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Green hydrogen: the eternal fuel that lights up a new era

2021-05-23T04:12:19.741Z


This gas is called to be a key piece in the energy transition. Spain aspires to produce 10% of the EU and develop the entire supply chain


Photoelectrocatalysis plant for hydrogen production at the Repsol Technology Lab.

“A new energy system is being born that has the potential to radically reshape civilization.

Hydrogen is the most basic and ubiquitous element in the universe.

It is the material of the stars and of our Sun and, when it is used properly, it will be the eternal fuel ”.

This was written by the American sociologist Jeremy Rifkin 20 years ago in the book The Hydrogen Economy.

What happened next?

Nothing.

Nor did anything happen when the oil crisis of the 1970s caused certain countries to start talking about the subject with remarkable enthusiasm.

Now, however, the world - and particularly Europe - cherishes the dream of obtaining an infinite fuel that does not produce emissions and whose residue is only water vapor.

More information

  • Time for green hydrogen

Are you sure this time will be different? Different yes, although perhaps not so bright. It is true that the EU has already lost many trains to lead disruptive technologies in the field of energy (from the electric car to solar panels) and this time it seems that there is someone in command of the ship to promote this gas as a transversal and common strategy to the whole continent. In any case, the starting reality has a grayish color: 95% of the 120 million tons of hydrogen that are produced right now on the planet are generated from fossil fuels (mainly through a process called steam reforming of methane from natural gas). This hydrogen produces between 9 and 11 tons of CO2 for every kilo obtained (between 70 and 100 million tons of CO2 in the EU alone).It is mainly used in oil refining and in the manufacture of ammonia-based fertilizers. It is, therefore, a product that generates pollution quite cheap: between 0.7 and 2.2 euros per kilo, according to the calculations compiled by Natixis.

In the long run, everyone knows that continuing to produce in this way is not an option. To achieve decarbonisation targets - Europe wants to be emissions neutral by 2050 - countries have begun to encourage the production of so-called blue hydrogen (which emits greenhouse gases that are captured and stored) and, above all, green, obtained through electrolysis, a process that applies an electrical current to divide water into hydrogen and oxygen. If that current comes from 100% renewable energies, the resulting product is completely clean.

That hydrogen can be compressed and transported.

It can be liquefied (at a cost) and stored for weeks or months, so it could be a lever to build up reserves when the sun is shining or the wind blows and use them later.

But we must not forget, as

The Economist

recounts

,

that ultimately hydrogen is just electricity in disguise.

And also very expensive: green is produced at prices that can reach 7.30 euros per kilo and usually do not go below 4 euros, which makes it uncompetitive.

Because it is not a primary fuel, it is produced from another element, usually with overwhelming energy losses during the process, and it is very expensive to transport.

Supply chain

The supply chain for its use is complex, it needs a legal framework that currently does not exist or is incipient. In return, it has a few advantages. The fundamental is that it burns. “I can make a barbecue with hydrogen”, illustrates Javier Brey, president of the Spanish Hydrogen Association. A barbecue that also does not pollute, because it only generates water vapor. As José Ignacio Zudaire, coordinator of the Basque Hydrogen Corridor, tells us, thanks to him in the future it will be possible to better manage electrical systems. Or, as Fernando Espiga, head of energy transition at the Tecnalia technology center, says, it is the opportunity to decarbonise sectors that need a large amount of energy, such as the steel production industry, the high temperature processes of ceramics, maritime transport. ,the air or the long distance. With an advantage: hydrogen is great in the so-called "anxiety range" for trucks, since it minimizes the waiting times for refills during a journey (it works practically like diesel) and allows autonomies of more than 1,000 kilometers. Very comparable to what you can have with diesel, and it is not at all clear, according to the dozen experts consulted, that short-distance transport in conventional vehicles is going to be a good idea, although car manufacturers such as Toyota have already launched models -The Mirai can be purchased from 69,000 euros.Very comparable to what you can have with diesel, and it is not at all clear, according to the dozen experts consulted, that short-distance transport in conventional vehicles is going to be a good idea, although car manufacturers such as Toyota have already launched models -The Mirai can be purchased from 69,000 euros.Very comparable to what you can have with diesel, and it is not at all clear, according to the dozen experts consulted, that short-distance transport in conventional vehicles is going to be a good idea, although car manufacturers such as Toyota have already launched models -The Mirai can be purchased from 69,000 euros.

