lauro, a founding member of the Monaco Hydrogen Alliance, who has also been serving as the President of the Monaco Chamber of Shipping this past year. Aside from being an honorary guest, Mr. Lauro also participated on the panel ‘Energy & Mobility: United Through Collaboration and Partnerships.’
Other panel topics included ‘Scaling Production of Clean Hydrogen,’ ‘Creating Clean Hydrogen Supply Corridors,’ ‘The Hydrogen Grid: Transforming Energy Networks,’ ‘Ports & Airports: The Future of Hydrogen Hubs,’ ‘Accelerating Zero-Emission Maritime Innovation,’ and a panel moderated by Scorpio’s Managing Director, Francesco Bellusci: ‘Power-to-Liquid to Decarbonize the Transport Sector – What Prospects?’. This is the panel I was able to attend, and what we will look at here.
Decarbonizing the Transport Sector
On day 2, an important and fascinating discussion was held at the panel “Power-to-Liquid to Decarbonize the Transport Sector – What Prospects?”. This session took a deep dive into role of synthetic fuels in decarbonizing aviation and shipping – the key barriers to their development and how to solve them. Synthetic fuels, produced through power-to-liquid technologies, are emerging as a viable solution to decarbonizing aviation, and shipping is moving towards hydrogen derivatives such as ammonia and methanol. The panel explored the technical and logistical challenges of integrating these synthetic fuels into shipping fleets.
Opening the panel was a presentation from Dr. Behrang Shirizadeh, Senior Manager of Deloitte France, which took a dive into the biggest the obstacles reaching Net-Zero and he gave his own thoughts on how the transport industry working together is the best way forward. Describing the ‘green fuel’ market as “far from take-off”, data shows that of 230 synthetic fuel production projects announced in 2024, only 15% made it to the final investment stage. Dr. Shirizadeh believes that the large-scale airline and shipping companies are the ones who can best push the decarbonization change at market level.
After this introduction to the challenges facing the energy transition on large scale, the panel was introduced by Francesco Bellusci, who moderated the discussion. He did an excellent job of asking key questions to the panelists, each of whom brought their own unique expertise to the stage.
Volkmar Galke, Executive Sales Director of WinGD Ltd., gave impressive figures from his company’s results with ammonia-powered vessels. Challenging the view that large-scale vessels aren’t yet capable of running on alternative fuels, he shared that WinGD Ltd. already has a 10,000 DWT vessel sailing on ammonia power. He added that there are already 58 signed contracts to build ammonia-powered vessels around the world. The most important thing, Mr. Galke stressed, is that collaboration is key to moving forward and ship owners must be part of the equation.
Corrie de Jager, CEO and Founder of Hydrox Holdings in South Africa has developed the Divergent-Electrode-Flow-Through (DEFTTM), an electrolysis technology to create inexpensive Hydrogen production. He brought an unusual perspective of living in Africa and seeing the sheer number of towns and villages where each household lives exclusively on diesel generators. He pointed out that while we need the large-scale companies to push the change, we must have small, inexpensive ways of producing clean energy at the individual consumer level.
Rostom Merzouki, Director and Head of Global Gas Development at the American Bureau of Shipping in Qatar, explained the challenges of working with and transporting hydrogen and ammonia. According to him, the best way to utilize Hydrogen power is to burn it at the source because the energy required to keep Hydrogen stable in transport is greater than the energy contained in it. This is one of the most important and most challenging aspects of finding the right ‘clean’ fuel for the future—looking at the entire supply chain, to make sure the fuel is clean at all stages. This has been the challenge in the electric car industry, seemingly clean for zero emissions from the exhaust pipe, however, the production and disposal of the batteries are proving quite harmful to the environment. This is no longer an acceptable allowance in the move to future fuels.
For the final question posed to the panel, Mr. Bellusci asked who will be paying for this synthetic fuel transition–another not-so-simple question to answer. Certainly, there will need to be a variety of funding programs, including government subsidies, tax credits, private-sector investment, consumer demand, etc. A solution that recalled Dr. Shirizadeh’s initial presentation that the only way to move forward will be full cooperation between governments, policy makers, the shipping industry, and other key players.
Regardless of the road to funding, the panelists agreed that all proposed scenarios, would likely cause a slight price increase for the consumer.
In the race to meet the ambitious and looming Net-Zero target for 2050, we are still a long way from consensus on clean synthetics. However, the industry is committed to finding a cost-effective solution, and it is in forums such as the Monaco Hydrogen Alliance that the discussions are happening. For sure, the next few years will be interesting as technology develops.
