Delivering Net Zero Through the Energy Transition

Energy transition is back in the spotlight on the podcast, and in this episode host Lubna Salim speaks with Henrik Larsen, KBR’s senior director of Energy Transition, about KBR’s leadership in this area that is critical to the planet’s future. Listen as they discuss KBR’s energy transition capabilities today and plans for the future, the value chain for future green energy sources such as hydrogen and ammonia, and how KBR provides customers an early-mover advantage.

Transcript

IN ORBIT A KBR PODCAST

Season 2, Episode 17

Delivering Net Zero Through the Energy Transition

INTRODUCTION

John Arnold

Hello, I'm John.

Lubna Salim

Hi, I'm Lubna. And this is In Orbit.

John Arnold

We are so glad you're joining us, tuning in to the In Orbit podcast. How are you, Lubna?

Lubna Salim

I'm very well. Thank you, John. How are you and where are you orbiting these days?

John Arnold

My orbit has taken me back to Atlanta. I had a nice, brief visit with family up in Tennessee last week. I can't believe that was only a week ago, two weeks ago I guess now, and met my new nephew. That was fun. Yeah, it was nice. It was a whirlwind trip, but I'm happy to be back. How are you feeling post COVID?

Lubna Salim

I feel okay. I feel a little tired at times. That's one of the big benefits COVID gives you, the fatigue benefits, that is there. But otherwise I'm doing fine. I'll be flying back to Delhi this weekend, back on track.

John Arnold

Excellent. We are now one month away from — well, one month for me, you're going to be flying into London a little early for our Global Marketing and Communications Team Summit. We're looking forward to that, counting down the days to meeting each other in person. That's going to be excellent. But Lubna, tell us what we are here to talk about today.

Lubna Salim

Yes, John. Today we are going to talk about energy transition and-

John Arnold

Excellent.

Lubna Salim

... yes, something …

John Arnold

This is one of my favorite topics that we talk about!

Lubna Salim

Awesome! Awesome. You know what? We had the privilege of getting the senior director of energy transition to come on board and chat with us. It was a super fun chat. I think you've had the privilege of listening to some of it, but Henrik is quite an interesting person. He's actually based out of Denmark at the moment. He touches upon everything from how we are to achieve our net-zero emissions target by 2050 to what kind of partnerships KBR is forging. I'm not going to say too much.

John Arnold

All right. I can't wait to listen. Let's get down to it.

TRANSITION

Lubna Salim

We have a super special episode of In Orbit with you this week where we have Henrik Larsen who is the senior director of energy transition at Sustainable Technology Solutions. A very warm welcome to you, Henrik.

Henrik Larsen

Thank you very much.

Lubna Salim

We are super, super excited to have you on this podcast. I'll begin by introducing Henrik to our listeners. I'm sure a lot of you already knew about him, but what the heck, I'm super excited. Henrik is working with continued development of the KBR technology portfolio for Sustainable Solutions. Prior to joining KBR, he held several leadership roles in technology management and development and has more than 20 years of experience in the oil and gas industry.

In terms of education, Henrik has an MSC in chemical engineering from the Technical University of Denmark, and he is a passionate person about technology and the crucial role that technology in the sustainability challenge the world is facing.

Henrik, given the target for achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 as part of the Paris Agreement, energy transition is at the core of KBR's business strategy and vision. Could you tell us a little more about the kind of innovation that's happened or is in progress in KBR's Sustainable Technology Solutions?

Henrik Larsen

Yes, I will do my best, Lubna. Thanks for the question. Well, let me start off by saying that, first of all, I think that we in KBR, we have actually an excellent baseline here for contributing to the overall net-zero goals. We have a motto called, "We deliver," and actually we are upgrading that to, "We deliver net zero," actually. That's what we are seeing, and we want to start saying because that's actually what we believe we can do and will do to a large extent.

Why do we actually mean that we are well positioned? Well, going forward and to achieve net zero, you probably want to electrify — to the large extent you can — electrify what can be electrified out there with renewable energy, not emitting any CO2 basically. But there's still quite a big part of energy usage fuel that cannot be electrified. That's probably going to be 10% to 15% of the world's need. To cover that very big part, hydrogen, as a molecule, is going to be the key to success.

