German engineers recently made a presentation to officials of His Majesty's Government and discussed the prospects for Brunei to venture into new fields of technology such as the production of hydrogen for automobiles, German Ambassador to Brunei Conrad Cappell told The Brunei Times.

"In my personal opinion, any new developments in Brunei should be future-oriented," he said, noting that "for now, the production of hydrogen is considered a niche industry, and it has not become a world market product but it definitely has the potential to become one".

Brunei Darussalam's strategic location and climate make it an ideal candidate for the production of hydrogen, the German engineers told a presentation attended by Brunei's Minister of Energy last week.

"Strategically the country is also surrounded with regions of trade, it being in the centre, where on the left are Indonesia and Malaysia, up north China as well as surrounded by the Apec (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) countries," Cappell explained.

He added that Brunei to has a budget surplus, it is stable and it possesses a secure environment for investments.

During the presentation, "the engineers said hydrogen fuel is the next generation after oil or parallel to oil, the new technology for automobile instead of gasoline or diesel," the ambassador said.

Concerns regarding the production of hydrogen include costs of separating hydrogen and oxygen in a process called hydroanalysis, Cappell explained.

The use of oil and gas in the separation process is considered useless as it would double the costs.

The German engineers suggested was the use of renewable energy in the production of hydrogen.

"The proposal was the use of sun, through electric power cells, this would need a vast amount of land used as well as the sun. Brunei has both. There is a lot of potential opportunities here," Cappell added.

A hydrogen economy is a hypothetical future economy in which energy, for mobile applications (vehicles, aircraft) and electrical grid load balancing (daily peak demand reserve), is stored as hydrogen, analysts have said.

Hydrogen is an energy storage medium, not a primary energy source.

Cappell added that to venture into the world market, with carefully run hydrogen production it would be easy to expand.

To venture in the world market the factory would need to produce at least 1,000 tonnes of hydrogen a month which is 300,000 euros.

"Another ongoing development is coal fiber and it will replace aluminum use in the aircraft and shipbuilding industries," the ambassador said.

He also higlighted that Brunei has big projects that will boost economic activity.

"The Brunei Economic Development Board is planning to invest US$5billion in the coming years for big projects. These include the petrol chemical industry as well as the port harbour industry, the amounts would definitely include foreign investments," he said.

"If this is the case there must be a lot of possibilities to get into business with Brunei, we do see major things in Brunei, the thing now is implementation and then businesses can come in," he added.