Neil Eisberg reports on progress towards wider hydrogen use
While investment is increasing in hydrogen projects to support the clean energy transition on the way to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, the International Energy Agency (IEA) believes further efforts are needed to reduce costs and encourage wider use.
In its recent report, Global Hydrogen Review 2021, the IEA says governments need to move faster and more decisively to enable low-carbon hydrogen to fulfil its potential to help reach net-zero, while also supporting energy security.
According to IEA Executive Director, Fatih Birol; ‘It is important to support the development of low-carbon hydrogen if governments are going to meet their climate and energy ambitions. We have experienced false starts before with hydrogen, so we can’t take success for granted. But this time, we are seeing exciting progress in making hydrogen cleaner, more affordable and more available for use across different sectors of the economy.’
The UK unveiled its Hydrogen Strategy in summer 2021 (C&I, 2021, 85, 9, 17). It was welcomed by the UK Hydrogen & Fuel Cell Association (HFCA), which did, however, say it could have been more ambitious. The HFCA says the industry believes that, with the right support, a 20GW mix of green and blue hydrogen power could be deployed by 2030, around four times more than the UK government has planned. The HFCA was pleased that in its strategy, the UK government acknowledged that a minimum standard to which companies must produce low-carbon hydrogen is necessary, as is a plan for a hydrogen network and storage.
According to the IEA, global production of low-carbon hydrogen is minimal, its cost is not yet competitive and its use in promising sectors like industry and transport remains limited. There are, however, encouraging signs that hydrogen is on the cusp of significant cost reductions and widespread global growth.
Commercial intelligence company Wood Mackenzie believes global demand for hydrogen will increase between two- and six-fold between 2021 and 2050 under its Energy Transition Outlook and Accelerated Energy Transition (AET) scenarios. Under its AET-1.5 scenario (1.5°C warming), low-carbon hydrogen demand will reach 530m t by 2050, with almost 150m t being traded on the seaborne market. Low-carbon import demand from Northeast Asia and Europe could account for about 80bn t, equivalent to 55% of seaborne hydrogen trade, and 23m t (16% of seaborne energy trade), respectively.
This seaborne trade will be supported by export-oriented hydrogen megaprojects focused on Northeast Asia and Europe, with more than 60% of green hydrogen export projects located in the Middle East and Australia.
2030
Airbus is ready to build a hydrogen-powered commercial aircraft by 2030
131
Large-scale hydrogen plants were announced in H1 2021
Hydrogen projects
By mid-2021, 359 large-scale hydrogen projects had been announced globally, with 131 in H1 2021, according to the latest Hydrogen Insight Update, from the CEO-led initiative, the Hydrogen Council in collaboration with consultancy McKinsey. The total investment in these projects and along the whole value chain is estimated at $500bn in the period to 2030. With these investments, low-carbon hydrogen production capacity is expected to exceed 10m t/year, or a third of total clean hydrogen demand growth expected in the next decade, by 2030. Some 70% of this production capacity will come from renewable energy sources, equivalent to about 70GW of electrolysis capacity, with the remainder being low-carbon hydrogen produced from fossil fuels and carbon capture and storage (CCS).
>€2bn
Investment in hydrogen production announced by Ineos, already Europe’s largest producer
According to the Hydrogen Council, more than 30 countries have concrete hydrogen strategies and have committed $76bn of government funding. Europe is the centre of hydrogen development, accounting for 80% of announced projects, representing estimated investments of $130bn. China is, however, emerging as a major player with hydrogen comprising 10% of the energy share by 2050. Some 53 large-scale projects have been publicly announced in China, representing investments worth $17bn. Some 50% of these announced projects linked to transport applications.
In Europe, the Scandinavian countries have been particularly active during 2021 with a number of announcements regarding technology development and hydrogen projects (See Boxes).
In terms of international collaboration, the inaugural UK-Taiwan Hydrogen Forum took place virtually in October 2021. During the event the UK and Taiwan’s respective trade associations, Taiwan’s Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Partnership and the Scottish Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Association, signed a Memorandum of Understanding improving bilateral engagement, supporting skills development, education and outreach activities as well as coordinating industry-related information and events. Nigel Holmes, CEO, Scottish Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Association, said: ‘This MoU…. will help us share experience from the deployment of zero emission hydrogen fuel cell buses in Aberdeen, the production and local use of hydrogen in Orkney and the H100 Fife demonstration of hydrogen from offshore wind for heating and cooking.’
Ahead of COP26, Saudi Arabia announced that it will become carbon neutral from 2060. One of the routes to this target will be through the production of blue hydrogen at its new Jafurah gas field, which is forecast to begin production of natural gas in 2024. It has yet to be announced how carbon dioxide from the production of hydrogen will be recovered and stored.
