Hydrogen

The murkiness of the federal government’s drive to make Australia an exporter of hydrogen, of any hue, gives rise to concerns.

Australia’s bid to establish itself as a major green hydrogen player has triggered a flood of state funding and new project announcements in recent months. But consultancy Rystad Energy sees potential obstacles for the nascent industry.

Ruchi Gupta is a research fellow at the University of Geneva’s Institute for Environmental Sciences. She focuses on how flexibility options, such as sector coupling with hydrogen production, can support renewable energy integration and decarbonize a wide range of sectors.

Belgian mechanical engineering group John Cockerill wants to set up its electrolyzer gigafactory for the production of green hydrogen in northeastern France. Galp Energia plans to install a 100-megawatt electrolyzer to power its refinery in Sines, Portugal, with green hydrogen, by 2025.

Long distance, point-to-point transport of green hydrogen for industrial use can harness the cheap solar electricity available in some parts of the world but distributing the energy-storage gas to individual refueling stations, for vehicle fuel cell use, will likely have to depend on production nearby.

State-run power company NTPC wants to explore the feasibility of using hydrogen instead of diesel for back-up power and micro-grid application.

Furthermore, Swiss energy company Axpo and Swedish-Swiss electrical equipment giant ABB committed to combining their technologies and skills for several projects related to green hydrogen in Italy and Germany’s gas transmission system operators Gascade and Ontras announced a plan to set up a platform for the hydrogen industry in eastern Germany, with an initial grid to cover 475 kilometers of pipelines.

Spanish developer FRV has agreed to participate in a €100 million effort to generate hydrogen via a 10 MW electrolyzer, powered by a 20 MW solar plant.

According to two new pieces of research, Europe is on track to reach 2.7 GW of operational hydrogen electrolyzer capacity by 2025 and most of this capacity is expected to be located in Germany. Furthermore, three European gas associations have assessed the competitiveness of the different transportation options for hydrogen and have found it depends on the distance over which hydrogen is transported, as well as on scale and end-use.

Widespread green hydrogen deployment will be key to achieving stringent climate targets, and German hydrogen demand is set to grow from the 80 TWh range in 2030 to between 400 TWh and 800 TWh by 2050, according to a new joint study by several Fraunhofer-related entities.