Dr Jan Procházka, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Czech Nanotechnology Industries Association, presented modern Czech nanotechnologies at the VISEGRAD 4 BUSINESS CONFERENCE held in Budapest on 14 November 2024, https://www.visegrad4business.eu/     

In the V4 & the Green Transition panel, he had the opportunity to explain how photocatalysis can be used to improve the living and working environment in the V4 countries, and at the same time he pointed out the possibility of reporting these results in ESG reports. Practical examples from the Czech Republic were applied to the conditions in Budapest,  where the air pollution index during the conference stood at 117 = Unhealthy.

A very substantial part of the conference was devoted not only to the environment but also to energy. The Foreign Ministers of Hungary and Slovakia, Péter Szijjártó and Juraj Blanár, also spoke about the difficulties of moving away from coal and traditional sources, concluding that they are primarily responsible to their own citizens and will act accordingly.

Dr Jan Procházka highlighted the fundamental fact that cheap energy equals prosperity, and that all the V4 states are transit countries which, if they were to master energy transport using battery storage, could cover around 25% of their own domestic consumption while also successfully trading this commodity on the European market. 

In Hungary, Asian companies are building a total annual production capacity of 150GWh of batteries per year, and in Poland the Korean firm LG is already manufacturing them, but neither of these types of lithium batteries is suitable for large-scale energy storage, where the risk must be completely eliminated and batteries with plastic separators therefore cannot be used. For large energy storage facilities, far more robust batteries with a ceramic separator (e.g. HE3DA®) are required, whose GWh-scale production capacity is currently being built in the Czech Republic.