Norwegian energy developer Statkraft has announced plans to develop a major green hydrogen production hub at the site of disused rail storage in Pembrokeshire.
The company is looking to transform the site of the former Royal Navy Armaments Depot into a green hydrogen production capacity of around 30GW. The hydrogen generated there, using electrolysis, would be used to serve the transport, manufacturing and industrial sectors.
Renewable electricity to serve the Trecwn Green Energy Hub will be generated from three onshore wind turbines and a ground-mounted solar array under Statkraft’s plans.
Statkraft told edie that it is hoping to submit the plans by the end of 2023. If the planning process runs smoothly, the site could be operational by the end of 2026. Around 5,000 homes and businesses in the local area will be contacted by Statkraft in the coming weeks asking if they would like to participate in consultations.
Statkraft UK’s head of RES eFuels and European wind and solar, Matt Kelly, said the project “presents an exciting opportunity to produce homegrown green energy for local use and has the potential to act a catalyst for the redevelopment of Trecwn Valley.”
The UK Government has committed to growing national low-carbon hydrogen production capacity to 10GW by 2030. At least half of this will need to be green. Hydrogen is considered necessary to the net-zero transition, for decarbonising hard-to-abate sectors such as heavy transport and heavy industry. It produces no greenhouse gases at the point of combustion. However, most global production is currently fossil-fuelled, meaning that it is not a low-carbon solution across the lifecycle.
Funds and accelerators
In related news, Hy24 Partners – a joint venture from investment firms FiveT Hydrogen and Ardian – has closed what it claims is the world’s largest infrastructure fund for the low-carbon hydrogen sector to date.
The €2bn fund will be used to invest across the hydrogen value chain. As well as production, storage and distribution will be supported.
Among the investors in the fund are TotalEnergies, Air Liquide, Airbus, AXA and Allianz. In total, it attracted more than 50 investors from 13 countries.
Hy24Partners estimates that the fund will enable the deployment of up to €20bn of investment within a six-year period.
Elsewhere, the Carbon Trust has announced a new clean hydrogen accelerator with backing from the UK Government’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).
Modelled on the Trust’s offshore wind accelerator, the aim of the project is to help achieve economies of scale for clean hydrogen, so that it becomes cost-competitive with the grey (fossil) hydrogen that dominates global markets today.
The accelerator will convene players across the British hydrogen value chain for innovation programmes. It will cover all production methods which can comply with BEIS’s Low-Carbon Hydrogen Standard.
“This new clean hydrogen accelerator fills a gap in the current innovation landscape by focusing on stimulating the supply chain,” said the Carbon Trust’s chair Baroness Brown.
At this point, the Carbon Trust is calling for new industry participants to join the accelerator. Its first step will be to shape a plan for innovation programmes.
WSP USA was awarded the engineering, procurement and construction management contract (EPCM) for the underground storage portion and related surface facilities of a major clean energy storage infrastructure to build the world’s largest green hydrogen production and storage facility.
WSP was selected by a joint venture between Magnum Development and Mitsubishi Power to lead all EPCM phases of the ACES Delta underground storage facility in Utah, beginning with Phase I, which consists of the developing two large salt caverns capable of holding a total of 11,000 metric tons of hydrogen.
The firm will also be responsible for the solution mining infrastructure, water and power supply facilities, brine management, and will assist with environmental compliance for the energy hub.
The ACES Delta project involves converting renewable power into green hydrogen that can be stored in commercial-scale solution mined caverns. When completed it will provide 100 percent clean energy seasonal storage capabilities, thereby deploying technologies and strategies essential to a decarbonized future for the western U.S. power grid.
“Green hydrogen is the future in renewables,” said Andres Fernandez, national hydrogen market lead for WSP, a leading engineering and professional services consultancy. “Green hydrogen is particularly unique because it only uses renewable sources combined with advance technology in electrolysis to generate hydrogen. WSP is honored to be part of an innovative team that will deliver the next generation of renewable energy and drive the green energy transition.”
ACES Delta will capture intermittent renewable generation and shape the product into reliable and dispatchable electricity, making the project’s seasonal storage capabilities ideal for integrating renewable energy facilities with the existing energy infrastructure. Each cavern will hold the equivalent of 150 gigawatt hours (GWh) of carbon-free dispatchable energy, which is equivalent to 40,000 megawatts of lithium ion batteries. This stored green hydrogen becomes an energy reserve that can be released to produce fuel for electric power generation at any time.
The project will use Utah’s unique geological salt domes to store green hydrogen in two massive salt caverns. Image: Mitsubishi Power
The overall project will enhance grid reliability and efficiency through optimization of existing transmission line loads, while creating the ability to move excess generation from highly productive renewable energy generation months with little electric load to cover demand during high-load periods. It also reduces the need to overbuild renewables and new transmission assets.
The massive natural geological salt formation is adjacent to the Intermountain Power Project (IPP) near Delta, with transmission interconnections to major demand centers throughout the west and significant renewable energy resource opportunities in the region.
“Using salt caverns for seasonal energy storage is a significant opportunity to empower hydrogen as an energy carrier and significantly expand energy storage resources throughout the U.S.,” Fernandez said. “This will further support the increased build-out of renewable energy thus reducing America’s carbon footprint. WSP is leveraging decades of experience in underground storage experience to provide a full suite of services around the hydrogen economy. This project reinforces WSP’s leadership in underground storage and positions the company to become a key player in developing hydrogen hubs.”
After nearly two years of engineering effort, WSP is grateful for the opportunity to support ACES Delta for the project execution phase and contribute to the advancement of the hydrogen economy in the U.S., at a time when the industry is poised for significant growth. This project consolidates WSP global leadership in underground liquid and gas storage facilities, including hydrogen, and aligns with WSP’s mission to help its clients and communities become Future Ready®.
About WSP USA
WSP USA is the U.S. operating company of WSP, one of the world’s leading engineering and professional services firms. Dedicated to serving local communities, we are engineers, planners, technical experts, strategic advisors and construction management professionals. WSP USA designs lasting solutions in the buildings, transportation, energy, water and environment markets. With more than 12,000 employees in 200 offices across the U.S., we partner with our clients to help communities prosper. wsp.com
When Indian transport minister Nitin Gadkari arrived in parliament in a car fuelled by green hydrogen in March this year, he signalled the country’s big ambition for fuel billed as crucial for the energy transition and the fight against climate change.