This brings me back to the baseline, where we are already today the leading supplier of technology for the ammonia space and other spaces. But hydrogen plays already a wide role in what we are delivering in the portfolio today. That's setting the scene for our position from the onset. Then, of course, we have to develop these technologies and add new technologies to expand the portfolio and be able to contribute much more to these 10%, 15% of hydrogen that is badly needed to achieve net zero.

You can say, “What do we do today?” We have the classic ammonia technology. Today we offer that with carbon sequestration, the carbon capture called blue ammonia in public tense, that we supply using all the learnings we have had for the past 60, 70 years in this space. We are very active in green ammonia, which is green ammonia. It's ammonia produced, the electrolyzers, the energy for the electrolyzers is supplied via renewable power coming from solar and wind, for instance.

Those spaces are going to grow tremendously over the coming years. You can say adding to those two growth areas, we even talk about the whole value chain because that's fine that you produce hydrogen or you produce ammonia, but you want to make sure that you get the ammonia or the hydrogen to all over the world because at the end of the day, this is a global problem. You can't solve the net-zero goal by doing things right in the U.S. Gulf Coast or you do it in Australia, where you have significant amounts of solar and wind available. You have to make sure that the green molecules are available all over the world. That brings me back to the end of the value chain where we, as KBR, have developed and commercialized the ammonia-cracking technology which allow this to happen.

Hydrogen, as I said, is the key molecule to solve the 10%, 15% of the energy pool that you have to do via liquids or nonelectrified solutions. But hydrogen is inherently a very difficult molecule to transport over long distances. That is why coming back to ammonia as a molecule, if you use ammonia as a carrier of hydrogen, it is significantly easy and cheaper to transport ammonia around on the globe using existing infrastructure that, of course, has to be expanded because we might see a growth in this market with a factor of five compared to where we are today. Then at the source where you need the hydrogen, you convert it back to hydrogen from ammonia via the ammonia-cracking process that we have developed.

Lubna Salim

Henrik, I'm curious to know as well, what are the kind of partnerships that KBR is trying to forge to actually give early-mover advantage to its customers who are aligned with KBR in their quest for achieving energy transition in their processes and in the industries? What would you comment on that?

Henrik Larsen

Yes, I think it's very easy to say this is a massive task. It's a global challenge and nobody can do it by themselves. That would be naïve to think. Partnerships, alliances, they are essential for success here. I would say across the board, we look at anything from alliances to help us in whatever we are doing today. We look at the new, new stuff that will help us to tomorrow or maybe five years from now. We engage in, let's say startups, and try with the expertise we have in KBR to take that to commercialization. That is one of the key strengths we have in KBR.

It is really across the board, with looking at the whole portfolio of Sustainable Technology Solutions, that we are scouting for new stuff. We are teaming up with existing friends or getting even closer together to lift this task jointly. Being in electrolyzers, we don't have the electrolyzer technology in KBR, but we are teaming up with handfuls of partners out there to make sure we have the supplies we need. We look at how to integrate, how to synergize. We do that with electrolyzers. We do that in ammonia cracking. Ammonia cracking is depending on catalysts. We take all the experience we have with dealing with catalysts and we bring that into that space and work with our partners to help us and synergize again to make sure that final technology that we offer from KBR is the best that you can get.

Lubna Salim

Absolutely. It sounds like we have a lot of exciting times ahead.

Henrik Larsen

Definitely.

Lubna Salim

In my next question, I want to highlight the kind of role that you are playing as senior director of Energy Transition at KBR and shaping the evolving vision that KBR has for energy transition in the future. Please walk us through that, Henrik.

Henrik Larsen

Yes, well there's probably not one single answer to that. But I think trying to put it on a high level here, it's really about the positioning of KBR and what we need to do the next 20 to 25 years. Because then, suddenly, we are at 2050 where net zero is the target. How do we, as KBR, being a long-term player in some of the traditional fields of technologies — in refining, in petrochemicals, in fertilizer — how do we tweak all that and position ourselves with all the competencies and qualities we have in this new space, this whole energy transition, which will be our bread and butter in the next 20, 25 years and onwards, of course?

