Energy

Europe, Asian Nations Leading The World In Hydrogen Development


As the nations of the world turn to hydrogen as part of the solution to staving off the worst impacts of climate change, the European Union is leading the charge, followed by many nations of Asia, with North America trailing behind in its embrace of the clean-burning fuel.

According to Hydrogen Insights, a report issued last month by the Hydrogen Council and McKinsey & Company, of the 228 large-scale industrial, transport and infrastructure hydrogen projects across the world more than half, 126,  are projected to be located in Europe, while 46 are planned to be built in Asia, 24 in Oceania and only 19 in North America.

These projects represent a potential investment of $300 billion, the equivalent of 1.4% of global energy funding. The momentum for much of this potential investment in hydrogen is coming from nations whose governments have committed to meeting zero-carbon emission goals.

According to the report, “75 countries representing over half the world’s GDP have net-zero carbon ambitions and more than 30 have hydrogen-specific strategies.”

Last July, the EU Commission adopted the EU Hydrogen strategy, which calls for the adoption of technologies for the production and use of renewable or “green” hydrogen as a way to help the Continent meet its goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.

Between November 2019 and March 2020, estimates of planned global investments by 2030 in electrolyzers, used in the production of green hydrogen, jumped from 3.2 GW to 8.2 GW, with 57% of those investments planned to take place in Europe.

According to the strategy, today “hydrogen represents a modest fraction of the global and EU energy mix, and is still largely produced from fossil fuels, notably from natural gas or from coal.” Thus, hydrogen production in Europe currently results in the release of 70 million to 100 million metric tons of CO₂ per year. “For hydrogen to contribute to climate neutrality, it needs to achieve a far larger scale and its production must become fully decarbonized,” the strategy states.

The EU projects that the share of hydrogen in Europe’s energy mix will grow from less than 2% currently to between 13% and 14% by 2050.

EU’s climate goals driving hydrogen investment

The pro-hydrogen policies adopted by the EU and by individual European nations, notably Germany, are creating the conditions for that part of the world to become the global leader in the emerging hydrogen energy industry.

“What we see in the European Union is the regulatory support,” Christin Schlensog, vice president of new energy business in North America for Siemens Energy. “That’s important to really give it a kick-start.”

She pointed to the 6MW H2Future plant, the world’s largest green-hydrogen production facility located at the site of steel maker Voestalpine’s mill in Linz, Austria, which started operation in November 2019. The hydrogen plant, which operates a Siemens polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) electrolyzer, uses renewable electricity provided by Austrian utility Verbund to create green hydrogen, which Voestalpine uses in the production of low-carbon steel.

“We focus on PEM because it’s a green hydrogen. You just use water and electricity. You don’t have any chemicals in the system,” Schlensog said.

Developing a new hydrogen-energy economy represents the classic chicken-and-egg problem involved in the introduction of any new technology, she said. Hydrogen project developers require a demand for their product before spending the capital to build costly plants, but the demand will not be generated without an ample supply to fill it.

“The technology is still rather expensive,” Schlensog said. “You need a certain number of projects just to increase production; the increased production decreases the cost. But of, course the projects are looking for the lower costs, so who moves first?”

Daryl Wilson, executive director of the Hydrogen Council, said that in both Europe and in China “there’s a very strong focus on the business opportunity of introducing new clean energy sources to the world and growing those markets and the production of hydrogen.”

In Europe, where the adoption of a hydrogen energy industry is being driven by “a very strong political movement in support of mitigating climate change and reducing CO₂ emissions,” he said.

“The other driver is air quality. That’s the situation in China, where a lot of their energy is coming from coal,” Wilson said. “There, the use of hydrogen to mitigate air quality issues has been a big focus.”

As the hydrogen energy industry has taken root and grown in different regions across the world, a pattern has emerged, he said. “Initially, the industry comes forward with a road map of how hydrogen could be done. When those road maps become a strategy within a country, now you have multiple stakeholder input and involvement of the government,” he said.

The next step occurs when the countries establish specific targets for hydrogen production and usage, and the industry responds by proposing specific projects and seeking funding for those projects. “There are quite a number of countries in that leading stage where there’s a strategy, there are targets and substantial funding: China, Korea, Japan, the European Union, and within the EU, France and German and Spain,” Wilson said.



READ NEWS SOURCE

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you accept our use of cookies.