“India will soon become a green hydrogen exporting country,” he said.
The government’s vision has captured the imagination of industry players in India, where two of Asia’s richest tycoons, Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani, are now racing to produce the world’s cheapest green hydrogen.
If they achieve their goal, the sector could potentially transform the world’s third-largest energy consumer and carbon emitter. But it will likely take at least a decade for India to realise its green hydrogen hopes, analysts say.
On 15 June, Adani announced that it had sold a quarter of the equity in group company Adani New Industries to France’s TotalEnergies and planned to invest $50 billion over the next decade in green hydrogen.
“Our confidence in our ability to produce the world’s least expensive electron is what will drive our ability to produce the world’s least expensive green hydrogen,” Gautam Adani, chairman of Adani Group, said in a statement.
India’s green hydrogen ecosystem could be a 1-2 trillion dollar industry over the next 20-25 years. – Rajat Seksaria, CEO, ACME Group
Reliance Industries’ chief executive, Mukesh Ambani, too, has pledged to produce green hydrogen at $1 per kg — which is about 60 per cent cheaper than today’s price — and plans to invest $75 billion in renewable energy production and equipment.
The plans of the two business groups alone can clean up thousands of tonnes of emissions, because Adani Group owns a chain of coal mines and coal-based power plants, while Reliance boasts of the world’s biggest petrochemical refinery as well as some of the country’s largest oil and natural gas assets.
Analysts expect both Ambani and Adani to not only replace their industrial use and production of fossil fuels at home, but to also target exports of green hydrogen.
Green hydrogen, which is produced by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen using renewable energy, could replace fossil fuels for a variety of uses including the manufacture of commodities like steel and fertiliser as well as transport fuel.
A lot will depend on government policy support as well as improved technology to cut the high cost of fuel (around $6 per kg) that puts it beyond the reach of the majority of consumers, analysts say.
Pipe dream?
“I think we are quite far away from what the big majors are announcing and where we are at this point of time,” says Vinay Rustagi, managing director of Bridge to India, a renewable energ consultancy firm.
“Everybody is hoping that green hydrogen will be almost like a silver bullet. But it’s a technology in the nascent stages and there is lack of clarity on the manufacturing plans,” Rustagi said.
There are several key challenges that are looming for the sector.
India will need to build manufacturing capacity for electrolysers, the equipment that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen, which is still a niche market worldwide, notes Thirumalai NC, sector head, strategic studies at Center for Study of Science, Technology & Policy (CSTEP), a Bengalaru-based thinktank.
The capacity to make electrolysers as well as better technology will be crucial to slash production costs by a third to below $2 per kg – a price level at which large-scale industrial demand is likely to kick in, say analysts.
India would also need to set up infrastructure for storage as well as pipelines that are mostly absent except for some ageing equipment, analysts added.
New Delhi would also need to source materials such as iridium, scandium, yttrium, and platinum, which are not easily available in the country and would be needed in abundance.
The federal government has started taking steps and in February announced a National Hydrogen Mission, outlining a program to incentivise the production of green hydrogen such as by offering cheaper land and fee waivers for electricity transmission across provinces.
The government is expected to flesh out the initial announcement with a more detailed program in about a month with specific mandates for sectors such as chemicals, fertiliser and steel to use the fuel.
India plans to produce five million tons of green hydrogen by 2030, which is nearly the same amount as it produces now using natural gas to mainly make fertilisers.
Global ambitions
The bold ambitions made by Indian policymakers have convinced several Indian companies besides Reliance and the Adani to make moves to develop green hydrogen.
Renewables energy company ACME Group has already set up an integrated green hydrogen and ammonia plant in Bikaner in the north-western state of Rajasthan, investing about $20 million to produce up to 1,800 tons of green fuel and five tonnes per day of green ammonia that is used to make fertiliser.
The group is also developing one of the world’s largest green ammonia projects in Oman with an annual production capacity of 0.9 million tonnes, which will likely be operational by 2024. The $3.3 billion-facility will cater to European and Asian demand.
A host of state-run oil companies such as Oil India Ltd, the nation’s second-largest oil and gas explorer, Bharat Petroleum Corporation and Indian Oil Corporation, have also announced plans to make green hydrogen as well as develop equipment like electrolysers, which could make the country a large producer over the long term.
The decarbonisation ambitions of other Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea are likely to play into India’s hands, as the country emerges as a low-cost green hydrogen producer, analysts say.
Although Indian companies’ production plans are at an early stage, the country can become a large supplier as it is one of the cheapest producers of renewable electricity, which accounts for up to 80 per cent of green hydrogen’s production cost, says CSTEP’s Thirumalai.
India plans to raise its renewable energy capacity to 500 gigawatts by 2030, up from 110 gigawatts now, could drive down output costs further.
“India will have its own green hydrogen demand as well be a major exporter … This would make the green hydrogen ecosystem in India a 1-2 trillion dollar industry over the next 20-25 years,” according to ACME chief executive, Rajat Seksaria.
Globally, the green hydrogen industry could be worth $12-13 trillion by 2050, according to industry estimates.
Subhalakshmi Naskar, partner at law firm Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, says that the government’s National Hydrogen Mission is a positive step to incentivise output and encourage investments, but a lot more will be needed.
“The implementation of policy…(including production linked incentives and tax holidays) will need to be put in place without any regulatory or other policy delays,” says Naskar.
In addition to green electrification, green gases like hydrogen are an irreplaceable part of a successful energy transition. They are needed to replace fossil fuels in the energy landscape of the future and to meet the Paris climate targets. E.ON is ready to support the development of a hydrogen economy in Germany and Europe competently and actively. We will significantly expand our commitment and plan to engage in electrolysers, grid infrastructure, and renewable energies to produce green hydrogen close to our customers as well as engage in investments along the entire hydrogen value chain.
