The hydrogen economy, it seems, has forever been on the way. But is the time finally here?
The term was coined by John Bockris in a 1970 speech at the General Motors Technical Center to refer to an infrastructure for delivering hydrogen energy to economic sectors that are hard to decarbonize, such as oil refining and manufacturing steel and cement, as well as fueling long-haul transportation on the ground and in the air.
The appeal of hydrogen as a way to decarbonize these industries is apparent: Hydrogen is renewable; it’s easy on the power grid, produced and stored during times of excess of renewable energy and readily available during peak demand; it can reduce pollution (it generates only heat and water when burned); it can be produced locally from a range of materials; and by 2050 it could provide jobs for up to 30 million people with revenues of U.S.$2.5 trillion a year, according to a report from global management consultant McKinsey.
IMAGE: UnsplashProductions hubs are key
Establishing hydrogen oases, also called hubs, clusters or valleys, is perhaps the most essential aspect of the UAE hydrogen strategy, says Steve Griffiths, senior vice president of Research and Development at Khalifa University. But balancing supply and demand through production clusters is the most significant challenge in scaling hydrogen, Griffiths says. Read more›››
“Clusters allow for clean hydrogen production to be matched with industrial hydrogen off-takers with minimal need for hydrogen storage and transport, both of which can substantially increase the cost of hydrogen for final use,” he says. “Technologies that are proven, or nearly proven, can be deployed into clusters immediately while research and development efforts continue to improve technologies across the hydrogen value chain.”
Griffiths says he expects the top industries using clean hydrogen through 2030 will be refining, chemicals, iron and steel and, in the UAE, aluminum. “Beyond 2030, continued research and development will enable hydrogen to be commercially viable for extended applications, particularly sustainable aviation fuels and maritime shipping fuels,” Griffiths says.
Research and development activities at Khalifa University may also support the overseas export of hydrogen by ammonia and other, more novel, vectors, he says.
“We established the Research and Innovation Center on CO2 and Hydrogen at Khalifa University to make such future innovations possible. That is, we pursue the cutting edge of hydrogen research while supporting development and implementation projects with partners like ADNOC and Emirates Steel Arkan,” Griffiths says.‹‹‹ Read less
But not much has happened to move the technology toward its long-imagined place as a major player in the world’s energy-transition process. That is, until the past five years or so.
“Hydrogen has been produced for a long time for its use in refineries and fertilizers, and technology has evolved to improve the efficiency of them,” explains Lourdes Vega, director of the Research and Innovation Center on CO2 and Hydrogen (RICH Center) at Khalifa University. “What is different now is the interest for using hydrogen as a long term energy storage technology, combined with renewable energy, and for its use to decarbonize hard to abate sectors. This can be accomplished with low carbon hydrogen or green hydrogen and this is where the technology needs to be improved to reduce its cost.”
As countries, businesses and organizations seek to reach the Paris Agreement target of 1.5 C global warming, attention has turned again to the hydrogen-economy model to solve the problems that so far keep the hydrogen economy at bay: finding a reliable way to balance affordability with low greenhouse-gas emissions into the atmosphere.
Hydrogen is an important factor in most strategies devised by at least 75 countries that are seeking to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, according to a paper from academics at the Polish Academy of Sciences.
Additionally, hydrogen has been identified by the International Renewable Energy Agency as one of six technological avenues to achieve net-zero by 2050.
‘HUGE GROWTH STORY’
Among countries expressing an interest in hydrogen: A U.K. House of Commons committee issued a report in December 2022 on the future of hydrogen in the country. The report concluded that although hydrogen couldn’t be considered a panacea to the U.K.’s energy issues, it would certainly play a major role in sectors of the economy, becoming a “huge growth story” over the next 30 years.
Areas identified as best suited for hydrogen include those that are hard to electrify, such as parts of the rail network or heavy transportation and uses that don’t require extensive refueling networks, such as local bus services. The benefit to bus services, Vega says, is that vehicles can operate longer than those powered by electric batteries.
