The picture in the advertisement above from 2003 has remained an unfulfilled promise for quite some time. But we approach an era in which this can become reality.
Triple L bv is still the owner of the domain names waterstof.nl and hydrogen.nl .
Early in the new millennium, Triple L saw an opportunity to build on an ongoing experiment in Amsterdam North with a busline (bus 32) running on hydrogen. At that time, the Shell subsidiary Shell Hydrogen had still its offices in Amsterdam North, and the two universities in Amsterdam had shown interest to open a common campus on the area formerly used by Shell – with a focus on environmental technologies.
Tiple L bv tried to bring the different stakeholders together in a new foundation AMSTAR, standing for Amsterdam Action Research, which was to become a research centre on the hydrogen economy with Amsterdam North as an experimental borrough which would bring all kind of applications of hydrogen into practice and become a showcase for the rest of the world.
It never materialized. First, the University of Amsterdam dropped out, because it feared competition for its Science Centre in Watergraafsmeer, then the Vrije Universiteit followed suit, and Shell became less active in hydrogen reseach for a couple of years, concentrating more on its core business in oil and gas.
Dream project
Triple L still has a dream project (though not for Triple L itself): Buoys in the ocean producing electricity either from waves or from temperature differences between surface and deeper water (see the video on OTEC electricity generation on http://www.bluerise.nl/), and using this electricity on the spot for creating and storing hydrogen. Now and then, a hydrogen tanker would pass by and “harvest” the hydrogen produced: “blue hydrogen for a green future”.
It could build on technologies such as developed by https://www.ecowavepower.com/ , see also
triplelll.nl 