To emphasise the relevance of the topic, a new E.ON Hydrogen unit was established at the end of 2021. Essen and Brussels, March 30, 2022 — E.ON and Tree Energy Solutions (TES) want to drive the ramp-up of the future hydrogen economy jointly and agreed on a strategic partnership to import green hydrogen at scale into Germany. Within the framework of the partnership the companies will investigate potential joint engagements along the entire hydrogen value chain to build a source for secure, long-term green hydrogen supply.
TES is developing a green energy hub in the German port of Wilhelmshaven. The energy hub will feature a receiving terminal, storage facilities and a clean, zero-emissions oxy-fuel combustion power plant. In addition, TES is developing the production of green hydrogen in solar belt countries and investing in the supply chain and relevant infrastructure. TES will efficiently transport green hydrogen produced from solar electricity, in the form of fossil-free green gas (CH4) to Europe where it is investing in infrastructure to recycle the CO2.
Patrick Lammers, COO at E.ON, says: “The ramp-up of a functioning hydrogen economy must have top priority in Germany and Europe. The partnership with TES is an important step on the way to a sustainable energy landscape while ensuring security of supply. It moves us a step closer to net-zero; without the use of green gases such as hydrogen, it will be impossible to completely avoid CO2 emissions.”
“This is an exciting long-term partnership that will allow us to combine relevant experience to accelerate the decarbonisation of the energy chain,” Paul van Poecke, Founder and Managing Director at TES said. “Our ambition is to build the Wilhelmshaven location into a hub for international hydrogen trading and upgrade the infrastructure accordingly. Through this hub TES will supply a mix of green and clean energy to economically lead Europe to reach it net-zero ambitions. We are excited to partner with E.ON to reach net-zero in the German market and support E.ON in its decarbonisation strategy.”
Firms will work together on Catalina Phase I, which will be made up of 1.7 gigawatts of wind and solar in Aragon, north east Spain, and a 500 megawatt electrolyzer.
Project Catalina will eventually look to develop a total of 5 GW of combined wind and solar, producing green hydrogen using a 2 GW electrolyzer.
Hydrogen has a diverse range of applications and can be deployed in a wide range of industries.
Plans for a huge project aiming to produce green hydrogen and ammonia have been announced, with those behind it hoping construction of the first phase will begin in late 2023.
On Tuesday, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners announced details of a partnership with Spanish companies Naturgy, Enagás and Fertiberia. Vestas, the Danish wind turbine manufacturer, is also involved.
The firms will work together on Catalina Phase I, which will be made up of 1.7 gigawatts of wind and solar in Aragon, northeast Spain, and a 500-megawatt electrolyzer able to generate more than 40,000 tons of green hydrogen annually.
A pipeline will link Aragon with Valencia in the east of Spain, sending the hydrogen to a green ammonia facility. CIP said this ammonia would then be “upgraded” into fertilizer.
Project Catalina will eventually look to develop a total of 5 GW of combined wind and solar, producing green hydrogen using a 2 GW electrolyzer.
The scale of the overall development is considerable. “Once fully implemented, Catalina will produce enough green hydrogen to supply 30% of Spain’s current hydrogen demand,” CIP said.
Details relating to the financing of the initiative have not been revealed. CIP did say, however, that Project Catalina would make what it called a “significant contribution” to Spain’s Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, or PERTE, on renewable energy, renewable hydrogen and storage.
In Dec. 2021, the Spanish government said PERTE would mobilize resources amounting to 16.37 billion euros, around $18.54 billion. According to authorities there, the private sector will supply 9.45 billion euros, with 6.92 billion euros coming from Spain’s Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.
Hydrogen has a diverse range of applications and can be deployed in a wide range of industries. It can be produced in a number of ways. One method includes using electrolysis, with an electric current splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen.
If the electricity used in this process comes from a renewable source such as wind or solar then some call it green or renewable hydrogen.
Over the past few years, a number of firms have undertaken projects related to green hydrogen. Just last week, energy major Shell said a 20 megawatt hydrogen electrolyzer described as “one of the world’s largest” had begun operations.
In Dec. 2021, Iberdrola and H2 Green Steel said they would partner and develop a 2.3 billion euro project centered around a green hydrogen facility with an electrolysis capacity of 1 gigawatt.
While there is excitement in some quarters about green hydrogen’s potential, the vast majority of hydrogen generation is currently based on fossil fuels.
In recent times, some business leaders have spoken of the issues they felt were facing the emerging green hydrogen sector. Last October, for example, the CEO of Siemens Energy told CNBC there was “no commercial case” for it at this moment in time.
And in July 2021, a briefing from the World Energy Council said low-carbon hydrogen was not currently “cost-competitive with other energy supplies in most applications and locations.” It added that the situation was unlikely to change unless there was “significant support to bridge the price gap.”
The analysis — which was put together in collaboration with PwC and the U.S. Electric Power Research Institute — raised the question of where funding for such support would come from, but also pointed to the increasing profile of the sector and the positive effect this could have.
For its part, the European Commission has laid out plans to install 40 GW of renewable hydrogen electrolyzer capacity in the European Union by the year 2030.
Singapore can work with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on solutions that reduce planet-warming carbon emissions to sustain “robust global responses to the climate crisis”, said President Halimah Yacob on Monday (Jan 17). These solutions include hydrogen fuel and carbon capture, utilisation and storage.
Delivering a virtual keynote speech for the Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week Summit held in Dubai, she highlighted green innovations and efforts in the UAE, such as its vast solar parks and being the first in the Middle East and North Africa region to declare a net-zero commitment by 2050.
Dubai houses the region’s first solar-driven hydrogen electrolysis facility to produce green hydrogen, where the gas is produced using renewable energy and has zero emissions.
Singapore is keen to collaborate with the UAE on improving the technical feasibility and the establishment of supply chains for low-carbon hydrogen, said Madam Halimah.
Such advanced low-carbon technologies are an area of interest for Singapore, which has pumped $55 million into 12 research projects in the areas of hydrogen and carbon capture, utilisation and storage.
A local study looking at the feasibility of using hydrogen as a fuel stated last year (2021) that Singapore would need to explore various supply pathways for price-competitive low-carbon hydrogen.