Be that as it may, this time yes, it has come to stay. The reason, beyond the laudable purposes of curbing climate change, is, as always, money: "Now it competes against [natural] gas prices, but the price of CO2 emissions will balance costs" , says Jaime Martín Juez, corporate director of technology and corporate venture at Repsol. That is the fundamental data: the cost of carbon dioxide emission rights closed 2020 at an average of 24.70 euros, according to the Sendeco2 platform. This week it was already trading at 49.50 euros per ton and it is expected to continue to skyrocket. If it continues to grow at that rate, soon the industries that pay to pollute will see a lot of pressure on their bottom line and will have to resort to slightly more expensive, but clean, alternatives.

On the other hand, it is assumed that, as with renewables, hydrogen technology will become more and more affordable as investments increase. In the words of Millán García-Tola, Iberdrola's global director of hydrogen, the open door for green hydrogen lies in the replacement of gray, and for this, project subsidies should “achieve equalization of costs and accelerate the industrialization of hydrogen production green".

The strategy that Brussels presented to Parliament last summer to achieve a climate-neutral continent speaks of those fantastic possibilities. “Many indicators show that we are currently near a tipping point. New investment plans are announced every week, often on a gigawatt scale. Between November 2019 and March 2020, market analysts increased the list of anticipated global investments from 3.2 GW to 8.2 GW of electrolyzers by 2030 (of which 57% are projected in Europe) and the number of companies that have joined the Hydrogen Council has gone from 13 in 2017 to 92 today ”. A McKinsey report points out that at the beginning of this year some 30 countries already had their own roadmap on the matter, including Spain. Bruno Esgalhado,partner of the firm in Madrid, believes that the European response will depend on each state. “People talk a lot about green hydrogen, very suitable for Spain or Portugal, rich in sun and wind. But it makes perfect sense for northern countries, which have access to very cheap natural gas, to explore blue hydrogen. The ideal solution is a mixture of the two ”.

The industry has designed more than 200 large projects globally, the majority in Europe, and all the governments of the world have committed 57,000 million euros in public funds to stimulate their industries in the year of the pandemic.

The projected numbers are even more gigantic. Cumulative investments in renewable hydrogen in Europe could reach between 180,000 and 470,000 million by 2050, with one million people directly or indirectly employed in the sector. Clean hydrogen could cover 24% of the world's energy demand by 2050, with annual sales of 630 billion euros. They are phrases with many conditionals, although they are limited in small intermediate goals. The first is to install at least six gigawatts of renewable hydrogen electrolyzers in the EU by 2024 to produce one million tonnes of clean gas and 40 gigawatts by 2030 to generate 10 million tonnes. A chimera? It can, because again reality is light years away from the objective:The 300 small electrolyzers currently in operation on the continent produce only 4% of the gas that is used (which amounts to 9.4 million tons in total). In short, hardly anything.

National overview

Spain, which has set itself to cover 10% of the Community objective, right now does not produce even a kilo of green hydrogen on an industrial scale. A panorama that is expected to change in 2024 so that there are between 300 and 600 megawatts in electrolyzers linked to the production of wind or photovoltaic parks. The 500,000 tons of hydrogen that are manufactured in the country each year come from gas reforming. 75% are consumed by Repsol for refining and the rest go to the chemical industry, basically to the poles of Huelva and Catalonia. That CO2 is lead in the wings of a sector that has a gigantic challenge ahead. “For the first time we have a framework that provides stability in the medium and long term. One in three tons of CO2 will not be able to be emitted in 2030 ”, recalled Sara Aagesen, Secretary of State for Energy,in a forum held a couple of weeks ago at the Association of Economic Information Journalists (APIE). "Last year we approved a document (the National Hydrogen Strategy) because we understand that we can have a leadership position." Its ambition is to act throughout the renewable hydrogen value chain, "to have the capacity to manufacture electrolyzers, compressors, a sectoral integration so that SMEs benefit."a sectoral integration so that SMEs benefit ”.a sectoral integration so that SMEs benefit ”.

