Gastech 2023 Takeaways
September 15, 2023
Last week’s Gastech 2023 conference in Singapore was host to nearly 45,000 energy industry professionals, policymakers, academics and 750 exhibiting companies. Conference programming focused on the role of natural gas, LNG, and hydrogen as enablers for energy security through the energy transition.
This year’s conference and exhibition generated excitement in the energy industry with the highest ever attendance at a time when the stakes around issues like energy security, decarbonization, and global cooperation could not be higher. Here are our key takeaways from the conference:
Key Takeaways
1. CCS Technology is Increasingly a Focus to Enable a Cleaner Natural Gas Supply Chain
Carbon capture, carbon storage, and carbon transport will be critical to decarbonizing the natural gas supply chain. This was especially seen as a focus for APAC countries, including heavy emissions contributing countries. In addition to CCS technology, carbon pricing was seen as critical to the success of reducing overall emissions. However, panelists pointed out that clearer standards and incentives are needed to help invigorate what is still a somewhat nascent CCS market.
2. Opportunities and Challenges Exist for Hydrogen
Panel speakers during Day 2 of the conference agreed that hydrogen has the potential to offer a decarbonized solution to energy needs provided we can overcome cost and market maturity challenges. Some of these challenges involve the infrastructure required to transport hydrogen. During the conference, Shell took select conference attendees to visit their first-ever liquid hydrogen vessel. The potential of liquid hydrogen is especially impactful to large importers of LNG because of the large amount of space required to transport gaseous hydrogen, and potential to adapt existing LNG infrastructure to support liquid hydrogen.
3. Financing the Global Energy Transition Will Not be a One-Size-Fits All Endeavor
For example, Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan, Chief Strategy & Sustainability Officer at NNPC, pointed out that for energy-impoverished regions of sub-Saharan Africa we cannot even begin to think about financing decarbonization until we can finance energy security. Furthermore, access to capital for decarbonization efforts in Africa has a higher cost in many cases. “Even for renewables, institutions provide greater difficulty for regional Africa to get a credit rating to have access to financing. It’s completely contradictory to our objective,” he said. As Saugata Saha, President of S&P Global Commodity Insights, said: “We use the phrase energy transition, but it is really an energy trilemma, as we need to solve three things simultaneously: energy security, sustainability, and stability/affordability.”
Overall, the conference illustrated that the success of our global energy transition will rely on collaboration between today’s energy leaders and the entrepreneurs, scientists, and policymakers who are building the technology and requirements for a sustainable future. As an exhibitor at Gastech 2023, Sapphire Technologies welcomed discussions with global leaders in the natural gas sector and innovators in the future hydrogen economy to our booth. We discussed how our FreeSpin® In-line Turboexpander generator harnesses the power of gas expansion to produce reliable and clean electricity – reducing global carbon footprint. We look forward to continuing these discussions and embarking on new partnerships with the world’s leading energy providers to decarbonize natural gas through the energy transition.