It was reported in June last year that three Singapore agencies were studying whether hydrogen could be imported via ships or pipes.
“We cannot afford to work in isolation when our planet’s future is at stake. Cooperation, partnerships and leadership are critical,” said Madam Halimah.
“Sustainability plans and road maps, including our Singapore Green Plan, will need to be refined as technologies evolve, mistakes are made and learnt from, and the knowledge and experiences of others guide us onto better and wiser paths,” she added.
The Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week (ADSW) is the first global and large-scale sustainability event after last year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Scotland.
The programme – which started on Saturday and ends on Wednesday – convenes numerous world leaders, international businesses and students to accelerate pathways to further sustainability and meet net-zero goals.
ADSW also acts as a global catalyst for COP27, which will be held in Egypt later this year, and COP28, which will be hosted by the UAE in 2023.
Speaking from Singapore, Madam Halimah said on Monday that the Republic and UAE will be enhancing their bilateral memorandum of understanding (MOU) on environmental protection and climate change to include food and water security.
The MOU – signed in 2017 – identified environmental protection, climate change and sustainable development issues of mutual interest to both countries, and established a mechanism through which both nations can pursue cooperative efforts.
“As we work to implement our respective plans, Singapore stands ready to collaborate with the UAE and other partners in the Middle East,” added Madam Halimah.
Minister for Sustainability and the Environment Grace Fu said in Parliament last week that there is “significant uncertainty” associated with technologies like hydrogen and carbon capture, utilisation and storage.
“Their commercial success hinges on factors such as technological maturity and transboundary cooperation, which are not entirely within our control,” she said during a debate on Singapore’s green transition.
There have been sustainability-related collaborations between the UAE and Singapore.
Last year, a few Abu Dhabi organisations collaborated with Enterprise Singapore to hunt for start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises from the Republic that can help with smart city developments in the Middle East. The partnership is called the Abu Dhabi-Singapore Smart Cities Open Innovation Challenge.
Mr Imran Hamsa, Enterprise Singapore’s regional group director for Middle East and North Africa, told The Straits Times: “As global trading hubs, Singapore and the UAE share strong economic links and cooperation in areas such as innovation and sustainability.
“Through this innovation call, we hope to uncover new and viable solutions that will accelerate the development of smart cities and knowledge economies for both countries.”
Ms Fu is in Dubai for the ADSW. On Monday, she attended the Zayed Sustainability Prize award ceremony, where Singaporean company Wateroam – which develops portable water filters – won an award under the water category.
Ms Fu will be meeting various officials, including UAE’s Minister of Climate Change and Environment, the chairman of the Abu Dhabi Department of Energy, and the chief executive of Dubai Electricity and Water Authority.
In a statement, the Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment said Ms Fu and the government officials will discuss ways to enhance cooperation in areas such as food and water security, and climate action.
Whelp, that was fast. No sooner does the firm Sinopec announce a massive new green hydrogen project in China to the tune of 20,000 tons per year, when along comes Chile with plans for a new project dubbed H2 Magallanes, which could pump out more than 880,000 tons per year. It seems the green hydrogen trend has legs after all, and plenty of them.
Chile Has Big Plans For Green Hydrogen
For those of you new to the topic, green hydrogen is a relatively new field. It leverages the low (and falling) cost of renewable energy to pry hydrogen gas out of renewable resources, mainly water. Biomass is also in the mix,but most of the activity is centered on water-splitting systems, powered by wind or solar energy.
Green hydrogen can be used as a zero emission fuel. It can also have numerous applications in agriculture, industry, food processing, and pharmaceuticals, among other areas that depend on hydrogen. That makes green hydrogen a major threat to fossil energy stakeholders, because almost all of the global hydrogen supply currently comes from coal and natural gas.
Chile’s sudden interest in new clean technology may seem sudden. It isn’t. The nation is better known for exporting fruit and fish, but copper is actually its top export, and copper is a key element in the electrification movement.
The copper connection helped sparked Chile’s interest in wind and solar energy several years ago, along with its history in bioenergy, hydropower, and geothermal resources. In 2015, the country launched a new clean power and energy efficiency plan that made a modest but noticeable impact on the nation’s wind and solar profile over the ensuing 5 years, as charted by the International Energy Agency.
Chile still has a long row to hoe before it can ditch fossil energy. H2 Magallanes could help shorten the timeline by providing a model for the rapid scaling up of renewable hydrogen.
If it all pans out, there could be a virtual bottomless pit of investor dollars heading for the green hydrogen hills of Chile. The financial muscle behind the H2 Magallanes project comes from the France-based independent power producer Total Eren. As the name suggests, Total Eren used to be Eren RE until 2017, when the leading fossil energy stakeholder Total S.A. entered the picture as an indirect stakeholder.
By April 2019, Total S.A. acquired a total stake of almost 30% in Total Eren, and then just last June Total S.A. changed its name to TotalEnergies, signifying the company’s new commitment to be a “a world-class player in the energy transition.”
800,000 Tonnes Of Green Hydrogen On The Way
TotalEnergies is apparently one of those fossil energy stakeholders that sees new bottom line opportunities in the green hydrogen field. It remains to be seen how serious they are, but TotalEnergies seems to have recognized that hydrogen buyers are demanding green hydrogen from renewable resources.
That’s a start, though TotalEnergies could leave some wiggle room for carbon capture through a new “clean” hydrogen fund it established last year in partnership with the firms Air Liquide and VINCI, among others.
Meanwhile, TotalEnergies and Total Eren have already launched several large scale green hydrogen projects in various countries, and H2 Magallanes is the biggest one yet.
Total Eren outlined its plans in a press release dated last December 2. It’s way too early to break out the bubbly, since the project is still in the planning stages. Still, they seem pretty optimistic that the vision will become reality.
The initial plans call for up to 10 gigawatts in onshore wind power near the borough of San Gregorio, in the Magallanes region of southern Chile. Another 15 could come on board for a total of 25 gigawatts by 2030, but even at 10 gigawatts of wind power the initial stage of the project is impressive. It will come with up to 8 gigawatts of electrolysis capacity, in addition to a desalination plant and a green ammonia plant, too (more on that in a sec).