The range of colors

Green: generated by electrolysis powered by renewable electricity.


Blue: its production is based on fossil fuels but with captured CO2 emissions.


Gray: made with fossil gas, the most common.


Black: made with carbon.


Brown: made with lignite.


Turquoise - Heat is used to split fossil gas in a process known as "pyrolysis."


Purple, pink or yellow - based on electricity and heat generated by nuclear reactors, but there is no widely accepted color for such methods.

25% of the industrial consumption that is now fed by polluting gas in Spain should come from renewable sources in 2030, a year in which 150 buses, 5,000 light and heavy vehicles and 2 train lines powered with this fuel should circulate. There should also be about 100 hydropower plants and machinery powered in this way in the country's five main ports and airports. In a first phase, 1.55 billion public funds will make this possible, and the industry seems very committed. 502 projects have been presented to be eligible for aid in Spain. Iberdrola, Enagás, Endesa, Repsol, Naturgy, Acciona, Talgo or CAF are the protagonists of large initiatives involving downstream suppliers. "Hydrogen valleys" are projected in Castilla y León or Catalonia. The most cutting-edge technology centers,Like the Aragón Hydrogen Foundation, they work on various lines. In the Basque Country the Hydrogen Corridor has been forged, which unites 78 organizations grouped under Petronor that are going to invest 1,300 million and produce 20,000 tons per year. Naturgy and Enagás work in a factory of 9,000 tons a year in León. Iberdrola, with 53 proposals submitted to the Next Generation funds in this fuel alone, believes that it will be able to cover 20% of the national objective and in one year expects to launch a large European complex for industrial use in Puertollano. CAF heads a consortium that is developing with European funds the prototype of the first hydrogen train in Spain, which will be underway next year. Endesa has 23 electrolysis projects from As Pontes (A Coruña) to Teruel or Tarragona.And the list adds up and continues in a fever that has even reached education, with the announcement this week of the first master's degree on the subject promoted by Repsol and Petronor in five universities.

It happens when there is an explosion of public funds. All the companies that visited the Ministry of Ecological Transition these months, as acknowledged by Aagesen, “want to have a PERTE”, an acronym for a strategic project for economic recovery and transformation, “but the point is to identify flagship initiatives. There will be total transparency in the aid, the criteria will be known by all the agents ”, says the person in charge. The ministry is also considering making pre-commercial public purchases in order to develop electrolysers made in Spain. Sener and Petronor, for example, already have an agreement to manufacture them in Bizkaia in 2022.

The question is whether it is feasible to develop a chain of suppliers that compete internationally on this issue. “We have companies that are very capable of doing it,” replies Nora Castañeda, director of new technologies at Sener Energía. Rafael Calvera has spent his entire life dedicated to gases for industrial use from his company Calvera H2, supplying the equipment needed to distribute and dispense hydrogen: from compression stations, trucks or hydrogenerators. “We see that there is an important field to grow in engineering. Our first projects were in northern Europe, on two islands in the Scottish Orkney that obtain gas from wind energy. We compress it and transport it to the main island by ferry ”. They are also responsible for the hydrogeneration plant in Manoteras (Madrid) and are planning others."We are at the dawn of what is going to be a road without brakes," he sums up, and insists on how important it is for Spain to develop electrolyzer technology. "In the rest of the chain there is a lot to do."

