I was recently talking to an acquaintance who was organizing an event in climate tech/renewtech.
Originally, the event used to fully about solar - and one could see halls full of eager delegates.
About four years back, he realized that very few wantes to attend solar power conferences. Most of the industry knew - or at least they thought they knew - all they wanted to know.
To bring in more delegates. he added an electric vehicle stream to the conference. And once again saw the crowd gather.
But of late, the crowds at this EV sessions have thinned too - and he is now trying to include - you guessed it - green hydrogen.
I have also some senior management shifts from solar sector to the green hydrogen sector.
The reasons are not far to seek. Solar power sector has become a utility, commodity sector, with decreasing potential for innovation and creativity - except in the distributed solar sector. It is currently mostly a finance, infra & policy game.
For those firms in the solar power sector (especially ground mounted solar power) wishing to work on greener pastures, green hydrogen is an obvious extension - it is evolving (so significant scope for innovation), it can be used in a variety of end use sectors including consumer sectors such as automotives (more scope for innovation) and most important, it is a derivative of solar power as most green hydrogen is expected to be produced by electrolysis which is in turn powered by solar or wind power.
If many solar power developers are not already investing in/diversifying into green hydrogen, is it likely that they will, soon?
And what could such a shift mean for green hydrogen startups? (Well, there are not too many such startups in India as I write this - end of 2022)