If all goes according to plan, construction will begin in 2025 and green production will begin in 2027.
Chile Takes On The Green Hydrogen Hard Sell
As a matter of national policy, Chile is determined to count green hydrogen among its leading exports as soon as possible. In 2020 the company issued a new National Green Hydrogen Strategy. Our friends over at SP Global took note and had this to say:
“As a net importer of fuels, Chile has not been a significant player in global energy markets. But the sun-drenched, wind-rich South American country aims to become a titan in the burgeoning green hydrogen economy, setting a goal to become one of the world’s top three exporters by 2040.”
In its introduction, the new report concedes that there has been a lot of “hypearoundhydrogen.” However, the report comes down hard on the side of the green hydrogen economy, and it details why Chile is sitting in the catbird seat.
“Whatwelackinsize,wemorethanmakeup forinpotential.InthedesertintheNorth,with thehighestsolarirradianceontheplanet,and inthePatagoniaintheSouth,withstrongand consistentwinds,wehavetherenewable energy potential to install 70 times the electricity generation capacity we have today,” they state. “This abundant renewable energy will enable us to become the cheapest producer of green hydrogen on Earth.”
Who Will Be The Earth’s Next Top Green H2 Producer?
It looks like the H2 Magallenes project will enable Chile to get a running start on its low cost green hydrogen goal.
They will have plenty of competition as the field heats up. Among the more interesting developments is an experimental project that parks electrolysis systems on offshore wind turbines.
As for the danger that “hydrogen hype” could end up increasing the use of conventional hydrogen overall, that is clearly going to be an issue over the short term.
However, hydrogen is the main ingredient in ammonia fertilizer, and that should help align the global agriculture industry on the side of green sourcing.
In addition, the global shipping industry is eyeballing green ammonia fuel as a decarbonization pathway. That circles back around to TotalEnergies’ acknowledgement that leading hydrogen buyers are seeking sustainable sources.
Here in the US, things have gotten off to a slow start. Last summer the Department of Energy sent a strong signal by making renewable hydrogen a focus of its new “Earthshot” series of clean tech initiatives, though it still allows for fossil sources to maintain a foothold.
Unlike Chile, the US has considerable domestic fossil energy resources along with politically powerful stakeholders such as US Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, which could explain why the Energy Department is hedging its hydrogen bets. Still, green hydrogen appears to have an edge, so it will be interesting to see what tack the Energy Department takes when the next round of hydrogen R&D funding comes up.
The time is right to tap into hydrogen’s potential to play a key role in tackling critical energy challenges. The recent successes of renewable energy technologies and electric vehicles have shown that policy and technology innovation have the power to build global clean energy industries.
Hydrogen is emerging as one of the leading options for storing energy from renewables with hydrogen-based fuels potentially transporting energy from renewables over long distances – from regions with abundant energy resources, to energy-hungry areas thousands of kilometers away.
Green hydrogen featured in a number of emissions reduction pledges at the UN Climate Conference, COP26, as a means to decarbonize heavy industry, long haul freight, shipping, and aviation. Governments and industry have both acknowledged hydrogen as an important pillar of a net zero economy.
The Green Hydrogen Catapult, a United Nations initiative to bring down the cost of green hydrogen announced that it is almost doubling its goal for green electrolysers from 25 gigawatts set last year, to 45 gigawatts by 2027. The European Commission has adopted a set of legislative proposals to decarbonize the EU gas market by facilitating the uptake of renewable and low carbon gases, including hydrogen, and to ensure energy security for all citizens in Europe. The United Arab Emirates is also raising ambition, with the country’s new hydrogen strategy aiming to hold a fourth of the global low-carbon hydrogen market by 2030 and Japan recently announced it will invest $3.4 billion from its green innovation fund to accelerate research and development and promotion of hydrogen use over the next 10 years.
You might encounter the terms ‘grey’, ‘blue’, ‘green’ being associated when describing hydrogen technologies. It all comes down to the way it is produced. Hydrogen emits only water when burned but creating it can be carbon intensive. Depending on production methods, hydrogen can be grey, blue or green – and sometimes even pink, yellow or turquoise. However, green hydrogen is the only type produced in a climate-neutral manner making it critical to reach net zero by 2050.
We asked Dr Emanuele Taibi, Head of the Power Sector Transformation Strategies, International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) to explain what green hydrogen is and how it could pave the way towards net zero emissions. He is currently based with the IRENA Innovation and Technology Center in Bonn, Germany, where he is responsible for assisting Member Countries in devising strategies for the transformation of the power sector, and currently managing the work on power system flexibility, hydrogen and storage as key enablers for the energy transition. Dr Taibi is also a co curator for the World Economic Forum’s Strategic Intelligence platform, where his team developed the transformation map on Hydrogen.
Green hydrogen technologies
What motivated you to develop your expertise in energy technologies and how does your work at IRENA contribute to it?
It was during my Master’s thesis. I did an internship in the Italian National Agency for Energy and Environment (ENEA), where I learnt about sustainable development and energy, and the nexus between the two. I wrote my thesis in management engineering about it and decided this was the area where I wanted to focus my working life. Fast forward almost 20 years of experience in energy and international cooperation, a PhD in Energy Technology and time spent in private sector, research and intergovernmental agencies, I currently lead the power sector transformation team at IRENA since 2017.
My work at IRENA is to contribute, with my team and in close cooperation with colleagues across the agency and external partners such as the World Economic Forum, in supporting our 166 Member Countries in the energy transition, with a focus on renewable electricity supply and its use to decarbonize the energy sector through green electrons as well as green molecules like hydrogen and its derivatives.
What is green hydrogen? How does it differ from traditional emissions-intensive ‘grey’ hydrogen and blue hydrogen?
Hydrogen is the simplest and smallest element in the periodic table. No matter how it is produced, it ends up with the same carbon-free molecule. However, the pathways to produce it are very diverse, and so are the emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4).
Green hydrogen is defined as hydrogen produced by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen using renewable electricity. This is a very different pathway compared to both grey and blue.
