Hydro Intl Share Discussion Threads

[waldron] 02/12/2024 04:03

Why Europe’s Hydrogen Economy Dreams Remain Just That

By Alex Kimani - Dec 01, 2024, 2:00 PM CST

Around 62 MW of electrolyzer capacity was installed in the EU at the end of 2023.

This installed capacity was just 0,1% of the EU 2030 target.

The European Union set a target to produce 10 million metric tons of carbon-free hydrogen by 2030 while importing an equal amount.

Electrolyser

Four years ago, the European Commission unveiled the landmark European Green Deal wherein it laid out a series of policies aimed at making the region a “climate-neutral bloc” by 2050. Among the key policies, Europe set a target to consume 20 million tons/year (Mt/y) of renewable hydrogen and install 62 GW in electrolyzer capacity by 2030. Unfortunately, the continent is quickly acknowledging a cold reality: hydrogen, really, is a hard sell.

In its latest annual report, the EU Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) paints a bleak picture of the state of the continent’s hydrogen sector, saying those targets are unlikely to be realized without tackling serious challenges that include production cost and infrastructure.

“The current renewable hydrogen consumption remains minimal, and while EU renewable energy and decarbonization targets could drive the demand, uptake so far has been slow,” ACER researchers wrote.

Around 62 MW of electrolyzer capacity was installed in the EU at the end of 2023, good for a mere 0.1% of the continent’s 2030 target. According to ACER data, EU countries consumed 7.2 Mt of hydrogen in 2023, a -2.5% Y-o-Y drop, mostly in chemical manufacturing and heavy industry like steel production. More than 99% of the EU’s hydrogen supply was the gray type produced using natural gas or other fossil fuels.

To be fair, the EU set those lofty goals two years before Russia’s war in Ukraine triggered a global energy crisis, a situation so dire that even shunned sectors like nuclear have received a new lease of life. Since the beginning of 2022, Europe has been on a gas buying spree, adding more than 36.5 billion cubic meters (Bcm), or roughly 1,289 Bcf, in regasification capacity. According to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, Europe’s import capacity could exceed 406 Bcm/year, or 14.3 Tcf/y, by 2030 as more import projects come online.

Hard Sell

Europe is not alone here. A few years ago, climate experts touted the outsized role that hydrogen could play in helping the planet limit catastrophic global warming. Indeed, net-zero models have forecast that hydrogen could provide as much as 20% of the world’s primary energy by 2050, nearly as much as all renewables currently contribute to the United States’ energy mix. Not surprisingly, there’s been no shortage of big hydrogen ambitions.

The European Union set a target to produce 10 million metric tons of carbon-free hydrogen by 2030 while importing an equal amount. Last year, U.S. President Joe Biden unveiled seven regional hydrogen hubs that will receive $7 billion from the government as part of the bipartisan infrastructure law. Chile, Australia and Egypt have laid the groundwork to produce green hydrogen for export. Meanwhile, China has announced no less than 360 hydrogen plants. Overall, companies and governments across the globe have announced plans to build nearly 1,600 hydrogen plants.

However, hydrogen producers are facing one small problem: Few customers are stepping up to buy their commodity.


According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), just 12% of hydrogen plants have customers with offtake agreements. Even among projects that have signed offtake deals, most have vague, nonbinding arrangements that can be quietly discarded if the potential buyers back out.

The big problem here is that many industries that could potentially run on hydrogen require expensive retooling to make this a reality, a leap that most are unwilling to make.

To complicate matters, green hydrogen made by electrolysing water using renewable energy costs nearly four times as gray hydrogen created from natural gas, or methane, using steam methane reformation but without capturing the greenhouse gasses emitted in the process. Quite naturally, it's hard to build hydrogen infrastructure when the demand may not materialize for years.

“No sane project developer is going to start producing hydrogen without having a buyer for it, and no sane banker is going to lend money to a project developer without reasonable confidence that someone’s going to buy the hydrogen,” BNEF analyst Martin Tengler notes.

“It’s no different than any other energy development at scale. Natural gas pipelines didn’t get built without customers,” says Laura Luce, chief executive officer of Hy Stor Energy. Laura’s company has secured an exclusive letter of intent to supply hydrogen to an iron mill that Sweden’s SSAB SA plans to build in Mississippi.

The situation is quite dire, even in renewables-obsessed Europe, “If half of it comes to fruition, we’ll be happy. If a quarter of it comes to fruition, we’ll be happy,” Andy Marsh, CEO of Plug Power Inc. (NASDAQ:PLUG) told BNEF, referring to the company’s 4.5 gigawatts in engineering and design work underway on European projects to generate green hydrogen. According to Marsh, EU member states are still incorporating their hydrogen roadmaps into their own regulations, delaying private investments.

Werner Ponikwar, CEO of hydrogen equipment maker Thyssenkrupp Nucera AG, says hydrogen projects likely to succeed today are ones that include “the whole ecosystem,” in essence hydrogen plants located near a clean energy source, with a ready customer close at hand.

According to Rachel Crouch, a senior associate at Norton Rose Fulbright, existing use cases for hydrogen--which today rely almost exclusively on gray hydrogen--may be among the first green or blue hydrogen opportunities to be financeable, because the offtake picture is already clear and is likely easier to model.

