Following our event in April, China’s Race to Zero, on May 19th, 2021, we invited Andy Klump, Founder of Clean Energy Associates (“CEA”), Peter Cheng, General Manager of Xebec Adsorption, and Yana Hryshko, Senior Sales Manager at JA Solar, to share their insights and experiences in the areas of clean energy with The Collective at our Powering Sustainability Forum.
An event focused on the reality that country’s need to power its economy, cities, and transportation sector sustainability will push the traditional energy industry players to transform while incentivizing new entrants to identify areas for disruption and scale of deployment.
The Carbon Neutral Economy
With over 20 years in the high technology and renewable energy industries, Andy Klump began his presentation speaking to the opportunity he saw when founding CEA and speaking to the vision for how solar was poised for massive growth over the coming decades.
Interestingly, while it is estimated that solar and wind could have the potential to supply half of global electricity needs by 2050, the challenge is no longer one of economics as the cost of producing solar energy is at, or below, grid parity against fossil fuels.
Instead, the main challenge to reaching that potential is with energy storage and ensuring that evening loads can be met reliably.
This was a point emphasized by Yana Hryshko, who spoke to the technical and design advances that JA Solar have made, and have planned, to improved panel performance without increasing panel size.
Advances that include a shingled panel, where gaps between modules were nearly remove, and recently led to the release of an 800W panel.
China’s Hydrogen Economy
Approaching the transition to sustainability differently, Mr. Cheng, shared with the audience his insights toward China’s hydrogen economy, and its challenges to foreign companies.
Starting his presentation with an introduction into the concept of hydrogen economy, its value chain, he then gave a detailed roadmap of China’s hydrogen infrastructure and the market forces that are driving investment.
With applications that include replacing fossil fuels to power automobiles, one of the key areas of opportunity lie in hydrogen’s use in primary energy for load balancing (P2G, linking power & gas grids).
An opportunity that opened up an interesting discussion between all panelists, and led to a lively 45 minute discussion between speakers and the audience.
As always, we sincerely appreciate the insights and experience that speakers contributed, to WeWork for their sponsorship, and for the time that participants took to support another fantastic event.
For those who were not able to join us, you can watch the video on our Youtube channel by clicking here:
Upcoming Event Announcement
Following this event, on June 16th we will be hosting a discussion on “CIRCULAR ECONOMY – Closing the Loop on Waste”. Click here to learn more.
You can visit our website calendar page to see all our upcoming events. Should you wish to learn more, please send us an email to [email protected].