SLB is at the forefront of heavy industry’s push to drive down emissions through the use of low-carbon H₂ in multiple processes ranging from steelmaking to petrochemicals production. Hydrogen Economist spoke recently with Gavin Rennick, president of the company’s New Energy business, about the technologies and strategies in play as industrials prepare to deploy H₂ at scale.

How would you characterize the challenge of scaling up the low-carbon H₂ sector?

Rennick: With H₂, you are starting up a new value chain, and this requires all of the pieces to come into play. Our position is that the whole value chain needs to be established. Demand needs to be established, and we are very focused on use cases—we want to target use cases that will enable a certain amount of demand, and then the supply will follow.

And the technology around production is really important because it gets you to an economic tipping point where companies can use the H₂ as part of their energy mix. But having that whole value chain incentivized and moving at the right speed is what is necessary for the industry to grow.

Tell us about SLB’s approach to the deployment of H₂.

Rennick: The way we are approaching it is that we are working very closely with specific industries. For instance, we are working in close collaboration with steel industry leader ArcelorMittal through a joint venture called Genvia, which we created with the CEA and other partners in France to develop a solid oxide electrolyzer. Through this close collaboration, we are already designing the very first units to go into a steel plant. That is really important because the way that you design technology is not independent of use cases; in fact, I think the most successful innovation is when you are solving a very specific customer problem. In our case, this will be in a very specific use case within the steel industry. We also have other engagements for other use cases in the chemical and cement industries.

In every case, we will be creating a system that addresses the needs of the customer and that will allow them to decarbonize. Being able to work really closely with customers is going to be key to understand and shift the economics.

For the full story, visit: https://pemedianetwork.com/H2-economist/articles/strategies-trends/2023/slb-guides-big-industry-to-H2-future?oly_enc_id=1683D7225256D6U