Hydrogen is one of our most urgent challenges
In recent years the surge in renewable energy has been a success story in the UK and Europe. But there is a significant challenge further along the road, and it’s a challenge that’s becoming ever more urgent.
In the UK and major European countries, renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, hydro and biomass, make up half of the current power generation mix. The other half comes from sources such as gas, coal and nuclear.
Power demand is set to significantly increase between now and 2040, to roughly twice the current volume. This is driven by the conversion to electric sources within large parts of the road traffic, industrial production and heating sectors.
Whilst renewables will undoubtedly grow significantly, particularly offshore wind power, the increased demand over the next 15 years will cause a significant problem. It will leave the share of the power generation mix from renewables at around 50%. The availability of wind turbines, under-sea cables for importing electricity, offshore structures and network infrastructure for deployment are all potentially limiting factors to growth.
Other energy sources that produce power in the UK, such as gas, nuclear and coal combined will, at best, remain at current output levels, meaning their share will decrease to a maximum of around 25%.
This leaves a significant gap of at least 25% to the anticipated 2040 power demand.
The UK Government and the EU have committed to climate-neutrality goals, which means that this shortfall must come from sources other than fossil fuels.
The solution that resolves this power supply and demand imbalance lies in finding a way to store and transport green power. The reason why this is the solution is because green power is likely to be produced in the global south or in certain regions in the United States. It needs to be transported to where it is needed in Europe. We also need to find green alternatives to electricity for road traffic, industrial production, and heating.
One such alternative is using green power, generated from renewables, to produce hydrogen and related products, such as ammonia and hydrogen-based synthetic fuels. These can be shipped to where demand is needed.
Therefore, using renewable energy to produce green hydrogen is the best solution to the problem of not having enough energy by 2040.
On a smaller scale, hydrogen, in gaseous form, can be transported to Europe via pipelines from nearby regions such as North Africa or the Caucasus.
Large scale production of hydrogen in Europe will not play a significant role, as locally produced green power will be required for electrifying road traffic, industrial production and heating and will, therefore, not be available for the production of green hydrogen on a scale that’s impactful. The one exception here is the use of hydrogen for power storage when there is an excess of supply from solar and wind production.
Triggering the necessary investment in the energy-producing countries will urgently require binding long-term agreements. These need to be set within the framework of international energy partnerships and should be concluded and guaranteed by the respective governments.
As a result of the Ukraine war, governments in Europe are anxious to not allow renewed energy dependence on autocratic regimes. However, risks can be mitigated by carefully choosing multiple sources and by keeping emergency backup solutions, such as coal and gas.
On the demand side, it is vital to develop technologies that can utilise hydrogen in gaseous or liquified form, ammonia or hydrogen-based synthetic fuels, such as fuel cells, hydrogen-powered internal combustion engines or hydrogen industrial boilers.
Synthetic fuels, in particular, will play an important role in applications such as aircraft, ships and freight trains, but also in road traffic allowing existing vehicle fleets to be decarbonised, which will otherwise take many decades to be phased out.
A frequent argument against the use of hydrogen and related products as a power source is that they are inefficient and expensive, as much of the primary energy input gets lost in production. However, the necessary capital expenditures required for solar/photovoltaic installations has massively decreased in recent years. If other cost factors (such as land, hours of sunshine, efficiency of electrolyser technologies, and economies of scale) are equally favourable, those inefficiencies become a negligeable factor in the overall production cost.
Governments should focus on defining a challenging, but realistic long-term reduction path for carbon and avoid adjustments to targets along the way as much as possible. They should also refrain from any regulations that favour certain technologies at the expense of others and avoid banning specific technologies.
Incentives can help to move things in the right direction but should meet three conditions: they should reward the consumer instead of handing out fines to the manufacturers, they should support existing market trends instead of trying to create new ones, and they should be technology neutral.
For Europe the energy mix of the future will mainly consist of local electricity generation from renewables and imported hydrogen-based products. Varied technologies on the demand side will have to mirror that mix. Governments need to urgently negotiate and conclude international energy partnerships, and they need to be technology-agnostic in their regulatory activities. Relevant investment on both the supply and demand sides needs to be triggered as a matter of urgency.