De Nora talks about Green Hydrogen at the RCS Academy Business School

Michele Sponchiado, for De Nora, at the Post-Graduate Master's Course “Sustainability & ESG Management” at RCS Academy Business School

The energy transition is a hot topic.
The ecological transition, in reality, is also a very complex topic. It concerns various anthropic activities, which in order to reduce their impact on planet Earth, and therefore slow down, if not stop, the worrying phenomenon of Climate Change, require efforts of a different nature (economic, technological, social).

There are various players involved in this process of momentous change.

These issues are also crucial in training courses.
We had the opportunity to talk about green hydrogen and its role in global decarbonization during the lesson dedicated to “Gases, the transition with LNG and regasification plants and green gases (hydrogen, biogas and biomethane)” on February 26, 2025, as part of the Postgraduate Master's Degree in “Sustainability & ESG Management” at RCS Academy Business School.

The speaker was Michele Sponchiado, Business Development Manager at De Nora.

Mr. Sponchiado introduced the students to the world in which De Nora operates on a daily basis, with particular attention to the business of Energy Transition and green hydrogen.
The ultimate goal is to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels by embracing the renewable energy economy, to use renewable energy for massive electrification and for the production of green hydrogen, and to use it as both a fuel and an energy storage medium.

He briefly analyzed how Europe invests in renewables and how the Old Continent's energy system could evolve, with the North Sea countries playing a significant role in this decarbonization process. A global look has shown that changes are underway in the Americas, where hydroelectric power is becoming strategic, especially in countries like Brazil. In any case, there is an increase in the production of energy from renewable sources globally.

Unfortunately, there is still resistance to change.
These are barriers that are not easy to break down:

• Cost of renewable energy: it is decreasing, but there is still a perceptible gap in the prices of energy produced from fossil sources and that produced from renewable sources;

• Discontinuous generation: exploiting renewable energy sources alone does not guarantee continuity of supply and does not allow for predictability;

• Bureaucracy: there are bureaucratic limits that make the expansion of the low CO2 impact energy portfolio complex, long and expensive;

• Financial risks: investments in renewables and nuclear power are currently considered to be high financial risks;

• Geopolitics: politics influence everyday life. They can actively influence change;

• Cultural gap: such important and controversial issues are not universally perceived in the same way. There are obstacles and strong cultural resistance to change, to the energy transition and to environmental issues, as well as a still limited knowledge of new technologies.

Together with Michele, the students were able to discover how (green) hydrogen is produced and, above all, its potential uses, also analyzing it in more technical terms: process efficiency, costs and market difficulties.

The challenge of decarbonization must be won, it can certainly be done, but the various global scenarios must be constantly analyzed and monitored. There are steps to be taken, but we have the support of more innovative technologies: one example is De Nora's technology, the electrodes for Alkaline Water Electrolysis.

This is a challenge that concerns everyone, and we can all be protagonists.