Which sectors are most suited to hydrogen, and which are not? For the answer, six academics from the UK and the Netherlands - Tom Baxter, Ernst Worrell, Hu Li, Petra de Jongh, Stephen Carr, and Valeska Ting – use their areas of expertise to neatly summarise hydrogen’s pros and cons in Road and Rail, Aviation, Heating, Electricity and Energy Storage, and Heavy Industry. Their general message seems clear: hydrogen is still very expensive, so it can … [Read more...]
Green or Blue Hydrogen: cost analysis uncovers which is best for the Hydrogen Economy
Blue hydrogen is created from fossil sources, where the carbon emissions are captured and stored. Green hydrogen is made from non-fossil sources and favoured by policy makers who are wary of keeping the fossil economy going, even with CCS. As more regions commit to hydrogen, finding the right cost-optimal mix is crucial to its success. Schalk Cloete summarises his paper that models the whole system based on Germany. Integrating hydrogen will … [Read more...]
How will China build its Hydrogen economy?
What are China’s hydrogen prospects? That’s the question Kevin Tu at the IFRI Center for Energy & Climate attempts to answer in a report that he summarises here. He points at the growing number of policies that show China is taking hydrogen very seriously. China wants to expand production as well as build up end uses in transport, steel and cement manufacturing, and storage. The main drivers are the Covid pandemic, energy security, the … [Read more...]
Will Saudi Arabia build the world’s largest green hydrogen and ammonia plant?
The Gulf is already a major producer and consumer of hydrogen, mainly for fertilisers and specialty chemicals. Like most hydrogen produced globally, it is the ‘grey’ kind made from hydrocarbons. But the region’s low renewable power costs and abundance of land give it the key components for the industrial scale production of green hydrogen. So in July, the Saudi model city of Neom (Neom means “new future”) and ACWA Power signed a joint venture … [Read more...]
Who will be the Hydrogen superpower? The EU or China
Implicit in the EU’s plans, announced in July, to be the world’s Hydrogen leader is that this technology will have others competing for the top spot too. When EU nations ramped up their solar PV sector in the 2000s they couldn’t survive the arrival and rapid expansion of Chinese production. Will EU Hydrogen meet the same fate? Sören Amelang at CLEW speaks to a wide range of experts to try to answer this vital question from all the relevant … [Read more...]
Hydrogen, Renewables and Open Borders [VIDEO]
![Hydrogen, Renewables and Open Borders [VIDEO]](https://energypost.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Hydrogen-featured-150x99.jpg)
On July 15th 2020, Energy Post hosted an online panel discussion with Dr. Florian Ermacora (European Commission), Professor Ad van Wijk (TU Delft), Marcel Steinbach (BDEW) and Giulia Branzi (SNAM). At the event, video recording below, readers heard a summary of the proposals for Europe's new Hydrogen and Sector Integration strategies direct form the Commission, insights from van Wijk on how supply will come as much from outside as from within the … [Read more...]
Europe’s new Hydrogen Strategy: the questions that still need answering
Yesterday saw the launch of the EC’s new Hydrogen Strategy, the focus of our next live online discussion and Q&A. Register now to join us at the event next Wednesday at 12.45 CEST on Zoom to hear direct from the European Commission's Dr. Florian Ermacora, Future Energy System expert Prof. dr. Ad van Wijk, Giulia Branzi - Head of Regulation at event partner SNAM and trading specialist Marcel Steinbach of BDEW. Here, to set the scene, Gökçe … [Read more...]
Energy conversion for Hydrogen cars is only half that for BEVs
Though Toyota may be a big fan, hydrogen cars have a problem. Energy must move from wire to gas to wire to power the car. There are always significant losses when the energy vector changes. For Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV) the energy stays on wires all the way to the car. Tom Baxter at the University of Aberdeen looks at the losses at each stage to show that for hydrogen only 38% of the original electricity gets used. For BEVs it’s 80%. … [Read more...]
An EU Hydrogen strategy: from industry feedstock to energy vector
The bravest recovery strategies will invest robustly in new yet-to-take-off clean energy technologies. If you are going to have to spend hundreds of billions to revive your economy isn’t it better to replace the old with the new rather than prop up what you’ll have to abandon soon anyway? In anticipation of that happening, new technologies are lining up. Here, Cédric Philibert at the IFRI Centre for Energy & Climate summarises their detailed … [Read more...]
Two new designs, GSR and MA-ATR, to make “blue” Hydrogen cheaper
What’s the best way to make clean hydrogen? Steam Methane Reforming (SMR) is the most common and cheapest way of producing hydrogen, but it also produces CO2 emissions. Capturing that CO2 is complex and costly. Schalk Cloete presents research on two new designs for “blue” hydrogen (blue = derived from natural gas/coal with carbon capture/CCS). He describes in detail Gas Switching Reforming (GSR) and Membrane-Assisted Autothermal Reforming … [Read more...]
Gas Switching Reforming: making Hydrogen to balance variable Wind, Solar
What is the best technology to balance the variable output of wind and solar? When there is little wind and sun the plant must produce power to compensate. When there’s too much wind and sun it must utilise that excess power. In other words, given the high capital cost of the new balancing technology it must do both profitably enough to cover the time sitting idle. A paper co-authored by Schalk Cloete looks at Gas Switching Reforming (GSR). The … [Read more...]
CCUS, nuclear, industrial heat, hydrogen, smart grids: “large unit” innovation needs more support
How do we accelerate innovation across all technologies? Simon Bennett at the IEA breaks down the task into “small unit” and “large unit” challenges. The first is easier and moves faster. Thanks to their small size and unit cost, heat pumps, EVs and solar panels benefit from mass production, mass deployment (100,000 to 100m units/year globally) and large customer markets with fierce competition. They can also easily leverage other fast-evolving … [Read more...]
Hydrogen’s future: reducing costs, finding markets
Although 100Mt/year of hydrogen is produced globally and at scale, it’s overwhelmingly for the chemical industry. So there’s a long way to go for it to play a role in the energy transition. It’s not even clear whether hydrogen will be best used directly as a power source or through further conversion into other powerfuels. That's why Dolf Gielen and Emanuele Taibi at IRENA are scoping out the challenges of reducing production costs and finding … [Read more...]
Hydrogen electrolysis: cheap, abundant Cobalt Phosphide can replace Platinum
Platinum and iridium are the preferred catalysts for producing hydrogen through electrolysis at scale. But they are expensive and rare, offering serious bottlenecks in hydrogen’s plans to replace gas worldwide. Now researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have shown for the first time that cobalt phosphide can do the same job in the harsh environment of a commercial device: high … [Read more...]
Hydrogen Fuel Cell trucks can decarbonise heavy transport
Patrick Molloy at Rocky Mountain Institute runs through the pros and cons of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (FCEVs). The big pluses are that hydrogen has an energy density of around 120 MJ/kg, almost three times more than diesel or gasoline. Half the energy generated by an internal combustion engine is wasted as heat, whereas electric drivetrains used by FCEVs only lose 10%. Nikola Motors, a U.S. maker of hydrogen trucks, claims its vehicles can get … [Read more...]
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