Spreading the HERO® word

It has been a busy period of global activity for Star Scientific Limited’s Deputy CEO,  Mr Matthew Hingerty and our Energy Justice Officer, Miss Amy Halliday.

In the wake of the publication of our inaugural Sustainability Report, Matthew and Amy have been invited to attend and present at conferences across the world. As a result, the interest in Star Scientific Limited and HERO® has been mounting.

Since our last newsletter executive members of staff were invited to attend the African Hydrogen Summit in Namibia, which confirmed the exceptional opportunities for HERO® in Africa and underlined our mission to use our technology to bring clean energy to the hundreds of millions of people globally who are not connected to a grid.

This was followed by attendance and an appearance at the SEC APAC conference in Brisbane, where we gave a no-holds-barred view of our opinion on where hydrogen orthodoxy is going wrong (see below).  We also hosted a delegation from Austria who were here for the conference.

In late September we attended and spoke at the Hydrogen Asia Summit in Singapore and noted the very positive views of the Singaporean and Indonesian Governments on hydrogen’s role in their future.

In October, our Deputy CEO, Matthew Hingerty, attended a trade mission in Germany organised by the German-Australian Chamber of Commerce and hosted by the German Federal Government. It was an enlightening tour from West to East and outlined some of the opportunities for Star Scientific Limited in Central Europe.

Later in October, Amy Halliday gave a presentation on HERO® to the Stade Chamber of Industry and Commerce in the state of Lower Saxony with the local Municipality in attendance (Stade is near Hamburg in North-Western Germany). This was an invitation following a meeting with a delegation from Lower Saxony at the SEC Conference in Sydney last year.

Following his visit to Germany, Matthew Hingerty visited Dubai, where he gave several speeches over two days at a series of crypto-currency conferences.  Crypto is having a significant global impact on energy demand and, again, Star Scientific can make a big difference in this regard.

Shifting views

Throughout 2024, Star Scientific has been listening very carefully to the changing views on hydrogen’s role in the transition with company representatives participating in many conversations, publicly and privately on the topic.

In the public sphere, hydrogen has come under a lot of fire in recent months. Its critics have said it is too expensive and that its promise of a couple of years ago is fading.

This criticism is understandable, and even valid, when you consider the type of arguments that have been prosecuted on hydrogen’s behalf and who is prosecuting them.   The big fossil fuel players and their hired consultants cannot think of hydrogen in any other way than as a commodity like coal, oil and gas.  So, they encumber it with visions of major industrial production facilities, moving it through large ports, shipping it thousands of kilometres as ammonia, receiving it in large ports, cracking it back to hydrogen and then shipping it off to large industrial facilities, which can only result in it being very expensive!  They further encumber the task of the still rare green version of the molecule by proposing to burn it, which is problematic, wasteful and, with the advent of HERO®, unnecessary.

Star Scientific Limited has been proposing a different model in all our appearances.  Our model is for lighter, cheaper and more nimble supply chains with hydrogen being produced and used as close to the off-taker as possible.  This model is gaining increasing attraction, and, indeed, many delegates have raised this model, independent of any knowledge of Star Scientific Limited.  In Namibia, for instance, the push is on to use the green hydrogen they produce for their domestic energy, desalination, agricultural and industrial needs before any surplus is exported.  In Dortmund, Germany, Mr Hingerty witnessed an industrial campus where a company is generating, storing and using green hydrogen entirely on-site.

Next year, no doubt, will bring interesting but at times rocky debates about the future of hydrogen as the world continues to further investigate and understand its value.  Star Scientific Limited looks forward to being a participant in these debates.