It's a lot about positioning to make sure that we, let's say, develop in the right direction, bet on the right horses, and these things with the partners and alliances as we just discussed. It's the ammonia field, the fertilizer field — how it's turning into a fuel space. How do we look at the bio side of things? Anything we can do there to combine that and put it into our portfolio? We have done it already with plastics recycling.

Lubna Salim

That's right.

Henrik Larsen

It's also going to play a major role going forward. How do we work with fuels in general? How do we get all the planes to fly on renewable fuels? How can we help in that task? All these tasks out there. It's happening right now. We need to find our position there.

Lubna Salim

You've been very humble about it, Henrik, but we know that how much you are putting out there in terms of all the efforts you are putting in for energy transition and that's commendable, absolutely. But moving forward, would you like to share some light also on the value chain of the future green fuels and how do you see them impacting various industries and businesses?

Henrik Larsen

Yes, I can certainly try. I already elaborated a bit on the value chain of hydrogen, which is obviously going to play a major role here. The starting point is it's a global problem. We can't solve it in U.S. or in Europe. It has to be solved globally. All the way from the source of renewable power and to delivering the clean molecule to the end user basically. That's the value chain we are looking at. It's a big one. We have today, in some of the spaces, we have definitely lots of the pieces to this puzzle. If you look at the biofuel, the other fuels that you could imagine, because not one solution will not solve all problems in this space.

Definitely still a lot of work to do in the various value chains that will take us to net zero. I do think to maybe take it to high level, I think the value for company like the KBR is definitely to have the value chain in our hands and maybe not entirely from A to Z, but having the control and the contributions in the proper steps along the value chain. That would really position us uniquely going forward. Transforming from the good old KBR, with great successes in refining chemicals and fertilizer, and tweaking that into the new energy transition space. I think that's key to success that you handle that value chain.

Lubna Salim

I think you've summed it up very, very nicely for all of us who are always curious about what's happening with energy transition, and all our listeners and all the clients and customers and experts who are keen to know what exactly we are doing. Yeah, that's very, very well put. But I'll move back a little in time and want to ask you that during the pandemic, KBR, and as other companies as well, were forced to look inward and think about how we do our businesses. In terms of energy transition, what are some of the things, like practices or processes, that have been adopted by KBR?

Henrik Larsen

I think the pandemic in many ways was a wake-up call, not only for us as persons, but also for companies, and definitely for companies like KBR. Reflecting on it, then I think also you saw some interesting things if you look at again the whole decarbonization and what impact it suddenly had on the planet that we, instead of going to work, we stayed at home. We stopped flying and at least it was kept to a minimum. You saw CO2 dropping 5%, 6%. You saw in Venice, in Italy, you saw dolphins coming back into the channels of Venice because the humans were not there anymore.

You saw some of these, let's say, natural happening because of the pandemic. I think it gave us some time to reflect on these things. I think it was the onset for meeting companies to kickstart the industry transition, which I think we all knew even before the pandemic was needed definitely. But it gave us this kind of a vacuum and time to reflect and then get it really started. I think that's also really where the KBR journey started a couple of years back. You see that across the board with some of our peers out there. It really took off. It gave us this moment to reflect. You could actually see that, “Ah, it is actually possible.” Not saying that we shouldn't travel anymore, but really I think it was an aha moment for companies and people. I think it gave us a platform to do things differently and dream bigger dreams and just do things smarter and leaner, actually.

Lubna Salim

I think that makes a lot of sense. Of course, that links well with the energy transition as well.

Henrik Larsen

Yes, I think indeed it does. Of course, for KBR, I think in practice now we work a bit more from home. We've learned that we can do things smarter online, like we are doing this podcast here today, and similar interactions are online whenever possible. Not forgetting the human interaction, of course, but I think it was really the onset for the kickstart for this whole transition.

Lubna Salim

That's a very interesting perspective, Henrik. I mean, I honestly never thought about it like that. It's really insightful I think. Which also brings me to the final question of the podcast, even though I would wish to hear a lot more from you, but here we are: What would your advice be to young, aspiring professionals who are inspired to take on the role that you are actually playing in your career right now?