Crouch sees petroleum refining as one such area where bankable early green or blue hydrogen projects are likely to emerge because refineries are among the largest users of hydrogen as a fuel stock. She has also predicted that specialty vehicles will become big hydrogen customers because hydrogen is already being used to power fuel cells. Fuel cells are used in specialty vehicles such as forklifts and by energy consumers to complement electricity from the grid, to smooth energy costs, and to ensure reliability.

By Alex Kimani for Oilprice.com

[bamboo2] 18/11/2024 08:06

IP Group plc - Australian portfolio company AMSL Aero completes first free flight of its 'Vertiia' aircraft


IP Group plc (LSE: IPO) ("IP Group" or "the Group"), which invests in breakthrough science and innovation companies with the potential to create a better future for all, is pleased to note that Australian portfolio company AMSL Aero has announced that it has completed the first free flight of Vertiia, Australia's first passenger-capable, emission-free, long range electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft (eVTOL) aircraft.

The landmark flight is the first by an Australian-designed and built eVTOL, the new generation of aircraft that take off and land like a helicopter but fly fast and smoothly like a fixed-wing aeroplane. Since the first untethered flight, which took place earlier this month, the aircraft has since taken off, flown and landed successfully more than 50 times.


Vertiia is the most complex civil aircraft ever developed in Australia. It has been designed to fly up to 1,000km on hydrogen at a cruising speed of 300km/hour with zero carbon emissions, carrying up to four passengers and a pilot.


The historic test flight was performed on battery power by remote control in the Central West region of New South Wales in accordance with Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) regulations. AMSL Aero will begin hydrogen-fuelled flight testing of Vertiia in 2025 having already broken records in 2023 by completing the first tethered battery-powered hover.


This year, AMSL Aero received deposits for 26 Vertiia aircraft orders from civil customers including 20 from Aviation Logistics, which operates the Air Link, AirMed and Chartair brands covering passenger services, aircraft charter, air freight and aeromedical flights across Australia.


IP Group Australia has an undiluted holding of 34.0% in AMSL Aero while IP Group's managed private funds* hold an additional 14.7%.


*Includes funds managed/advised on behalf of Hostplus & TelstraSuper

[tenapen] 14/11/2024 16:12

Ricardo’s hydrogen fuel cell module celebrates key milestone to successfully generating power
14 Nov 2024

Cont...

Ricardo will soon be releasing a video series where will will share more about our fuel cell module. Sign up to our mailing list

[zeppo] 27/10/2024 14:49

Sunday Times: Jim Armitage interview with Essar Group's Prashant Ruia:


'The UK is racing ahead or the rest of the world.......

..... a hydrogen -powered refinery. Its fortunes are critical to our industrial base.....'

[tenapen] 21/10/2024 06:00

Glenn Harvey
Green | The Big Take
The Climate Short: Hedge Funds Pile Up Huge Bets Against Green Future
The $5 trillion industry's move against clean energy and green technology may prove more damaging than political pushback over "woke" capitalism.

By Sheryl Lee, Ishika Mookerjee and Christopher Udemans

October 21, 2024 at 5:00 AM GMT+1

[tenapen] 12/10/2024 12:19

h ttps://www.hydrogeninsight.com/production/there-aren-t-enough-subsidies-available-to-develop-the-clean-hydrogen-market-says-uniper-boss/2-1-1723279


There aren’t enough subsidies available to develop the clean-hydrogen market, says Uniper boss
We have had to put on the brakes due to high costs and the lack of demand for green H2, explains CEO Michael Lewis

[tenapen] 10/10/2024 07:28

Have countries just run out of money to take on the burden of moving to clean tech ?

Or have the Oiler's, with lots of money to spend, been too good at lobbying ?.

Mmmmmmm !

[zeppo] 03/10/2024 09:28

Recently in The Times Business section:

'Hydrogen plant in Scotland would be biggest in Europe.'
by Emma Powell.

Today its 'H2 Revolution needs a certain chemistry.'
by Robert Lea. This is about Johnson Matthey.

I'm sticking with AUK who's spokesman launches their AI EDDIE at the Smart Buildings Exhibition, at Excel, on 10th October 2024 Exhibition is on the 9th and 10th October.

[tenapen] 20/9/2024 05:42

People are waiting ......

[skinny] 19/9/2024 13:28

I remember when this lot made gearboxes :-

[tenapen] 17/9/2024 06:26

A bit of Shell green washing!

[tenapen] 04/9/2024 04:39

Still going strong for a fringe sport!

[zeppo] 04/9/2024 03:22

Whatever happened to ExtremeE?

[tenapen] 03/9/2024 18:46

Hydrogen power is slowly but surely emerging onto the motorsport scene. This year, we have already seen hydrogen racecars enter the Fuji 24 hours, hillclimbs and the Dakar Rally. While 2025 brings with it the world’s first hydrogen championship in the form of Extreme H, and by 2027 hydrogen prototypes are expected to race at the Le Mans 24 hours.

Cont...

[tenapen] 26/8/2024 17:03

Followed a low loader today carrying my first view of a hydrogen fuel cell unit. Change is coming.