Climate Perspectives™ magazine | Zero Emissions, Unachievable without Clean Hydrogen says Nadim Chaudhry
Climate Perspectives™ magazine | Nadim Chaudhry, Chief Executive, World Hydrogen Leaders > As Green Power Global we have worked since 2003 in accelerating the energy transition to combat the obvious, clear climate impacts that were baked into the existing unsustainable energy system. Initially we focused on Carbon Markets, as a functioning global system to cost the true externalities of the fossil fuel pollution was seen, at the time, as the only way to bridge the cost gap between clean renewables and dirty fossils.
Much has changed in the intervening years in the electricity markets, with the technology driven disruption of power generation. Led chiefly by the incremental gains of Swanson’s Law in photovoltaics and the material science of wind turbines. Scaling up deployment led innovation has seen the cost of clean electricity generation drop like a stone over the 2 decades.
Yet electricity, traditionally represents just 20% of the final energy demand by value and application. The 80%, the vast markets of heat and mobility, are largely still fully carbonised with “natural” gas and oil. We believe that clean electricity is now going to provide a much needed way to decarbonise a lot of applications in those markets.
Speaking from personal experience, and as both a user of the humble heat pump and a Tesla, I see few barriers and only a cost driven fast and rapid penetration of electricity into these traditional fossil heat and mobility markets.
I believe we will indeed see the economics drive a huge switch over to electricity to cover widespread expanding electricity usage towards a huge 70-80% of final energy demand by 2050.
We will see an over provision of electricity generating assets, in order to cope with peak demands and widespread load shedding when electricity is unwanted.
Yet we believe penetrating to a “100% electricity only” system will be impossible, impractical and largely inefficient.
With climate impacts due to increase and many countries lacking in enough domestic renewable resource to satisfy their demand, resilience and developing a clean, flexible and a cost effective resilient energy system will require some practical thinking.
So what will be the role of clean hydrogen? there are obvious downsides with assuming that green hydrogen will automatically replace all current natural gas usage. The law of thermodynamics, where every energy conversion costs efficiency, means there is little sense in using electricity to create green hydrogen to then use to create electricity, unless you are overcoming a challenge. What are these challenges?
The limits to using electricity as the sole energy carrier are namely the cost of transporting it long distances and storing it for any length of time. In addition it is technically challenging to build a large, robust, resilient and well run centralised electricity grid that can continuously grow to meet demand, as many fast developing nations have struggled to date.
Huge swathes of the planet have ideal renewable resource profiles but remain far from population and hence energy demand centres. The windy deserts of Arabia, Western Australia and Asia Minor, the winds of Patagonia and the offshore winds of the Northern Sweden are just a few examples of resources that can provide cheap green hydrogen.
Cheap, cost effective green hydrogen can provide vital resilience, storage and a method to transport energy across oceans, under oceans in pipelines or across seasons to offset a European dark winter Dunkelflaute (low pressure, low wind, low solar).
In terms of applications considerable heat and chemical driven industrial applications in refining, fertilisers, steel making, chemicals, ceramics, glass, concrete will require clean hydrogen and are not easily convertible to electric energy pathways.
The scale of these early adopter segments are likely to drive the same deployment led innovation that we saw in photovoltaics and wind. For every global doubling of the installed base costs of these technologies their costs reduced by 12-25%.
In terms of mobility, segments that require high power to weight ratios are likely to offset the poor energy conversion of green hydrogen, with the comparative efficiency of compressed or liquefied hydrogen or its derivates such as ammonia, methanol or e-fuels. Heavy duty trucking, aviation, maritime shipping and even space exploration can all be provided for cost effectively in a net zero environment.
Finally a word on value. As renewables become cheaper, electricity cheapens and becomes deflationary (Australia have targeted PV electricity to achieve $0.3 kwhr with 30% photon efficiency by 2030) – value will shift to the difficult to decarbonise reaches of our energy usage. Green hydrogen may achieve 20-30% of final energy demand by 2030 in terms of volume but it could represent more value in terms of dollars. Nonetheless, starting as it did in 2020 at basically zero penetration, rapid growth is guaranteed.
Join us at the live and free-to-attend webinar session during Green Infrastructure Week ‘The UK’s Options for Clean Hydrogen Production‘ featuring Dr. John Massey, MD, Grey Cells Energy.
Climate Perspectives magazine issue Q1 2023. Read the full magazine here.