Announced projects
Ineos subsidiary Inovyn is to build a 100MW electrolyser to produce ‘green’ hydrogen at its Koln site in Germany. The hydrogen will be used to produce green ammonia and will reduce carbon emissions at the site by more than 120,000t/year. The project will also look to develop e-fuels through power-to-methanol applications. In addition, Inovyn is to ramp up hydrogen capabilities to fuel trucks, buses and power generation at its Runcorn site in Northwest England. The investment will deliver on-site facilities for purification and compression of existing hydrogen production for distribution to UK refuelling stations. These projects follow plans to build a 20MW electrolyser plant at its Rafnes site in Norway, announced in March 2021. The Rafnes development will be integrated into current assets and also tied into ongoing discussions to establish a network of refuelling stations in Norway to provide buses, trucks and taxis with clean hydrogen.
In Finland, Turku Energia and Green H2UB have signed a letter of intent for construction of a hydrogen facility next to the Naantali power plant. In addition to hydrogen for marine and heavy vehicle transportation, the heat generated as a byproduct can be utilised for district heating.
In the UK, the Offshore Wind Power consortium, comprising TotalEnergies, Macquarie’s Green Investment Group and Renewable Infrastructure Development Group, has submitted a proposal to ScotWind, the UK Crown Estate’ Scotland offshore wind leasing round, to develop a windfarm west of Orkney. The power generated could supply a planned green hydrogen production facility to be located at the Flotta oil terminal owned by Repsol Sinopec and Uniper.
Consulting and engineering company Wood has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Hygen Energy to accelerate production of green hydrogen for transport applications in the UK, beginning with a conceptual design for a facility at Herne Bay, Kent. Based on existing off-shore wind power, an 8-9t/day plant is planned to commence production by mid-2023.
The Oyster consortium, comprising Ørsted, Siemens Gamesa, ITM Power and Element Energy, is to establish offshore hydrogen production at Grimsby, UK. The pilot project will develop and test an electrolysis plant on a megawatt scale, for which the possibility of combining offshore wind energy directly with an electrolysis plant, and the transport of green hydrogen to land will be investigated. ITM Power is responsible for developing and testing the electrolysis plant, while Ørsted will assist and provide analysis and preliminary investigation. Siemens Gamesa and Element Energy will contribute technical knowledge. The project is expected to start in 2021 and run until the end of 2024. The European Commission’s Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking is financing the whole project with €5m.
Ørsted has also joined forces with the German energy company Uniper to produce large-scale green hydrogen. They have signed a declaration of intent to jointly produce hydrogen with offshore wind, from Uniper’s site near Wilhelmshaven in north-western Germany. Ørsted is already the largest Danish participant in German offshore wind with 1.35MW installed capacity and a further 1.15MW planned.
Strandmøllen has been granted investment support by Klimatklivet, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency’s investment support agency, for the construction of a 2MW hydrogen plant in Ljungby, Småland, expected to be operational in the autumn of 2023.
The Danish Business Authority has announced the provision of so-called Important Projects of Common European Interest (IPCEI) funding of K850m for two consortia, led by members of Hydrogen Denmark. The Green Fuels for Denmark project, led by Ørsted, is for a 1GW Power-to-X electrolysis plant utilising wind power to produce hydrogen-based fuels for aviation and shipping. The second project HySynergy 2.0, led by Everfuel, is a 300MW plant to produce hydrogen for Crossbridge Energy’s refinery and also for heavy transport applications. The EU Commission’s Directorate for Competition has to approve the funding by end-2021 or early 2022.
Neste’s green hydrogen and carbon capture and storage project at its Porvoo refinery in Finland has received €88m support from the EU Innovation Fund.
Swiss renewable energy company H2 Energy Europe is to build what is claimed to be Europe’s largest green hydrogen Power-to-X plant near Esbjerg, Demark, to utilise offshore wind energy to produce green hydrogen for powering trucks and other heavy land-based transport. The facility will have two plants and is forecast to come onstream as early as 2024.
US hydrogen technology provider Plug Power is partnering with French green hydrogen producer Lhyfe to develop up 300MW of hydrogen production throughout Europe by 2025 and to begin development of a 1GW production site.
Air Products is investing $4.5bn in a clean energy complex to be built near Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The facility, Air Products largest-ever US investment, will produce blue hydrogen from natural gas, with completion in 2026. The hydrogen will supply the world’s longest hydrogen pipeline network stretching from Galveston Bay, Texas, in the west to New Orleans in the east, as well as a blue ammonia plant to be built on the site using Haldor Topsoe technology. Haldor Topsoe is also supplying its SynCOR blue hydrogen technology to Air Products complex in Alberta, Canada.
