Ships, trucks, villages & battered paintwork
[A review - with links – of some of the hydrogen news catching the eye of Dr John Massey, Course Leader of the Zero to Hydrogen Heroes programme this week]
Coming to this week’s least surprising conclusion were Snam, the IGU and BloombergNEF; the authors of the 2020 Global Gas Report. If you didn’t already know, “public policies are required to support clean hydrogen… and to facilitate large-scale use”.
Luckily, they did make some more interesting findings too.
They were particularly focused on “large-scale, localized supply chains”, such as “clusters of industrial facilities that consume hydrogen, located within a radius of 50-100 km”; concluding that this will be the most cost-effective near-term route to hydrogen growth.
If you are in the US, Brazil, Australia, Scandinavia, the Middle East or North Africa, then good news! You “have huge renewable energy and hydrogen storage resources” and should achieve the lowest hydrogen prices.
By contrast, and despite both having strong hydrogen strategy foci, Japan and South Korea can be forgiven for glum faces: they “may see the highest hydrogen prices due to their low renewable energy potential and unfavourable geology”.
In terms of what policy action should be, the report suggestions include “the removal of rules that currently forbid the use of hydrogen in many countries and the creation of decarbonization roadmaps for industrial sectors such as steel and cement making, chemicals, aviation, shipping and heavy-duty transport.” In order that low-carbon products such as steel be encouraged, “awareness of the embodied emissions” and “labelling standards for green products” will be important.
While none of those ideas are particularly mind-expanding, one interesting bit of advice was “against investments in fossil fuel infrastructure without regard to its compatibility to a transition to clean fuels like hydrogen”. Beware stranded assets, in other words!
Perhaps France will be one of the first places to turn policy promise into tangible support?
A reason for optimism is that the government there “has launched a €100bn recovery plan that will see €30bn allocated to green goals” of which “€2bn will be allocated to developing a green hydrogen sector”.
The latter will “include support for regional hydrogen projects and a support mechanism for hydrogen produced through electrolysis”, including “a call for tenders and additional remuneration”.
Given that “40% of the funding will come from the European Union’s own recovery deal”, the French plan not surprisingly follows the same direction as the EU’s own energy strategy, outlined back in July: it also includes aspects such as “energy efficiency improvements and the electrification of industrial processes”.
Meanwhile and apparently undaunted by their unfavourable geology, five Japanese organisations started work on “a demonstration project to build a zero-emissions, high-power, hydrogen cell vessel”.
The vessel in question will be “a medium-sized tourist ship” with “a gross tonnage of 150, with a passenger capacity of about 100.” Following a current feasibility study, design will follow in 2021. Beyond that, “construction of the vessel will start in 2023, with pilot operations along the coast of Yokohama port beginning in 2024”.
For the project, Toshiba “will ‘marinise’ its mobile high-power fuel cell technology”, Kawasaki will provide “onboard fuel supply and energy management systems” and “NYK will develop, build and operate the ship”. All-important safety verification falls to ClassNK while ENEOS will supply the fuel.
The article notes that the International Maritime Organisation has targeted greenhouse gas reductions of 50% from international shipping by 2050 with a target of zero emissions “as early as the end of this century”. Of course the word ‘early’ here should be replaced by the more accurate term: ‘embarrassingly late’.
Staying with the maritime theme, Netherlands-based VoltH2 this week “signed a cooperation agreement with Dutch-Belgian North Sea Port”.
In particular they are eyeing up “a long-term concession contract with North Sea Port for an industrial plot covering 27,950 square metres in Vlissingen. On it they plan a 25 MW electrolysis unit, to produce “up to 3,600 tonnes of green hydrogen annually”. They’ve decided to opt for “proven, commercially available technology”. No sense of adventure!
Aside from green hydrogen production, the plan will also include “storage, refuelling and distribution facilities” and “the possible construction of a pipeline to a tanker transfer point”. Looking ahead, the design of the plant “will allow for an expansion of up to 100 MW with a potential production of 14,400 tonnes of green hydrogen per year”.
Investment for the first phase “is budgeted at €35 million”.
In the UK, and firmly on land, ULEMCo – “the world’s first hydrogen commercial vehicle conversion company”- were commencing “the largest single deployment of hydrogen dual fuel vehicles yet seen”. The dual fuels involved are hydrogen (obvs) and diesel. The vehicles involved will be a fleet of 'gritters' owned by the City Council of Glasgow, in Scotland.
To explain to those lucky enough to live in hot countries: a 'gritter' is a type of heavy truck that drives along slowly while hurling little chunks of rock salt onto roads to stop them freezing in cold weather. They usually do this at the precise moment you find yourself behind them, on that exact same stretch of road, in a brand new car with unblemished paintwork.
Thanks to government funding, this project “will see 20 gritter / multi-purpose vehicles ready for use on the streets by next winter”; of which half will be converted to dual fuel and half hydrogen-enabled from the outset. Based on their normal duty cycle, “around a third of the energy is expected to come from hydrogen”.
The trucks won’t lie idle in the summer, when Scotland becomes a tropical paradise; instead they’ll be used for food waste collection.
Although dual-fuel will be seen by many as a watered-down approach to hydrogen deployment, the company points out that this approach “builds the base load for hydrogen infrastructure investment”, “and “helps to create a market for hydrogen fuel that will make it easier for other local authorities and businesses to switch”.
In other diesel-related news, work is ongoing on the Viking Link project, a 1.4 GW electricity interconnector between the UK and Denmark; the longest in the world when completed, at 765km (subsea and onshore).
If this doesn’t sound even slightly diesel-related then consider, in a delicious twist of irony, that the construction site “won’t have a grid connection for at least six to eight months”. Which means it would ordinarily be dependent on diesel generators for power.
Good news then, that a 20ft-containerised hydrogen fuel cell system from Siemens Energy and GeoPura will instead “provide off grid power and heat” to the 20 cabins of the probably-not-as-nice-as-it-sounds “construction village”.
In addition to power production (for both the cabins and “six electric vehicle charging points”), this system uses the waste heat from the fuel cell too. This passes through a heat exchanger “to heat water, which is then piped through to heat two drying rooms for the site workers’ personal protective equipment (PPE)”.
The system also “incorporates 216kWh of battery storage, used to smooth the peaks in power demand and improve the efficiency of the system”. If hydrogen supply is interrupted, the system “can supply power autonomously for several hours”.
Finally, if a construction site in Eastern England isn’t remote enough for you, then it’s probably a good time to return to the Moon.
That’s because, having reported on one start-up’s dream of hydrogen-powered moon rovers in a previous edition of the Weekly News, this week I discover that no less than automotive giant Toyota has similar ambitions.
Or, as reported, their “Lunar Cruiser SUV will let astronauts drive on the Moon in 2030”, following “engineering and design slated to be completed in 2024”. Handily, given the lack of fuel stations, the manned rover will “be able to travel more than 6200 miles” using a combination of “stored hydrogen and retractable solar panels”. Which makes the 340-mile range of Toyota's earthly Mirai car sound a bit feeble.
And of course there's another big plus compared to the Mirai.
Despite freezing overnight lunar temperatures, there’s little chance of this shiny new SUV being bombarded with Scottish rock salt as it goes about its work.