Grey hydrogen is traditionally produced from methane (CH4), split with steam into CO2 – the main culprit for climate change – and H2, hydrogen. Grey hydrogen has increasingly been produced also from coal, with significantly higher CO2 emissions per unit of hydrogen produced, so much that is often called brown or black hydrogen instead of grey. It is produced at industrial scale today, with associated emissions comparable to the combined emissions of UK and Indonesia. It has no energy transition value, quite the opposite.
Blue hydrogen follows the same process as grey, with the additional technologies necessary to capture the CO2 produced when hydrogen is split from methane (or from coal) and store it for long term. It is not one colour but rather a very broad gradation, as not 100% of the CO2 produced can be captured, and not all means of storing it are equally effective in the long term. The main point is that capturing large part of the CO2, the climate impact of hydrogen production can be reduced significantly.
There are technologies (i.e. methane pyrolysis) that hold a promise for high capture rates (90-95%) and effective longterm storage of the CO2 in solid form, potentially so much better than blue that they deserve their own colour in the “hydrogen taxonomy rainbow”, turquoise hydrogen. However, methane pyrolysis is still at pilot stage, while green hydrogen is rapidly scaling up based on two key technologies – renewable power (in particular from solar PV and wind, but not only) and electrolysis.
Unlike renewable power, which is the cheapest source of electricity in most countries and region today, electrolysis for green hydrogen production needs to significantly scale-up and reduce its cost by at least three times over the next decade or two. However, unlike CCS and methane pyrolysis, electrolysis is commercially available today and can be procured from multiple international suppliers right now.
Green hydrogen energy solutions
What are the merits of energy transition solutions towards a ‘green’ hydrogen economy? How could we transition to a green hydrogen economy from where we are currently with grey hydrogen?
Green hydrogen is an important piece of the energy transition. It is not the next immediate step, as we first need to further accelerate the deployment of renewable electricity to decarbonize existing power systems, accelerate electrification of the energy sector to leverage low-cost renewable electricity, before finally decarbonize sectors that are difficult to electrify – like heavy industry, shipping and aviation – through green hydrogen.
It is important to note that today we produce significant amount of grey hydrogen, with high CO2 (and methane) emissions: priority would be to start decarbonizing existing hydrogen demand, for example by replacing ammonia from natural gas with green ammonia.
Recent studies have sparked a debate about the concept of blue hydrogen as a transition fuel till green hydrogen becomes cost-competitive. How would green hydrogen become cost competitive vis-à-vis blue hydrogen? What sort of strategic investments need to occur in the technology development process?
The first step is to provide a signal for blue hydrogen to replace grey, as without a price for emitting CO2, there is no business case for companies to invest in complex and costly carbon capture system (CCS) and geological storages of CO2. Once the framework is such that low-carbon hydrogen (blue, green, turquoise) is competitive with grey hydrogen, then the question becomes: should we invest in CCS if the risk is to have stranded assets, and how soon will green become cheaper than blue.
The answer will of course differ depending on the region. In a net zero world, an objective that more and more countries are committing to, the remaining emissions from blue hydrogen would have to be offset with negative emissions. This will come at a cost. In parallel, gas prices have been very volatile lately, leaving blue hydrogen price highly correlated to gas price, and exposed not only to CO2 price uncertainty, but also to natural gas price volatility.
For green hydrogen, however, we might witness a similar story to that of solar PV. It is capital intensive, therefore we need to reduce investment cost as well as the cost of investment, through scaling up manufacturing of renewable technologies and electrolysers, while creating a low-risk offtake to reduce the cost of capital for green hydrogen investments. This will lead to a stable, decreasing cost of green hydrogen, as opposed to a volatile and potentially increasing cost of blue hydrogen.
Renewable energy technologies reached a level of maturity already today that allows competitive renewable electricity generation all around the world, a prerequisite for competitive green hydrogen production. Electrolysers though are still deployed at very small scale, needing a scale up of three orders of magnitude in the next three decades to reduce their cost threefold.
Today the pipeline for green hydrogen projects is on track for a halving of electrolyser cost before 2030. This, combined with large projects located where the best renewable resources are, can lead to competitive green hydrogen to be available at scale in the next 5-10 years. This does not leave much time for blue hydrogen – still at pilot stage today – to scale up from pilot to commercial scale, deploy complex projects (e.g. the longterm geological CO2 storage) at commercial scale and competitive cost, and recover the investments made in the next 10-15 years.
Several governments have now included hydrogen fuel technologies in their national strategies. Given the rising demands to transition towards decarbonization of the economy and enabling technologies with higher carbon capture rates, what would be your advice to policymakers and decisionmakers who are evaluating the pros and cons of green hydrogen?
We will need green hydrogen to reach net zero emissions, in particular for industry, shipping and aviation. However, what we need most urgently is:
1) energy efficiency;
2) electrification;
3) accelerated growth of renewable power generation.
Once this is achieved, we are left with ca. 40% of demand to be decarbonised, and this is where we need green hydrogen, modern bioenergy and direct use of renewables. Once we further scale up renewable power to decarbonise electricity, we will be in a position to further expand renewable power capacity to produce competitive green hydrogen and decarbonise hard-to-abate sectors at minimal extra cost.
The future of green hydrogen
Where do you see energy technologies relating to hydrogen evolving by 2030? Could we anticipate hydrogen-powered commercial vehicles?
We see the opportunity for rapid uptake of green hydrogen in the next decade where hydrogen demand already exists: decarbonising ammonia, iron and other existing commodities. Many industrial processes that use hydrogen can replace grey with green or blue, provided CO2 is adequately priced or other mechanisms for the decarbonisation of those sectors are put in place.
For shipping and aviation, the situation is slightly different. Drop-in fuels, based on green hydrogen but essentially identical to jet fuel and methanol produced from oil, can be used in existing planes and ships, with minimal to no adjustments. However, those fuels contain CO2, which has to be captured from somewhere and added to the hydrogen, to be released again during combustion: this reduces but does not solve the problem of CO2 emissions. Synthetic fuels can be deployed before 2030, if the right incentives are in place to justify the extra cost of reduced (not eliminated) emissions.