The sectors most likely to benefit from hydrogen (aside from such traditional areas as refineries, chemicals and fertilizers) are metallurgy, cement and heavy transportation, Vega says. “In addition, hydrogen can be used in the heat and power sector, replacing natural gas, with a huge potential market.” Furthermore, green hydrogen can be used, combined with CO2, to produce synthetic fuels such as methane or methanol, usually called e-methane or e-methanol.
And the United States in 2021 announced that the first program in its Energy Earthshots Initiative, aiming to accelerate advances in clean-energy technology, would focus on hydrogen. The Hydrogen Shot’s goal is to reduce the price of hydrogen by 80 percent to U.S.$1 per kilogram in a decade.
IMAGE: Freepik/UnsplashA gift from the sea
Green hydrogen is the “cleanest” form of hydrogen, using renewable energy sources to split water into hydrogen and oxygen without any greenhouse-gas emissions. And a group of Australian researchers in early 2023 said they created it from seawater without expensive pre-treatment processes or catalysts. Read more›››
“We have split natural seawater into oxygen and hydrogen with nearly 100 percent efficiency, to produce green hydrogen by electrolysis, using a non-precious and cheap catalyst in a commercial electrolyzer,” University of Adelaide’s Shizhang Qiao says via the university’s newsroom.
The team used seawater as a feedstock without any expensive pre-treatments processes such as reverse osmosis, purification or alkalization, Qiao says. The team in its paper for Nature Energy points to seawater as an “almost infinite resource” for hydrogen generation.
Researchers at Khalifa University led by Faisal Al Marzooqi and TieJun Zhang are also working on techniques to generate hydrogen from industrial wastewater contaminated by heavy metals, wastewater from industrial and domestic laundries and seawater using solar energy.
It’s just a beginning, Al Marzooki cautions. “This research is at its very early stages,” he says. “It may take some time between five to 10 years, if enough resources are given to this area.” ‹‹‹ Read less
That price, as with everything, is critical.
The cost in money — and carbon produced — depends on how that hydrogen is made. (See: “Colors of Hydrogen.”) Greener forms are more expensive and therefore represent a small percentage of total hydrogen currently produced. In fact, most hydrogen produced today is made using fossil fuels (methane) and with no CO2 emissions controls; this “gray hydrogen” accounts for 2 percent of the world’s CO2 emissions. And the International Energy Agency predicts fossil fuels will remain the primary source of hydrogen for the United States, Europe and Japan through 2050.
Vega, however, has a more optimistic view, seeing sectors transition from gray to more blue and blue and green as technologies advance and costs come down.
UAE HAS PLANS
Fossil fuels are key to the UAE’s plans, announced in January 2022, to control 25 percent of the world’s hydrogen market using natural gas with CO2 capture (blue hydrogen) and green hydrogen. The nation’s Hydrogen Leadership Initiative pursues a research-and-development collaboration across industries, according to the Emirates News Agency, the UAE’s official news service. Targeted markets include Japan, South Korea, Germany and India. Emirates Global Aluminium, one of the largest companies in the UAE, joined the initiative in September 2022.
“The UAE sees hydrogen as a promising fuel for the future to achieve carbon neutrality and the UAE Net Zero by 2050 Strategic Initiative. Such partnerships will help accelerate the transition to clean and renewable energy,” UAE Minister of Energy and Infrastructure HE Suhail bin Mohammed Al Mazrouei says.
By 2031, according to the Ministry of Energy & Infrastructure’s UAE Energy Strategy 2050, updated in July 2023, the country plans to:
- Develop a resilient hydrogen supply chain to support the growth of the local industry
- Consolidate the UAE’s role as a leading global producer and supplier of low-carbon hydrogen
- Promote innovation in industrial zones in the UAE
- And establish a robust hydrogen economy that can support the country’s nationwide decarbonization efforts
Meanwhile, UAE Undersecretary for Energy and Petroleum Affairs H.E. Sharif Al Olama tells Reuters that the country plans to produce 1.4 million tons of hydrogen annually by 2031.
