The European State of Play in the Emerging Hydrogen Sector

Laurence Green works as a Senior Consultant in the Energy Transition department at Ramboll, where he focuses on regulation and policy, and business and strategy development in Hydrogen and Power-to-X projects. Prior to joining Ramboll, Laurence worked for dena (Deutsche Energie-Agentur), the German Energy Agency, with various private and public energy sector stakeholders to develop sustainable policies and solutions to promote renewable energy and decarbonisation. In recent years he has worked in various international environments, energy markets, and across sectors to advise partners on energy transition policies to promote the expansion of renewable energy technologies with a focus on both energy supply and demand, and network integration. Laurence holds a bachelor's degree in international business and MBA in Energy Management.

Before becoming independent, he worked for more than 20 years in the European Commission. In 1999 he joined DG Enterprise and Industry in the sector for technical harmonisation in the Common Market and EN standardisation. In 2003 he was appointed Head of Unit dealing with Entrepreneurship and SME Policy and later Advisor in the same area. In 2016 he became Senior Adviser for Macroregional Strategies the Danube Region, working from Vienna. After returning to Brussels in 2018 he was named Senior Adviser for Advanced Industrial Technologies and Hydrogen Coordinator in DG GROW. Before joining the European Commission, Christian Weinberger worked in the private sector, for 10 years with a large multinational corporation in Marketing, Sales, Finance and Special Business Operations in various countries and at European HQ and then founded an international SME in Information Technology and was its CEO for 10 years. Being a European born in Austria, Christian Weinberger holds a Master of Physics in Engineering, an MBA and a Ph.D. in Economics.

Johanna Schiele is a Policy Officer at the EU Commission, DG CLIMA. She works on designing and implementing EU-wide auctions for renewable hydrogen production at the EU Innovation Fund, under the umbrella of the EU Hydrogen Bank. Previous to joining the Commission, Johanna worked in the power sector and as a researcher on auctions and clean tech funding. She holds a BA from Oxford University and an MPA from Harvard University.

Olivier is an entrepreneur in the field of efficient energy transformation. Just following his degree in Chemical Engineering in 2000, he created the fuel cell and electrolyser company HTceramix today known as SolydEra. He gained many projects in the field and actively contributed the programming of topics as Vice Chair of the Coordination Group in which role he also co-drafted the SRIA of the current Clean Hydrogen Partnership. Since 2010, Olivier acts as President of the European Electrolyser and Fuel Cell Forum EFCF, Europe's reference event for science and technology in the fuel cell and hydrogen world. In this role, he also co-edits since 2012 an annual Special Issue of 'Fuel Cell - From Fundamentals to Systems' published by Wiley. In 2021, he joined ExerGo as Executive Chairman and lead successfully the company's seed financing round. In August 2023, he co-founded Adele Hydrogen, company developing and commercialising advanced alkaline electrolyser electrodes where he acts as Executive Chairman.

Mr Sehling joined VERBUND's Green Hydrogen GmbH Commercial workstream in August 2023. he worked at all stages of the gas industry's value chain. He gained experience as head of gasdesk at EnergieAG in setting up a gas trading desk, including trading mandates, book structure, risk limits and position management, Trading standard and non-standard products (TTF, NCG, Gaspool, VTPa), Implementation of hedging strategies for sales and CCGT portfolio. Previous he developed non liquid markets as Senior Key Account Manager for Ruhrgas AG. Previous he gained experience as Senior Analyst and Market Access Trader at ALPIQ (former Atel), and as Key Account Manager for EconGas. Previous employers include voestalpine Stahl Donawitz GmbH, Donawitz KWI Consultants & Engineers and EnBW Austria GmbH as Project Manager.

Jorgo Chatzimarkakis is CEO of Hydrogen Europe since 2016. Before he was Representative of Infineon Technologies in Brussels and Member of the European Parliament (2004 - 2014) inter alia in the ITRE Committee (Industry, Technology, Research and Energy) where he could contribute to lay the cornerstone for the first and the second Joint Undertaking on hydrogen and fuel cells. In 2007 he was elected 'MEP of the year' by his colleagues of the European Parliament in the category 'Research and Innovation'. In 2015 he was appointed ambassador at large for Greece. Mr Chatzimarkakis was born in Duisburg, Germany. He holds German and Greek nationality, a degree in political science from the University of Bonn.

Jonas Heilhecker is a hydrogen project developer working for bayernets GmbH in munich. In network strategy and innovation, he works both on regional network planning and internationally on integrating the bayernets network into the import corridors. Before joining bayernets, he worked for a distribution network operator and was involved in the planning of the first real conversion project from natural gas to hydrogen in inhabited buildings. He holds a degree in mechanical engineering.

Christian Wolff works as a Senior Consultant in the Energy Transition department at Ramboll. He is a systemic process consultant and agile coach and has several years of project management experience in the energy industry. With a focus on power-to-X, hydrogen and innovative heat and power supply systems with low CO2 emissions, he develops, analyses and optimises sustainable energy systems. This includes scenario-based energy system planning for cities and municipalities as well as conceptual design and feasibility testing for the integration of PtX and renewable energies into existing systems. Sector coupling and the generation of green hydrogen as well as the analysis of its use with a focus on mobility and in the industrial sector are also increasingly becoming the focus of activities. Christian Wolff is involved in project management of green hydrogen planning and construction projects. Christian holds a degree in Energy and Process Engineering from the Technical University Berlin.