Henrik Larsen

Well, if they already aspire to do it, they should just do it, definitely. This is where we all will work in the next 25, 30 years, and of course, onwards. That's probably after my retirement, but somebody would have to take over definitely. We have to deliver on this challenge. There's no way around it. To a large extent, you can say it's a human obligation. If you have the skills, whether you're an engineer, technician or just damn smart at something, I think you have a certain obligation to actually contribute.

I do see some of the younger people we have in the company and applying to get in, they have such a passion for this transformation. I wouldn't look back. I would just jump and join us, join others in this massive challenge we have ahead of us. Of course, you can say you need a certain skill set, but I think there's plenty of challenges in here and opportunities, whether you are a super-technical person or you come in and add value in other ways to solving the whole thing. There's so many things to be accomplished here, Lubna. I wouldn't say anything that should hold people back about this. It's really just joining.

Lubna Salim

I think that's very good advice, Henrik. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you so much, Henrik, for taking time out. I know that you have a very busy schedule and you made time for this podcast. You shared so many amazing insights about energy transition. I'm sure it's going to help a lot of people who are wanting to invest in it, who are wanting a career in the field, and otherwise as well, like me, who want to actually just learn about energy transition and all the amazing things that you, at KBR, are doing to make that a possibility. Thank you so much for your time. It was lovely chatting with you.

Henrik Larsen

My pleasure, Lubna. Thanks for inviting me.

TRANSITION

John Arnold

Well, I said it at the beginning, energy transition is one of my favorite things that we get to discuss here on the podcast. Listening to your conversation with Henrik was outstanding. It's very, very exciting to hear about KBR's role in this drive to net zero in 2050. I love their new slogan, "We deliver net zero!" I thought that was fantastic.

Lubna Salim

That's right. We are totally going to talk about it and promote it in the months and days and weeks to come. You will see it in a huge way. But Henrik, as unassuming as he might sound, he is doing some amazing stuff out there. I also particularly liked the way he explained the impact of the pandemic on our businesses.

John Arnold

Yes, absolutely.

Lubna Salim

It's a very different kind of an approach. I'm sure a lot of young professionals are going to get more excited about energy transition. As he said, it's all about being passionate, other than having the skill set for it, but I do believe that there are exciting times ahead for KBR.

John Arnold

One thing that really comes across — well, several things come across — but one thing that is a common thread in this discussion with Henrik and in interviews we've done with Ben Sawford and had the pleasure to listen to those is the passion for this issue and for the perpetuation of energy transition and how it really is an all-hands-on-deck issue. I really did love his parting salvo to young professionals, which was saying that there's a certain obligation to contributing to energy transition and that if you're a young engineer or a technician or in another field, that we need all the help we can get to solve this massive, massive issue.

Lubna Salim

That's right. I'm sure a lot of people would benefit. Lesser mortals like me, did for sure.

John Arnold

I was sitting there taking notes and thinking, “Man, should I go back to school and be a chemical engineer?”

Lubna Salim

Yeah, I mean, it's quite inspiring to listen to our leaders and just see how all the amazing stuff that everybody's doing and how we are part of it. That's a great feeling. But in case anybody who has listened wants to know more, wants to give us some suggestions, please feel free to write in and we will take that up.

John Arnold

Absolutely. That's at InOrbit@KBR.com. Young professionals, if you're a young chemical engineer starting a budding career and are interested in learning more about the amazing work KBR is doing in energy transition, you can head over to KBR.com, check out the careers page, and see what opportunities are available, because we are all over the world. We are looking for the best and brightest talent, and we want you to join our team.

Lubna Salim

That's right, John. If any of you want to know more about our sustainable technologies, we do video series called “Five in Ten” on our LinkedIn. Please access them and learn more.

John Arnold

You can also, on the website, check out our most recent Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility Report to see just some of the ways in action that we're helping customers with the solutions that we provide and helping our customers fulfill their own sustainability objectives, which is equally as important.

Lubna Salim

[With] that we shall end this episode on a note of promoting sustainability, participating in energy transition, and keeping ourselves super safe at all times.

John Arnold

Absolutely! Take care.

Lubna Salim

You too. Bye.