In the coming years, ships can switch to green ammonia, a fuel produced from green hydrogen and nitrogen from the air, which does not contain CO2, but investments will be needed to replace engines and tanks, and green ammonia is currently much more expensive than fuel oil.
Hydrogen (or ammonia) planes are further away, and these will be essentially new planes that have to be designed, built and sold to airlines to replace existing jet-fuel-powered planes – clearly not feasible by 2030: in this sense, green jet fuel – produced with a combination of green hydrogen and sustainable bioenergy – is a solutions that can be deployed in the near term.
In conclusion, the main actions to accelerate decarbonisation between now and 2030 are 1) energy efficiency 2) electrification with renewables 3) rapid acceleration of renewable power generation (which will further reduce the already low cost of renewable electricity) 4) scale up of sustainable, modern bioenergy, needed – among others – to produce green fuels that require CO2 5) decarbonisation of grey hydrogen with green hydrogen, which would bring scale and reduce the cost of electrolysis, making green hydrogen competitive and ready for a further scale up in the 2030s, towards the objective of reaching net zero emissions by 2050.
This article was originally published in the World Economic Forum.
Emission-free hydrogen could, one day, entirely replace fossil fuels – and a start up in Germany believes it has the key ingredient to make it accessible to all.
Born in a climate-change affected South Pacific Island, Vaitea Cowan believes deeply in green hydrogen technology. She co-founded Enapter more than three years ago.
“I wanted to replace all the diesel generators in New Caledonia and all the remote areas that didn’t need to rely on dirty diesel, ” she says.
“But then realising the potential for green hydrogen to replace fossil fuels, I wanted to be part of this change.”
Green solutions will only be adopted if they are the most economically attractive. And that’s our mission at an after to make green hydrogen cost-competitive with fossil fuels.
Vaitea Cowan, Co-founder, Enapter
With headquarters in Germany, the company has deployed its ion exchange membrane electrolysers in over 100 projects across 33 countries. The technology turns renewable electricity into emission-free hydrogen gas.
Developed more quickly and cheaply than once thought possible, the AEM electrolyser already fuels cars and planes, powers industry and heats homes.
Enapter’s hydrogen generators have recently won Prince William’s Earthshot Prize in the ‘Fix Our Climate’ category.
What is green hydrogen?
Much of the planet’s hydrogen is locked up in water. So-called ‘green’ hydrogen is an emission-free way of extracting it. This extraction relies on renewable energy, which is used to power electrolysis. Electrolysis is the chemical process needed to separate the hydrogen and oxygen atoms in the water.
Extracting hydrogen this way has been facing criticism, because of its low efficiency and high cost. Enapter says, however, that their AEM Electrolyser solves these problems and provides a quick and easy way to produce green energy, even at home.
Half of the water used to flush a toilet can power a home for days
Enapter says its electrolyser uses about 2.4 litres of water to generate enough hydrogen for a couple’s home for several days.
However, the exact number of days depends on the power storage capacity. This amount of water is equal to half of the water used for flushing a toilet once (5 litres), and eight times less than the water consumption of a dishwasher (20 litres).
The climate emergency is the biggest threat to civilisation we have ever faced. But there is good news: we already have every tool we need to beat it. The challenge is not identifying the solutions, but rolling them out with great speed.
Some key sectors are already racing ahead, such as electric cars. They are already cheaper to own and run in many places – and when the purchase prices equal those of fossil-fueled vehicles in the next few years, a runaway tipping point will be reached.
Electricity from renewables is now the cheapest form of power in most places, sometimes even cheaper than continuing to run existing coal plants. There’s a long way to go to meet the world’s huge energy demand, but the plummeting costs of batteries and other storage technologies bodes well.
And many big companies are realising that a failure to invest will be far more expensive as the impacts of global heating destroy economies. Even some of the biggest polluters, such as cement and steel, have seen the green writing on the wall.
Buildings are big emitters but the solution – improved energy efficiency – is simple to achieve and saves the occupants money, particularly with the cost of installing technology such as heat pumps expected to fall.
Stopping the razing of forests requires no technology at all, but it does require government action. While progress is poor – and Bolsonaro’s Brazil is going backwards – countries such as Indonesia have shown regulatory action can be effective. Protecting and restoring forests, particularly by empowering indigenous people, is a potent tool.
Recognition of the role food and farming play in driving global heating is high, and the solutions, from alternatives to meat to regenerative farming, are starting to grow. As with fossil fuels, ending vast and harmful subsidies is key, and there are glimmers of hope here, too.
In the climate crisis, every fraction of a degree matters and so every action reduces people’s suffering. Every action makes the world a cleaner and better place to live – by, for example, cutting the air pollution that ends millions of lives a year.
The real fuel for the green transition is a combination of those most valuable and intangible of commodities: political will and skill. The supply is being increased by demands for action from youth strikers to chief executives, and must be used to face down powerful vested interests, such as the fossil fuel, aviation and cattle industries. The race for a sustainable, low-carbon future is on, and the upcoming Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow will show how much faster we need to go.
Transport
Responsible for 14-28% of global greenhouse gas emissions, transport has been slow to decarbonise, and faces particular challenges in areas such as long-haul flight.
But technical solutions are available, if the will, public policy and spending are there, too. Electric cars are the most obvious: petrol and diesel vehicles will barely be produced in Europe within the decade. EV sales are accelerating everywhere, with the likes of Norway well past the tipping point, and cheaper electric vehicles coming from China have cut the fumes from buses. Meanwhile, combustion engines are ever more efficient and less polluting.
Employees on the assembly line for electric buses in Xi an, Shaanxi province, China. Photograph: Visual China Group/Getty Images
Bike and scooter schemes are growing rapidly as cities around the world embrace electric micromobility. Far cleaner ships for global freight are coming. The potential of hydrogen is growing, for cleaner trains where electrification is impractical, to be followed by ships and even, one day, planes. Manufacturers expect short-haul electric aircraft much sooner. Most of all, the pandemic has shown that a world without hypermobility is possible – and that many people will accept, or even embrace, a life where they commute and travel less. Gwyn Topham
Deforestation
Deforestation and land use change are the second-largest source of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. The destruction of the world’s forests has continued at a relentless pace during the pandemic, with millions of hectares lost, driven by land-clearing in the Brazilian Amazon.
