World Hydrogen Congress 2022 - Interview with Ross B. Shuster

Ah, Hello Ross. How you doing? Very good.
It's excellent to see you again. Yeah, good to see you again. Obviously your
Ross Shuster the chief executive officer of Howden. Howden
is a leading gas handling company. So do
you want to give us a little bit background to Howden? I'm I'm more
what the work you're doing in hydrogen. Yeah, absolutely.
So as you mentioned we're a world leader in air
gas handling, you know specific to renewable hydrogen,
we've actually been involved in hydrogen for over
100 years. So actually we were the first company to develop diaphragm
compressors, which obviously are a key
part of compressing hydrogen. Today Obviously,
we're much broader company. We have a broad range of Technologies
for air and gas handling which really
allows us to play a very enviable role in
the hydrogen value chain, you know, we were involved
in projects at the end uses at vary
from everything from Mobility. We're involved in in the
pioneering at the green Steel.
Projects we're also very much involved in sustainable fuels
as well. If you look at the production of hydrogen
or electrolyzers because of the range of products we
have we're agnostic to electrolyzer technology or the pressures and
then as you well know there's a debate going on between
gas and liquefaction and where each of those
plays a role we've got compression technologies that both compressed
gas as well as help liquefy hydrogen. So we see a
lot of different activities across the value chain. Yeah, and obviously
we're here at the World Hydrogen Congress in Rotterdam.
I imagine you've got some projects projects here
or in the Netherlands. Yeah, we do. I mean a globally
there's a lot of activity right now as you well know with renewable
hydrogen, I'm sure everyone in the industry sees it if you
look at some of the activities we're involved with and as you
mentioned right here in Rotterdam a couple of very notable projects we're involved
with with Shell we've been working with them really for
over 100 years, but now today on renewable hydrogen we've been
involved or are involved with their large biofuel plant,
which will be the largest biofuel.
In Europe, we recently secured
work with them to participate in
their new hydrogen renewable hydrogen facility, which will
produce 60,000 kilograms of hydrogen eventually per
day, which is going to be the largest project in
for hydrogen in Europe moving out
a little bit further. We've been involved with European Energy in their
plant to provide e-fuels to Maersk and an
interesting one that we're involved with in France is for
compression of hydrogen for underground storage. So
globally a lot of activity as well, you know,
we're particularly seeing activity everywhere from Asia to the
Americas and particularly now with the inflation reduction act in
the US. We're seeing a lot of increasing activity in
the Americas as well. Yeah. It's a
it's amazing the breadth of projects that are
out there and it's amazing to see a company such as yourselves are able
to be right across the the value chain the applications
and stuff that must be exciting times for Howden and
very exciting times very exciting times obviously comes with
You know the challenges of Staffing up and expanding our
factories, but those are those are all good problems to have.
Yeah, I mean is Manpower an issue in finding
good quality people or it is I mean, I think
not we're able just because of the type of company we are able to
attract great talent, but you know, there is a challenge
there because of the ramp up is is quick the amount
of talent that we're bringing to the organization is it needs to be significant to
meet those demands and it's it's not like says it's not just in Europe, but
it's also looking for those types of individuals in in the
US as well. I think what's very fortunate is we're seeing not only
companies like oil and gas move to hydrogen but we're seeing people that
come with that same sort of Industry knowledge that applies
very well from oil and gas into the hydrogen industry. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean I did a quick analysis anything we're now up
to about at least so over 6 or 7,000 people on
LinkedIn have hydrogen in their job title. Whereas the
last year was less than half of that. So yeah,
that's an interesting indicator of what's going on the industry.
It's been great chatting to you Ross.
Thanks for your support of this event, and we look forward to working with
Howden and helping you accelerate and get involved
in even more projects. So many thanks fantastic. Thank you as much
a great great event fantastic event great opportunity
to Network and and learn more about the industry.