More information

  • European aid catapults hydrogen

Another of the technologies that will be essential is compression, and there Spain also has some leading companies. Hiperbaric has been working on high-pressure technology to eliminate bacteria from food for 20 years and they see hydrogen as a challenging enough opportunity for their research to have something to contribute. Andrés Hernando, its CEO, explains that it is a gas with a high energy density by mass, but small by volume. "Its molecule weighs very little, it is the lightest in the periodic table." So you have to compress it to very high pressures: in hydropower plants, at 800 or 900 bars, “a challenge for us”. So they decided to develop hydrogen compression technology, a way to take advantage of it that they see better than liquefying gas,because for the second you need to bring it to 253 degrees below zero. "That is more energetically expensive than compressing it."

Rivers of aid

In historical moments like this, daunting risks also surface. It happened in the past with European funds that were squandered on dilapidated infrastructure, such as desalination plants or roads that led nowhere. Will Spain be able to end up with a bunch of expensive and useless green hydrogen factories? "I think the projects in Spain are thought out, limited," says the McKinsey partner. Antonio Llardén, president of Enagás, explains that Europe does not want the transport of this fuel to involve an extraordinary investment. "It is expected that in 2040 three quarters of the hydrogen produced will circulate through existing networks and the rest through networks created expressly". Jaime Martín Judge is clear that for projects to take off they must have previously tied the demand."Starting to produce without being clear about what you are going to use that hydrogen for or what it is going to replace makes the development of that ecosystem of technologists and technologies more difficult."

In addition, national companies are betting on a very practical approach: providing a renewable source to the industry that already uses this gas.

"There is no other, because Germany will do its homework, and what we do not want is to find that in 20 years they say that we have to close steel or iron factories because they did not put the batteries with the emissions", analyzes a Basque businessman who ask for anonymity.

So the most difficult sectors to electrify will be the first to embrace that technology, but there are still many doubts about the supports and the efficiency of all those grandiose plans.

If in the past it failed in its attempt to bring down an entire fossil fuel-based system, at least now hydrogen has a small window open for Rifkin's promise to be fulfilled.

"The house begins with the roof"

"A lot of smoke is being sold, the house is starting from the roof." The warning is made from Greenpeace by José Luis García, head of the Climate Change Program. It considers demand management, electrification of the system, efficiency improvements and the implementation of large-scale renewables more urgent than the promotion of new energy. "We use electricity to produce hydrogen, but there are other solutions to store it much simpler", such as hydraulic pumping or batteries. He criticizes that it is precisely the companies that live on fossil fuels that are the standard bearers of the new trend. "They seek to make the investments they already have profitable, but if that entails extending the life of the gas, we will have a problem." Without being so pessimistic, David Valle,who was director general of Industry of the Community of Madrid, raises the question about water. Obtaining hydrogen is made from the liquid element "and Spain is a dry country." He does the math and believes that with the 2030 goals the country will need about 12 million cubic meters of water a year to produce it, which is equivalent to the consumption of 245,000 Spaniards. Javier Brey, president of the Spanish Hydrogen Association, recalls that water ends up returning to the atmosphere and that the equivalent of 50 times more is lost just by wasting the network.which is equivalent to the consumption of 245,000 Spaniards. Javier Brey, president of the Spanish Hydrogen Association, recalls that water ends up returning to the atmosphere and that the equivalent of 50 times more is lost just by wasting the network.which is equivalent to the consumption of 245,000 Spaniards. Javier Brey, president of the Spanish Hydrogen Association, recalls that water ends up returning to the atmosphere and that the equivalent of 50 times more is lost just by wasting the network.

A shower of millions in proposals

Before we begin, let the reader know that here you will find hydrogen projects from a compilation that does not pretend to be exhaustive because it would be endless. Each of the 502 presented to the Government is represented by a company, but behind it drags hundreds of SMEs, universities and technology centers. Nor will they all succeed. Many will overlap, others will decline due to lack of aid, others will be unfeasible or will not make sense strategically speaking. The important thing, according to the president of the Spanish Association of the sector, Javier Brey, is that the proposals have exceeded all the objectives to be able to qualify for the 1,550 million public funds, "the sad thing would have been that there was no interest". The challenge is to ensure that these plans reach a safe port, and that they do so throughout the territory and for the entire chain,from multinationals to micro-companies. And, above all, that they get Spain to dominate the technology of electrolysers with capacities to manufacture 100 megawatt equipment, currently non-existent —now the standard does not exceed 20—.


