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AsiaElec COMMENTARY AsiaElec
IRENA conference turns focus on to green hydrogen
Green hydrogen needs to build on its political and business momentum if it is to beat fossil fuel-derived hydrogen on cost within five years, writes Richard Lockhart
GLOBAL
WHAT:
Green hydrogen could undercut fossil fuel- sourced hydrogen in five years
WHY:
Technology development, falling solar and wind costs and political support will make it cheaper alternative for boosting decarbonisation
WHAT NEXT:
Government needs create a more friendly regulatory and investment environment for green hydrogen projects
IRENA’S 10th Assembly in Abu Dhabi has pin- pointed green hydrogen as a key accelerator of the energy transition and a major tool in decar- bonising the world economy.
The assembly’s ministerial round table heard that green hydrogen, or hydrogen produced using renewable power, could be the cheapest form of the gas within five years.
Continued technical development and scal- ing up manufacturing would halve the cost of the fuel in the coming decades, making it competi- tive with fossil fuel-based methods of producing hydrogen and boosting the gas’ attractiveness as a fuel for industry and domestic consumption.
Political momentum
“Green hydrogen is gaining unprecedented political and business momentum, with a num- ber of policies and projects expanding rapidly around the world”, said IRENA’s director-gen- eral, Francesco La Camera, at the opening.
“Hydrogen can help overcome many difficult energy challenges. It can decarbonise hard-to- abate sectors like steel, chemicals, trucks, ships and planes. Hydrogen can also enhance energy security by diversifying the fuel mix and provid- ing flexibility to balance grids,” said Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Technology
Green hydrogen is produced by electrolysis of water using renewables power such as wind or solar. IRENA’s 2019 report on hydrogen pointed out that 95% of hydrogen currently used in
industry was produced by a process called steam methane reforming, which emits 8-11 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of hydrogen produced.
The report found that falling wind and solar costs would make electrolysis projects at the most favourable locations competitive with hydrogen produced from natural gas with car- bon capture and storage (CCS) – so-called blue hydrogen – within five years.
As well as costs, another attraction of hydro- gen is that it can be burned by itself as a fuel – especially transport – or mixed with natural gas in existing pipeline networks for use by industry and domestic heating. It can also be injected into a fuel cell to generate electricity.
When hydrogen is itself burned, it only pro- duces water vapour, again reducing emissions.
The IRENA’s claims build on the IEA’s June 2019 report on the future of hydrogen, which found that the major economies needed to scale up technologies and bring down costs to allow hydrogen to become widely used.
It found that 75% of the world’s 2018 hydro- gen production of 70mn tonnes was sourced from natural gas, with the rest from coal and other fossil fuels. Only 0.1% of hydrogen came from renewables, such as electrolysis of water.
Cost wise, green hydrogen is still more expensive than fossil fuel-sourced hydrogen, with IEA figures for 2018 putting green hydro- gen at $3-7.5 per kg, compared with $0.9-3.2 per kg for gas.
What this means is that the falling costs of solar and wind are needed to make hydrogen competitive. IEA analysis finds that the cost of
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w w w. N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 02 15 •January•2020