The 18th Ezra Memorial Lecture was held at 1745 for 1820 on Wednesday 13 March 2024 at City & Guilds Building, Imperial College London. It was being given by the Rt Hon the Lord Mayor of London, Professor Michael Mainelli.

For a colourless gas, hydrogen generates a lot of colourful prose, from blue to grey, green, black, brown, yellow, turquoise, white, and pink, if not purple. In this talk, Professor Michael Mainelli takes as his basic theme that the profusion of hydrogen colours is due more to the optics of economics than science and engineering. This lecture will examine various energy economic sub-systems from production, to transportation, to storage, to use. Increasingly these economic sub-systems lead the hydrogen markets to interact with the carbon markets. Along the way, the lecture will touch on market gaps, particularly the lack of baseload markets for electricity and financial tools for long-term government policy commitment. The lecture will conclude with some observations on how hydrogen economics is analysed, in particular using option theory and learning curves. The hope is that the lecture will provide ways to see the future of hydrogen through an economic prism, less darkly.

TIMINGS
1745 - Doors open
1820 - Lecture starts
2005 - Reception
2115 - Carriages