The past few months have seen an unprecedented global pandemic unfold and trigger a global economic recession. This crisis highlighted the importance of working together with urgency on our long-term future.

The energy transition is already underway, and a number of technologies are being deployed to reduce our CO2 footprint. However, new pathways must be developed to go beyond technologies that are ready or near-ready for large-scale use.

This is particularly important in the case of hydrogen: the currently available routes alone cannot provide enough CO2-free energy in the long term. Water splitting increases pressure on renewable sources of electricity, and the other routes (such as SMR with CO2 capture and methane splitting with low-value carbon by-products) rely on waste management (CO2 or low-value solid carbon) which must be avoided to attain a circular economy in the long term. If we want to solve the hydrogen issue, we must solve the solid carbon issue satisfactorily.

In the past few months, we have been working together with our Corporate Partners to setup the foundations of the Carbon Hub. And we are pleased to announce our first Call for Proposals to start providing solutions for a low-carbon sustainable future where the splitting of hydrocarbons provides carbon-based materials that displace CO2 and energy intensive materials in addition to concurrent production of hydrogen.