Keynote Speaker - Arjan Hensen

Prof. dr. Arjan Hensen, TNO – Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research, NL

“Cool hydrogen is hot”

Prof. dr. Arjan Hensen has a position at TNO in the Netherlands and usually hides in the dunes near Petten. One day a week he heads south to VU (Free University Amsterdam) attempting to make students enthusiastic for NCGG-research. His team is running the Cabauw ICOS - GHG measurement station and Arjan helped setting up measurements there three decades ago. Apart from national scale tall tower observations, his team does emission measurements. The preference lies with diffuse sources that are not easy to tackle. Methane and/or nitrous oxide from landfills, manured fields, animal housing, abandoned gas wells or industrial installations. In natural ecosystems they study CO2 and CH4 exchange as well as NH3 and NOx deposition. H2 emission measurements are a new activity. In relation to this Arjan is a lead author for the H2 annex to the upcoming IPCC report on short lived climate forcers. “Hydrogen is both a cool gas with lots of applications and a hot gas in the energy transition. Since the product of H2 as an energy carrier is H2O instead of CO2 switching from coal, oil or gas to H2, this gas has a cool image in the climate debate. It is however hotter than you might expect with an estimated GWP of 11.” This keynote will try to wrap up the current knowledge on where H2 in our atmosphere comes from and what on earth to do with this molecule.