As hydrogen begins its journey in the energy transition, Star Scientific feels strongly about cooperating with other renewable energy businesses in our region. By talking collectively to governments about our common needs and aspirations, we can rapidly achieve our milestones. It is also an excellent way to connect to suppliers, collaborators, and customers.
To that end, Star Scientific kicked off the year, in a public sense, by attending and exhibiting at the Hunter New Energy Symposium hosted by “New H2”, the Hunter Hydrogen Technology Cluster. New H2 is a collaboration of a number of industry groups and the University of Newcastle. This region, which is just to the north of our Research, Development, and Deployment Division on the Central Coast, has been identified by the Australian and State Government as a major hydrogen port and industry hub.
The conference program was jam-packed with very useful content, with some recurrent themes emerging that we have observed elsewhere in Australia. Australia is densely populated in a few main cities and urban centres on our coasts, and as such, land is at a premium, and our burgeoning population is competing fiercely for residential land, particularly industrial land uses.
At the same time, coastal and rural communities are pushing back against the land and waterway impacts of the transition – solar farms, transmission lines and terrestrial and coastal wind farms. These matters will likely figure in Australia’s next national election. Happily, the community’s view towards hydrogen is neutral but it will nevertheless be an interesting couple of years as we map out our growth needs in our home country.
While the Newcastle conference allowed us to make a regional contribution, we move more locally next week, where we’ll be exhibiting at the Central Coast Industry Exhibition, organised by Central Coast Industry Connect.
Speaking of real estate, this time of the cyber-kind, Star Scientific is very pleased to announce that we have secured the starscientific.com domain. We recently discovered the domain’s availability that we’ve been eager to obtain for a while and wasted no time in securing the rights. We will be transitioning from the “.com.au” domain over the coming months and will make it seamless for all.
Star Scientific will, again, be attending the SEC World Hydrogen Summit in Rotterdam on May 13-15. Our Global Group Chair, Andrew Horvath, continues as a member of the SEC Hydrogen Advisory Board. Last year it expanded to 11,000 attendees, up from 1,100 in 2022, and it’s expected to grow again this year! For those who are interested, a reminder that registration for the exhibition floor is free.
Following Rotterdam, we’ll be attending the SEC’s Americas Hydrogen Summit held in Washington, DC in June. In our next Newsletter, we hope to bring you some exciting news related to our New Mexico plans. Then later in the year, it will be back to the SEC Asia-Pacific Hydrogen Summit, this time in Brisbane.
If you’re interested in any of these events, please go to: https://www.sustainableenergycouncil.com