30 European energy players have launched a previously confidential integrated value chain project intended to deliver green hydrogen across Europe at €1.5/kg 1 before 2030.
The project, known as HyDeal Ambition, will see the production of green hydrogen generated by solar-driven electrolysis from the Iberian Peninsula beginning in 2022. The ambition is to achieve 95GW of solar and 67GW of electrolysis capacity by 2030 to deliver 3.6 million tonnes of green hydrogen per year to users in the energy, industry and mobility sectors via the gas transmission and storage network, the energy equivalent of 1.5 months of oil consumption in France.
The goal is to delivery green hydrogen at a price parity to fossil fuel. Thierry Lepercq, spokesperson for HyDeal said, HyDeal Ambition constitutes a complete industrial ecosystem spanning the whole green hydrogen value chain (upstream, midstream, downstream, finance), and results from 2 years of research, analysis, modelling, feasibility studies and contract design. HyDeal Ambition makes it possible to produce and deliver competitive green hydrogen in Europe”.
This is the latest in a series of green hydrogen announcements, the number of which are expected to continue to accelerate. ORANGE.BAT was launched earlier in February by another international consortium of 40 organisations from Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Greece to address the use of green hydrogen across the value chain of a major EU ceramics cluster.
Led by ETRA, the consortium is supported by the Government of Valenciana, with structured financed from Smartenergy. Enel Green Power will be providing technical expertise and using Sunfire’s technology. Paola Brunetto, Head of Hydrogen Business Unit of Enel Green Power said, “For Enel Green Power, green hydrogen is the only truly sustainable solution that can support the decarbonization of hard-to-abate sectors, where electrification of end uses is not an easy solution. For that reason, we are glad to participate in the ORANGE.BAT consortium. Just through the openness and the collaboration with other partners, we will develop new services that use energy to tackle global challenges”.
Faith Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency has said, “Hydrogen can help overcome many difficult energy challenges. It can decarbonise hard-to-abate-sectors like steel, chemicals, tucks ships and planes. Hydrogen can also enhance energy security by diversifying the fuel mix and providing flexibility to balance grids.”
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The potential for green hydrogen has captured the imaginations of policy makers, the fossil fuel industry and the media and is touted by many as a low carbon alternative fuel solution to solve challenges in mobility, transport and heating, as well as a storage medium for excess renewable energy. It can also act as a feedstock for a range of chemical processes and synthetic fuels.
The challenge today is that green hydrogen does not yet exist. Today’s hydrogen is predominantly generated by coal gasification (black hydrogen) – resulting in higher emissions even than fossil fuels – or by natural gasification with steam methane reformers (grey hydrogen). The market is mostly driven by demand for fertiliser – 40 megatonnes a year is used to create ammonia as a basis for enhancing soil fertility. Between 96-98% of all hydrogen generated today is fossil fuel based. And globally only around 120 million tonnes is produced, only two thirds of which are pure hydrogen.
Most of the hydrogen hype surrounds the potential for its use in high energy density industrial processes, and for seasonal storage of renewably generated electricity. Over 50GW of green hydrogen electrolysis projects were announced in 2020 including Saudi Arabia’s $5 billion green hydrogen plant (powered by 4GW of wind and solar) and Iberdrola’s 20MW of green electrolysis with fertiliser manufacturer Fertiberia in Spain. Country’s around the world are announced their hydrogen development plans and there is excitement about the potential in repurposing extra pipeline infrastructure.
Few projects have yet come to market however. While there is a pipeline of hydrogen projects many are waiting for subsidies to be in place, driving economies of scale in the same way as in the solar PV market. In the EU, for example, its hydrogen strategy is to be supported with up to €470 billion in investment by 2050. As part of the bloc’s decarbonisation and recovery plan, up to 1 million are expected to be employed directly or indirectly across the overall green hydrogen value chain.
Chemical engineers argue that the use of hydrogen, to use a fuel to create another fuel, will remain uneconomic as it doesn’t make sense thermodynamically. On the other hand, the fossil fuel lobby wants to find something to sell, while policy makers around the world are painfully aware of how a lack of action resulted in a loss of ownership of key supply chains in both the solar and battery markets. Despite over €1 billion in public funds already for projects between 2014-2020 (through the public-private research partnership ‘Fuel Cells and Hydrogen – Joint Undertaking’) development has been slow.
In 2020 the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) suggested that green hydrogen supplies will only hit 3 million tonnes annually by 2030, short of a projected demand of 8.7 million tonnes. If that gap is to be met with black, grey or even blue (low carbon hydrogen generated from non-renewable sources such as nuclear) hydrogen it could destroy decarbonisation targets. While developments in the solar PV market have outstripped predictions in terms of cost and deployment for a decade, we are still some way from seeing such activity in hydrogen.
There is no doubt that the hydrogen market is going to be volatile over the next few years. What matters is ensuring that there is a wider acceptance of the fact that many different technological solutions will be needed, and will be appropriate for different problems. One thing is for certain though, with only 0.1% of today’s hydrogen actually being green, we need to keep a close eye on what we’re being sold and why. If HyDeal manages to deliver 3.7 million tonnes of green hydrogen alone, it could be the difference
Source: forbes
