Frank Wouters

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Frank Wouters is Chairman of the MENA Hydrogen Alliance, Director of the MED-GEM Network and Fellow at Payne Institute for Public Policy. He formerly acted as Deputy Director-General of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). After working on the energy transition for more than 30 years in various leadership roles, he is currently focusing on hydrogen projects.

Frank Wouters

Dec 04 2024

A strategic storage vision for Europe

Illuminem Voices

Energy · Energy Storage

To accelerate the development of a hydrogen system from scratch we need to decouple the production from the demand, both in time and place

A wooden table with a typewriter, glasses, notebook, and pen placed on top.

Speed, the forgotten cost reduction factor in the energy transition

Frank Wouters

Mar 23 2022

Speed, the forgotten cost reduction factor in the energy transition

Energy

To keep global warming below 1.5 °C, our energy systems need to be carbon emission free latest by 2050, and many countries have pledged to do so. A high-level model was built for a fictitious economy called Utopia to assess three pathways towards a zero-carbon economy by 2050: a gradual (linear) replacement of fossil fuels by clean energy, an accelerated pathway leading to a carbon free system by 2035, and a delayed pathway, in which replacement takes place from 2035 onwards. The model yields very clear results. The accelerated pathway is not only 21% cheaper than a gradual phasing out of fossil fuels, with accumulated savings of $4 trillion over a period of 30 years, but also the climate wins, with emissions reducing from 32.7 GT to 13.1 GT over the same period.

Recent publications

Frank Wouters

Mar 23 2022