A TES Tale: Meet Birte Falch, Director Global Strategic Partnerships at TES

Before joining TES, I worked for Orsted, one of the largest renewable energy companies in the world, where I was commercially responsible for a Power to X project in Sweden (Flagship One). Before that, however, I worked in the oil and gas industry for many years and witnessed a mindset shift, where many of these companies decided to (not only be part of the problem, but) engage in finding solutions to one of our most pressing challenges – climate change.

This is how I was first exposed to the business areas of hydrogen and Power to X, and decided I wanted to contribute to the development of this new industry from within a truly renewable energy company.

I am sure having two kids also influenced my desire to continue my own energy transition.

I didn’t apply, I was headhunted to join TES. Admittedly also for quite a while, as I was happy with my job at Orsted. But from the start I was tremendously intrigued by the vision of TES – to produce hydrogen in regions with low-cost renewable electricity, adding CO2 to receive CH4 and then using existing gas infrastructure for transport. Also, the vision of closing the CO2 loop, and therefore decoupling the two most important feedstocks for e-NG production – electricity and CO2 – resonated a lot with me, as it addressed the huge bottlenecks, I had been encountering in my P2X projects.

Ultimately, it’s the scalability of the TES product, e-NG, which convinced me. I’m super excited to work on a solution which will be able to have a real, significant positive impact.

Since I joined TES a year ago, I have been leading the topic of CO2 infrastructure development and CO2 sourcing in Europe. And there is no average day when it comes to that, or probably not at TES overall.

There are, however, reoccurring themes. In my role it is important to understand the market dynamics of the business area of CO2, so I need to be on top of the regulatory and political environment, customer needs and competitive landscape.

I must also bridge the technical considerations of the project, be it our CO2 terminal development in Wilhelmshaven, a potential CO2 import terminal, or a partner’s project, in addition to the commercial implications for TES, as well as for any given counterparty.

A further, very important aspect of my work is to structure this complexity, working out key drivers and providing recommendations to our management.

My extensive experience in developing and negotiating commercial setups for large scale industrial projects comes to good use in this role. I also find that my listening and stakeholder management skills are incredibly valuable here.

Successfully developing partnerships! I have always loved this aspect of commercial work in my previous jobs. Large scale industrial projects, especially “First Of A Kind” projects, absolutely require close collaboration across the involved parties. I enjoy understanding each party’s situation, needs, boundaries, and then finding common ground. It’s definitely not an easy task, but it´s very rewarding, when you manage to line up the commercial agreements like a row of beautiful pearls.

Many corporations and start-ups are engaged in the energy transition however, I find that TES stands out as a leader in promoting e-NG globally because we generate commercial demand for this new product by educating policy makers, industries, and partners along the value chain. For example, by founding the e-NG Coalition which aims at promoting e-NG, building a global market with aligned emissions accounting and certification standards, and bolstering cooperation between all stakeholders along the e-NG value chain.‍It´s a great piece of work; and one which not only TES will benefit from, but ultimately the energy transition as a whole.

Navigating uncertainty. Uncertainty in the regulatory environment, in the way commercial demand will develop, in the direction this nascent industry will take – just a lot of uncertainty in a highly complex environment. But it’s also what makes it a lot of fun.

I am very excited to be working on the topic of CO2. Ultimately, the core of the energy transition is to find a solution to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere. The TES vision of using and re-using CO2 to transport hydrogen will be a game changer.

Currently I lead the project of developing TES’ CO2 export terminal in the German port of Wilhelmshaven. On the site of our Green Energy Hub, we will offer to receive, store and handle 3rd party CO2 coming from emitters throughout Germany and beyond. The CO2 will then be exported, by our value chain partners, to sequestration sites in the North Sea. As TES, we thereby offer our terminal capacity to 3rd party users. We ourselves will not engage in CCS as such but owning and operating the CO2 export terminal makes us an indispensable element in the value chain - from emitter to final storage site.

For the TES business model, the CO2 terminal also poses a strategic element. Whilst in the beginning, the CO2 terminal will be utilised by CO2 volumes destined for CCS, it gives us the possibility to derisk the CO2 sourcing for our e-NG production. In addition to sourcing biogenic CO2 in the regions where we produce e-NG, through the CO2 terminal, we can either export biogenic CO2 we sourced in Germany, or export the CO2 which is emitted and captured upon combustion of our e-NG at German customers sites. In this way, we recycle CO2 in a closed carbon loop—just like trees do—reinforcing the inspiration behind our name, Tree Energy Solutions.

Ah, there is a clear answer for me. Succeed in Partnerships. As described, I believe partnerships are at the core of a successful energy transition. All sectors from producers and technology providers to developers and end-users will have to work together to achieve this huge paradigm shift!

It’s the most scalable solution with the shortest speed to market.

We’re a start-up, but our office is not in a garage! Jokes aside, I do think it might surprise people to see that we are not a start-up of only young people but have quite a few senior energy industry players in the mix as well. It’s definitely a core strength of TES.

Yes, some days it does seem overwhelming… but then I remind myself and naysayers of the journey wind and PV took. It took a while in Europe and around the globe and we have come so far. This should give us comfort in believing what humans can achieve, when they put all their collective energy behind a cause, no pun intended.