Hydrogen

The 1 GW Horizeo project includes a solar plant, battery storage, a green hydrogen production unit, a data center, and an agrivoltaic facility. It is being planned near Saucats, a municipality in the Gironde department in Nouvelle-Aquitaine in southwestern France.

A German research team has developed a photovoltaic-electrochemical device for alkaline water electrolysis that can be linked to battery storage. The proposed system configuration can not only smoothen out the PV power fluctuations and facilitate power coupling, but also improve solar to hydrogen efficiency.

Acme Solar said the facility would use 3 GWp of solar and 0.5 GWp of wind energy to produce 2,400 tons of green ammonia daily and approximately 900,000 tons annually. Construction is planned in phases with an investment of $3.5 billion over the next three years.

Carbon never goes away, says Associate Professor Tianyi Ma, but if industrial carbon dioxide emissions can be cleanly, renewable catalyzed into chemicals and fuels that we need, we can reduce the overall GHG burden on the earth’s atmosphere.

Energy storage and clean fuel company ITM Power also opened a 1 GW electrolyzer factory in the United Kingdom and South Korea’s automobile parts maker Hyundai Mobis is investing US$1.1 billion in two hydrogen fuel-cell plants in its home country.

U.K. business and energy secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has unveiled a new hydrogen strategy aiming at developing both the green and blue forms of the fuel. Furthermore, Thierry Breton, the EU commissioner for the internal market, has said Europe needs to increase its commitment to hydrogen and use nuclear to produce a decarbonized form of the gas.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said green hydrogen will play a significant role in achieving India’s decarbonization goals. He also announced the nation’s ambitions to become a global hub for green hydrogen production and export.

The switch from fossil fuels and nuclear will bring a jobs dividend thanks to the greater labor-intensity of renewables plants, according to a paper published by Finland’s LUT. However, the jobs dividend is unlikely to be evenly spread around the world, with Europe set to be a big winner.

Oman is expanding its network to become a hydrogen hub and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has published a practical guide for generating hydrogen using scrap aluminum. Furthermore, BP and Mitsui have separately announced more blue hydrogen projects.

A new study from Stanford University and Cornell University shows that blue hydrogen can produce more greenhouse emissions than heat produced by coal and gas. The modeling classifies blue hydrogen emissions as carbon dioxide and unburned fugitive methane, as well as lifecycle emissions linked to the mining, transport, storage, and use of methane.