Hydrogen

The Suiso Frontier cargo vessel docked at Victoria’s Port of Hastings on Friday to take on the world’s first shipment of liquid hydrogen. The ship’s arrival is a landmark for the Japanese-Australian Hydrogen Energy Supply Chain pilot project, which sees liquefied hydrogen generated from brown coal, and an engineering milestone in itself. But while the Australian government describes the product as “clean”, experts maintain that carbon capture and storage technology has proven only to be an expensive failure.

Australian startup Endua’s plan to make modular hydrogen-powered energy generation and storage systems has been given a financial boost, as the federal government has provided it with almost AUD 1 million ($719,800) to help it commercialize its technologies.

Fortescue Future Industries (FFI) and Covestro also want to partner on the supply of green hydrogen and its derivatives, including green ammonia. And the Indian government is cooperating with the IRENA to scale-up hydrogen and renewable energy projects.

The British energy giant will support the potential development of multiple gigawatts of wind, solar and green hydrogen projects in the Middle Eastern country by 2030.

While there are still many uncertainties as to the way in which hydrogen trade might evolve and change economic ties and political dynamics between countries, experts agree that green hydrogen can bring winds of change to the global energy arena. According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, significant geoeconomic and geopolitical shifts are just around the corner.

Canada’s First Hydrogen and German consulting firm FEV are developing a hydrogen fueling station for remote locations where there are no electrical power grids available. Furthermore, Japan and Indonesia have started to cooperate on hydrogen and carbon capture technologies and the UK gas grid is set to start blending hydrogen around the country from next year.

Elsewhere, French renewable hydrogen startup Lhyfe has announced it is building an electrolyzer in eastern Germany, and Los Angeles-based Southern California Gas has launched a hydrogen-powered drone to monitor its gas grid.

The campus of the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in the Netherlands is currently hosting a retrofitted existing building provided with heating by an H₂ heating boiler in the attic. The boiler is linked to an underground hydrogen system.

In other news, Oil India is setting up a 100 kW green hydrogen production facility in Assam, while the German government is providing €60 million for a project aimed at preparing electrolyzer technologies for industrial production at gigawatt scale.

With a new start-up and a consortium in the Netherlands, German automotive supplier Schaeffler wants to significantly reduce the costs of green hydrogen.