Of that number, UAE clean energy company Masdar is expected to produce 1 million tons of green hydrogen by 2031. The remaining 0.4 million tons will be blue hydrogen, produced using natural gas accompanied by CO2 capture and storage.
IMAGE: UnsplashDecarbonizing diesel engines
Heavy industry emits about 6 billion tons of CO2 a year, about a sixth of the world’s total output. But a diesel-hydrogen engine from Australia nicknamed “baby number two” could help bring that number down. Read more›››
Engineers at the University of New South Wales say they’ve modified a conventional diesel engine to work on hydrogen and a small amount of diesel, reducing C02 emissions by more than 85 percent.
The key, Shawn Kook tells BBC.com, is to introduce the hydrogen into the fuel mix at the right moment. Otherwise, “it will create something that is explosive that will burn out the whole system.”
The team says diesel trucks and equipment in such industries as mining and agriculture could be retrofitted with the technology relatively quickly.‹‹‹ Read less
Al Olama tells the news agency that the 2031 goals include two “hydrogen oases” or production hubs, located in Ruwais and the Khalifa Industrial Zone Abu Dhabi (KIZAD). There will be five hubs by 2050, he says. This follows the Paris Mission Innovation on Clean Hydrogen’s suggestions to promote hydrogen valleys.
The UAE’s plans for at least a partial fossil-fuels-based hydrogen future seem to align with the low-carbon hydrogen developments that Daryl Wilson, executive director of Belgium-based advisory board the Hydrogen Council, says he expects to see across the globe.
“By low-carbon (hydrogen), we mean fossil-fuel-derived hydrogen with carbon capture and storage. Low-carbon hydrogen will be faster, cheaper and quicker to scale than renewable sources in regions such as North Africa,” says Wilson, whose group is made up of 132 energy, transport, industry and investment companies with an interest in building the hydrogen economy.
BUILDING AN INFRASTRUCTURE
Infrastructure for the hydrogen economy, however, is still in its early stages, Wilson says, adding that disruptions in energy markets brought by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have accelerated regional connection from North Africa to Europe.
“Already pipeline corridors have been proposed with an EU backbone, and routes through the Iberian Peninsula and north through Italy. Port terminal infrastructure is under development as we contemplate moving large quantities of hydrogen and its derivatives from sources in Australia to Japan and Korea,” he tells KUST Review.
Vega, however, sees the changes coming more as a result of accelerating consciousness about the need for independent energy sources that can be produced using local resources in a sustainable manner.
But while materials may be new, the infrastructure will be similar to what the energy industry has used in the past. And that’s good news, says the Hydrogen Council’s Wilson.
The policies should apply on a more global level to truly develop and implement the hydrogen economy. Clear policies will help investors and hence, industry to move.
Lourdes Vega
“Ammonia, e-kerosene and methanol will make a contribution as carriers with seaborne trade. From a technical point of view, there are many points of commonality with natural-gas-pipeline development, (liquefied natural gas) cryogenic transport and bulk carrier development for the sea,” Wilson says. “The scale in hydrogen is new ground, but the underlying engineering is not new to industry.”
Well, yes and no, says KU’s Vega.
“Hydrogen and natural gas are both known to industry, but they are not exactly the same, neither the technologies and infrastructure to produce, transportation and storage,” she says.
Governments, however, play a critical role in developing the hydrogen future, Wilson says, “funding the green premium during the transition, providing a clear stable policy regime to support long-term investment decisions, and developing the tradable standards platforms.”
Development goes even beyond individual countries, Vega adds. “The policies should apply on a more global level to truly develop and implement the hydrogen economy. Clear policies will help investors and hence, industry to move.”
And when that hydrogen future finally arrives, it might not be visible to members of the public, who may ride on hydrogen-fueled buses oblivious to the infrastructure that supports them. But “they will experience the benefit of long-term stable cost and security of supply from local renewable energy sources – a very different feeling than the vulnerable uncertainty of our current sources of fossil-fuel energy,” Wilson says.