UK-based Atome Energy has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Itaipu Binational Technology Park in Paraguay for a 50MW green hydrogen and ammonia production facility to be located adjacent to the Itaipu hydroelectric dam by end-2024. The plan includes a gradual production increase to 250MW. Atome plans a similar project in Iceland.
We have experienced false starts before with hydrogen, so we can’t take success for granted.
Fatih Birol Executive Director, IEA
Europe’s largest producer
Petrochemical major Ineos already produces and uses 400,000t/year of hydrogen and claims to be Europe’s largest existing operator of electrolysis and renewable power to produce hydrogen. The company has also recently announced an investment of over €2bn into electrolysis projects through its Inovyn subsidiary to produce green hydrogen across Europe (See box).
Ineos Automotive has already produced a hydrogen fuel cell demonstrator of its Grenadier 4x4 vehicle now in development, which will be on test in 2022, alongside an electric version. The company has also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Wrightbus, based in Northern Ireland, to work together on the deployment of hydrogen for transportation applications. Wrightbus has already developed what is claimed to be the world’s first hydrogen-powered double decker bus.
The UK’s largest blue hydrogen facility has been proposed by BP for construction in Teesside. The H2Teesside project has a target of 1GW of hydrogen production by 2030, representing around 20% of the UK’s hydrogen target. The facility will capture and send for storage up to 2m t of CO2/year. The final investment decision will be taken in early 2024, with 500MW of production starting in 2027 or earlier. Memoranda of Understanding have been agreed with Venator, the global producer of TiO2 pigments and performance additives, to scope the supply of clean hydrogen to its Teesside plant, and Northern Gas Networks, to initiate work into decarbonising UK gas networks.
BP will also support the development of the UK’s first hydrogen transport hub, having agreed a MoU with Tees Valley Combined Authority to explore the potential for green hydrogen. In 2020, BP and Ørsted signed a Letter of Intent for a project in Germany covering the industrial-scale production of green hydrogen.
Meanwhile, aircraft manufacturer Airbus says it is ready to begin production of a hydrogen-powered commercial passenger aircraft by 2030, although it is convinced that 2035 is ‘fair and realistic perspective’ for a hydrogen aircraft to come into operation. Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury says he is confident that the company will be able to tackle the complex challenges, including safety, but also warns that state and regulatory support will be required. Certainty about legislation and the availability of hydrogen as a fuel by 2027/8 will be needed before the company could decide to invest in a hydrogen aircraft programme.
Technology update
Johnson Matthey has agreed a MoU with Germany’s Hoeller Electrolyzer covering collaboration to provide catalyst coated membranes for Hoeller’s Prometheus range of proton exchange membrane (PEM) stacks for green hydrogen production.
Researchers at the University of Crete and Toyota Motor Europe have improved the hydrogen storage profile of Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs) for automotive applications using machine learning (Int. J. Hydrogen Energy, 2021, 46, (54), 5.27612). Fuel tanks containing hydrogen bound to MOFs may require lower pressure than tanks of pure hydrogen. The researchers investigated 58 benzene-based functionalised linkers that can be used to produce MOFs and calculated the hydrogen-MOF binding energy using computational chemistry. One saw a hydrogen interaction of 80%, compared with other levels of 15-25%. The findings were used to develop a model using machine learning to predict binding energy for future MOF development.
Meanwhile, India’s Reliance Industries subsidiary, Reliance New Energy Solar (RNESL) has partnered with Denmark’s Stiesdal to develop and manufacture hydrogen electrolysers.
Swedish multinational technology company Semcon is collaborating with Norwegian company Hystar, a producer of PEM electrolysers, to develop new technology for hydrogen production. The project aims to increase the amount of hydrogen that can be produced through electrolysis by over 150%, compared with current electrolyser technology – without using more energy. The new generation of electrolysers contain new component design concepts, making it possible to scale production.
Two Danish companies Pureteq, a designer of scrubber systems, and Estech, an engineering and development concern, have developed a plant that combines CO2 capture and hydrogen production. It preserves energy and makes it financially viable for smaller companies to capture their CO2 emissions. The Estech CCCH2 system (Combined Carbon Capture and Hydrogen) is based on CO2 scrubbing in a high efficiency scrubber tower, and electrochemical separation of CO2 + O2 and Hydrogen from the scrubber wash-water. It is already running a pilot scale unit, cleaning the exhaust gases of a power-plant of CO2, with co-production of hydrogen. Only electricity is required to operate the system, as opposed to the commonly used amine process, which requires a significant amount of heat energy.
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