October 8, 2020 - 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM Eastern Time (ET)

Towards Carbon Neutrality in Energy and Transportation: The Role of Hydrogen

Event Description:

Hydrogen promises potential solutions to many of the most vexing challenges facing energy and environmental policy-makers as they plan for deep decarbonization scenarios and eventual carbon neutrality in our energy and transportation systems.

In this webinar, organized in collaboration with the MIT Energy Initiative Electric Power Systems Low Carbon Center, three experts will weigh in on the prospects of hydrogen from different backgrounds and regional contexts:

Svetlana Ikonnikova of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) will discuss the potential role of hydrogen in decarbonizing the global transportation sector as well as explore the link between hydrogen and international trade, including whether she expects from the emerging international hydrogen trade to follow the LNG blueprint.

MIT’s Dharik Mallapragada will recap two recent MIT papers, one which evaluates the economics of green hydrogen at industrial-scale from PV-electrolysis coupled with storage, and another, which assesses the least-cost deployment of hydrogen supply chain for serving transportation applications while modeling the interactions with the electric grid for hydrogen production and other energy requirements.

William Nuttall of the Open University in the United Kingdom will then provide us with takeaways from his recent book Fossil Fuel Hydrogen, which explains key technological, economic, and environmental issues concerning hydrogen from fossil sources, including discussion on the use of fossil-sourced hydrogen in fuel cell-powered vehicles.

Participants

Speaker:
Svetlana Ikonnikova
TUM

Dr. Svetlana Ikonnikova is an Associate Professor at the Technical University of Munich and a Research Associate / Energy Economist in the Bureau of Economic Geology at The University of Texas at Austin. She received her B.Sc. and M.S. degrees from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Russia and her Ph.D. from Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany. From 2007-2008 she was a post-doctoral fellow at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium and Teaching Assistant at Humboldt University of Berlin. In 2008 she started working in the Bureau of Economic Geology at The University of Texas at Austin, first as a postdoctoral fellow and since 2011 as a Research Associate.
Speaker:
Dharik Mallapragada
MIT

Dharik Mallapragada joined the MIT Energy Initiative in May 2018. Prior to MIT, Dharik worked at ExxonMobil Corporate Strategic Research, where he contributed to research on power systems modeling, life cycle assessment and also led a research program to study energy trends in developing countries. Through his Ph.D. and nearly five years of research experience in the chemicals and energy industry, Dharik has worked on a range of sustainability-focused research topics such as designing light-weight composite materials and carbon-efficient biofuel pathways, as well as developing novel tools for energy systems analysis. His research interests include the design of novel energy conversion processes and their integration into the energy system. At MIT, Dharik is working on advancing power systems modeling tools to study questions around renewables integration and economy-wide electrification.
Speaker:
William Nuttall
Open University, UK

Bill Nuttall is Professor of Energy having joined the Open University in October 2012. Much of his work has focussed on technology and policy issues of energy. He has had a leading role in studies devoted to particular energy-related materials including plutonium, helium, uranium, thorium and hydrogen and much of that work is on-going. He has long-standing experience of matters relating to civil nuclear energy and more recent experience associated with hydrogen energy systems.
Moderator:
Joshua Hodge
MIT Joshua Hodge is Executive Director of the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR), where he coordinates research activities and is responsible for the Center’s budget and manages Center staff. His areas of expertise include domestic and international climate and energy policy, with a focus on energy transition and renewable energy policies in the United States. Joshua’s recent work has included assisting rural electric cooperatives in the U.S. with decarbonization strategy. He is also a member of the MIT Net-Zero by 2026 Faculty Review Committee.