Iberdrola, Endesa and Naturgy plan to mobilize investments of 53,000 million euros in 360 projects. And Repsol adds up to 2,900 million in theirs from now until 2026. In the case of Iberdrola, it adds an investment of several billion to install electrolyzers and create some 5,000 jobs through 500 local suppliers. It wants to act in four areas: fertilizers, mobility, industrial projects and cogeneration, with fifty companies as partners in 15 autonomous communities. In Puertollano (Ciudad Real), its complex will have a photovoltaic plant, a lithium-ion battery system and one of the largest hydrogen production systems through electrolysis (20 MW). From there and from Palos de la Frontera (Huelva) ammonia will be supplied to Fertiberia for the manufacture of fertilizer.Tomorrow, Monday, it will announce a new agreement with the North American company Cummins on the subject.


Endesa associates its goals with 2,000 megawatts of renewables. Its most advanced plan is in As Pontes (A Coruña), where there will be a 100 MW electrolyzer and six related wind farms whose construction entails the creation of some 1,600 jobs and which will be operational for 20 years. For this you need to invest 738 million.


Rafael González, the company's generation director, summarizes that, together, they propose some 300 megawatts of electrolysers, half of the goal for the entire country in the short term. “Since there is no experience in projects at this scale, we want them to be representative of a certain technology and that they can then be scaled. The important thing is that they are efficient and green ”. They will act in areas where coal plants are closing, in places where there is demand for hydrogen for direct application (refineries, ammonia plants, fertilizers, ethanol, metallurgical plants) and on the islands, where they see the possibility of substituting fossil gas consumption for biofuels. Enagás is also in Mallorca with a project that has received financial support from the European Union. Together with Acciona, Cemex, Redexis and 30 partners from 11 countries,They are going to set up a plant in Lloseta that will produce 330 tons per year for use in buses in Palma de Mallorca, injection into the gas network (where it can be combined, without major technical problems, up to 10% with conventional gas) and for generate electricity in fuel cells for public buildings and the port.


At Repsol, its lines range from the manufacture of biofuels from waste (from plastic to cardboard or organic matter), the capture and use of CO2 for synthetic biofuels and renewable hydrogen to reach 400 megawatts of production in 2025 and 1,2 gigas in 2030. In Bilbao and with Saudi Aramco, they will build a factory of synthetic fuels with zero emissions capturing CO2 from the Petronor refinery and using hydrogen produced with renewable electricity. Another of its lines is the development of the first 100 megawatt alkaline electrolyzer in Europe. And perhaps the most curious is in photoelectrocatalysis, where they work with Enagás on a technology to produce hydrogen from sunlight, without going through electricity, directly on the panels.


In the so-called Basque Hydrogen Corridor there will be 650 million for production, 250 to develop technology and 50 to investigate applications in mobility, the residential sector and the industry. It involves 8 institutions, 12 knowledge centers and 58 companies. An electrolyzer factory, the development of the fuel cell, hydrogenerators and the hydrogen train are its main lines. In the first phase, until 2026, the production of clean gas should reach 20,000 tons per year to avoid the emission of 1.5 million tons of carbon dioxide.


Naturgy, for its part, considers investment estimates of 3,870 million in hydrogen and biomethane. In addition to its plant in La Robla (León), which will be associated with a photovoltaic plant with a 60 megawatt electrolyzer to cover local consumption, it wants to promote hydrogen and oxygen factories to use them in industrial processes. In Valencia he is studying with the ceramic sector to introduce clean energy into kilns. And in the port of Valencia he will use it to propel cranes.

Source: elparis

All business articles on 2021-05-23

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