Hydrogen as an option for the sustainability

These were the words I read on the open ceremony of the XI International Hydrogen Congress of the Mexican Hydrogen Association, September 23th, 2011 in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico.
Palabras leídas en la ceremonia de apertura del décimo primer Congreso Internacional de Hidrógeno, del día 23 de Septiembre de 2011.

Today, the activities of the XI International Hydrogen Congress of the Mexican Hydrogen Association started. As you all know, our future depends on the use of renewable energies. In order to use these energy sources, we need to generate vectors, and, up to now, Hydrogen is the most promising energy vector. Here it is not the place to advocate the use of renewable energies or the goodness of Hydrogen.

There are many social and economic aspects that renewable Hydrogen, beyond science and technique, requires to be adopted and adapted for our communities.

I do not want to mention the scientific or technical challenges of renewable Hydrogen, and I want to attract your attention to how to create a new culture: the culture of sustainability where renewable energies play a fundamental and strategic part. Of course, Hydrogen as an energy vector is required. From our perspective of renewable people, we need to use Hydrogen in the social agenda and the economic development policy. We have different actions and proposals to span a cultural change about innovation and sustainability.

These two words seem opposite because innovation implies business, but I am convinced that there is no sustainability if we do not involve profitability.

I intend to remark on the culture of innovation as a practice of successfully putting renewable energy ideas into the market. In my opinion, we will not have renewable energies if they are not profitable. We have two different ways of doing this. First, we incorporate the environmental cost of fossil energy and new forms of Hydrogen as well as all renewable energies in new fashion ways. This last form is the intelligent way to do it. We have spent many years asking to consider the environmental cost of fossil fuels. However, we have the challenge of creating new applications and novel forms using Hydrogen as an energy vector.

I am sure in this congress; we will look at many different technical solutions to this complex problem of Hydrogen as an energy vector. However, I have looked at very few people boarding the innovation aspect. This still is a challenge, a problem not generally tackled. I want to motivate you all to think about how and what to do with this so that we can incorporate the concept of innovation and sustainability into our daily lives.

The amalgam of innovation and sustainability will give us social, economic and environmental benefits.

My best wishes in this important event for the sustainability.