Volunteers plant mangrove tree seedlings in a conservation area on Dupa beach, Indonesia. Photograph: Basri Marzuki/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock
But there are reasons for hope. The UK has put nature at the heart of its Cop26 presidency and behind the scenes, the government is pushing hard for finance and new commitments from forested nations to protect the world’s remaining carbon banks. Indonesia and Malaysia, once global hotspots of deforestation, have experienced significant falls in recent years, the result of increased restrictions on palm oil plantations. However, the 2000s soy moratorium in Brazil shows these trends are reversible. Finally, there is a growing recognition of the importance of indigenous communities to protecting the world’s forests and biodiversity. In the face of racism and targeted violence, a growing number of studies and reports show they are the best guardians of the forest. Empowering those communities will be vital to ending deforestation. Patrick Greenfield
Technology
Emissions from technology companies, including direct emissions, emissions from electricity use and other operations such as manufacturing, account for 0.3% of global carbon emissions, while emissions from cryptocurrencies is a huge emerging issue.
Mining – the process in which a bitcoin is awarded to a computer that solves a complex series of algorithms – is a deeply energy-intensive process and only gets more energy-intensive as the algorithms grow more complex. But new mining methods are lighter, environmentally. A system called “proof of stake” has a 99% lower carbon footprint.
Researchers pose for a group photo at the International Research Center of Big Data for Sustainable Development Goals in Beijing, China. The centre was inaugurated to support the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock
Scrutiny of the whole sector is increasing, spearheaded by tech workers who walked out in their hundreds to join climate change marches in 2019. The companies have pledged to do better: Amazon aims to be net zero carbon by 2040 and powered with 100% renewable energy by 2025. Facebook has a target of net zero emissions for its entire supply chain by 2030 and Microsoft has pledged to become carbon negative by 2030. Apple has committed to become carbon-neutral across its whole supply chain by 2030.
They’re still falling short when it comes to delivering, but employee groups continue to push. Kari Paul
Business
For decades Exxon Mobil has arguably been corporate America’s biggest climate change denier. But this year, the activist investor Engine No 1 won three seats on the company’s board with an agenda to force the company to finally acknowledge and confront the climate crisis.
Across corporate America and all around the world there are signs of change. The Federal Reserve, the world’s most powerful central bank, is beefing up its climate team. BlackRock, the world’s biggest investor, has made environmental sustainability a core goal for the company.
This isn’t about ideology: it’s about “common sense.” According to BlackRock, failure to tackle climate change is simply bad for business. The investor calculates that 58% of the US will suffer economic decline by 2060-2080 if nothing is done.
Much more needs to be done, and some question whether corporate America can really solve this crisis without government action. But the days of denial are over – what matters now is action. Dom Rushe
Electricity
The rocketing global market price for gas has ripped through world economies, forcing factories to close, triggering blackouts in China, and threatening to cool the global economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.
But it has also spelled out a clear economic case for governments to redouble their efforts in developing homegrown, low-carbon electricity systems.
The good news is that renewable energy is ready to step up and play a greater role in electricity systems across the globe.
A woman completes paperwork by the light of solar-powered lamps in a village shop for solar products. Photograph: Kunal Gupta/Climate Visuals Countdown
The precipitous fall in the price of wind and solar energy has helped to incentivise fresh investments in electricity vehicles and energy storage technologies, such as batteries, where costs are plummeting too. Soon, wind and solar power will help to produce green hydrogen, which can be stored over long periods of time to generate electricity during days that are a little less bright or breezy.
All of these advances are made possible by cheap renewables, and will help countries to use more renewable energy too. There has never been a better time to step back from gas and go green. Jillian Ambrose
Buildings
The built environment is one of our biggest polluters, responsible for about 40% of global carbon emissions.
Over the past two decades, the carbon footprint of buildings “in use” has been greatly reduced by energy-saving technologies – better insulation, triple-glazing, and on-site renewables such as solar panels and ground-source heat pumps. Onheat pumps, the UK lags far behind: Norway, through a mixture of grants and high electricity prices, has installed more than 600 heat pumps for every 1,000 households.
As national energy grids are decarbonising, the focus is shifting to reducing the “embodied energy” of materials – which can account for up to three-quarters of a building’s emissions over its lifespan – for example by reducing the amount of concrete and steel in favour of timber.
The Vertical Forest in the Porta Nuova district in Milan. Photograph: Miguel Medina/AFP/Getty
There is also a growing movement to prioritise refurbishment and reuse over demolition, driven by the realisation that the most sustainable buildings are the ones that already exist. Oliver Wainwright
Food and farming
The hoofprint of the global livestock industry is a significant one, accounting for about 14% of total annual greenhouse gas emissions. But it is increasingly recognised and accepted by national governments.
New Zealand now has a legal commitment to reduce methane emissions from agriculture by 10% by 2030, while Denmark has passed a legally binding target to reduce climate emissions from the agricultural sector by 55% by 2030.
While global meat production is increasing, there is a growing shift towards fish and poultry, which have a comparatively lower emissions footprint than red meats. The food industry is also developing a range of lower-carbon products using plant-based proteins such as soy and pea, and insect and lab-grown meat alternatives. Tom Levitt
Manufacturing
Decarbonising the manufacturing of every product needed by a modern economy is a vast and varied task. Some sectors are well on their way. For instance, Apple, the world’s third-largest maker of mobile phones by volume, has pledged to produce net zero carbon throughout its supply chain by 2030.
For many others, advances in efficiency of factories and their products will be accelerated by machine learning and other artificial intelligence technologies that are still in their infancy. There are even hopeful signs in some of the hardest sectors to decarbonise, such as plans by Volvo to replace coal with hydrogen in the steel it uses in cars.
One of the greatest reasons for optimism is manufacturers’ increasing awareness of circular design principles. Making products easier to recycle from the start will help to cut emissions from fresh resource extraction– although a bigger question remains as to whether rich societies can reduce consumption, the most obvious way to cut emissions. Jasper Jolly
