Green hydrogen is electrification – Australian Manufacturing Forum

A number of people contacted me last week after Saul Griffith’s comments on TV and in print were reported as an attack on green hydrogen. I responded individually, but thought it might be good to do so publicly as well. By Paul Hodgson.

The bottom line is that I agree with Dr. Griffith: let’s electrify everything! Now I know the media wants to simplify things and make it a fight. I have extensive experience in so-called ‘climate warfare’, particularly in my roles as Senior Advisor to Australia’s Minister for Climate Change, Industry and Innovation, Managing Director of NERA – National Energy Resources Australia and interim CEO of Scaling Green Hydrogen CRC for the past decade. However, the opportunity for Australia is so big and so easily squandered on a false division that enough is enough.

According to Geoscience Australia, “Australia receives an average of 58 million petajoules of solar radiation per year, about 10,000 times more than its total energy consumption”.

Australia is the world leader in residential rooftop solar with more than one in four households equipped with a rooftop photovoltaic (PV) system. A 2019 report, How many rooftop solar panels can be installed in Australia?commissioned by the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Property Council of Australia, and prepared by the UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures, APVI – Australian PV Institute and UNSW, found that Australian rooftops can handle 179 gigawatts (GW) of solar PV, with a production of 245 terawatt hours (TWh), more than the current consumption of the Australian national electricity market (NEM).

A combination of new storage, transmission, grid management technologies, business models and other innovations can achieve this, as well as mining, mineral processing, manufacturing, installation, operations and the required recycling, much of which can also be undertaken in Australia. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) in 2021, US$27 trillion of new solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, electrolyzers and fuel cells will be needed by 2050. In the same year, the International Energy Agency Renewable Energy (IRENA) has estimated that 43 million jobs will be created in renewable energy by 2050. Clearly, there are greater opportunities for Australia in renewable energy generation.

I haven’t even mentioned Australia’s other leading renewable energy assets such as wind (onshore and offshore), tidal, wave, bioenergy and geothermal, but it’s fair to say that we have the potential to be a world leader in renewable sources. of energy.

CSIRO and the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) also continue to confirm that wind and solar are the cheapest electricity, even taking into account the additional integration costs resulting from variable renewable energy production. , such as energy storage and transmission.

So so far so good.

However, let’s play Australia’s current energy resource production and consumption. In Australia, in 2020-21, we produced about 20,000 petajoules (PJ) of energy resources, mostly coal and gas, and exported three-quarters of that. We import approximately 1,500 PJ of primarily refined petroleum products. Exporting so much makes us save 400% energy.

If we were to replace all of that fossil fuel generation and consumption in Australia, maybe about 5,500 TWh of renewable electricity would be needed. Certainly doable in Australia but about thirty times the size of our existing NEM. The draft Net Zero Australia report suggests that we could need forty times the capacity of our existing electricity grid in Australia by 2050. With our vast energy resources, Australia has a responsibility to continue to export energy to existing trading partners and our vast renewable potential means we can help the world decarbonise beyond our own shores.

So where does green hydrogen come from? Green hydrogen is produced by passing renewable electricity through water (H2O) to separate hydrogen from oxygen. This process is called electrolysis and Australia’s largest currently operating electrolyser is a 1.25 MW Siemens PEM unit installed for the Australian Gas Infrastructure Group (AGIG) at Tonsley in South Australia. When burned as energy, hydrogen releases only water vapor, making it a potential zero-emissions fuel source (assuming zero emissions throughout the supply chain).

In a country like Australia, with vast access to renewable energy (mainly solar and wind), hydrogen and its derivatives may play a smaller role in the electrification story than in other parts of the world. . For many applications now powered by coal, oil or gas, renewable electricity is likely to be the cheaper alternative.

However, direct electrification will not be able to replace fossil fuels in all applications, regions and even in all seasons. In Australia, this can represent between twenty and thirty percent of final energy demand. In other parts of the world it could be much higher.

Here are some examples:

1. Some countries do not have sufficient access to their own renewable energy and will want to import at least some of it to meet their needs. Although high voltage direct current (HVDC) cables could connect renewables between countries, it is likely that a gas or liquid carrying green electrons will be required. Geopolitical and energy security considerations may also play a role in favoring shipments arriving regularly from various sources rather than putting “all your eggs” into a single HVDC connection. Green hydrogen will be the initial chemical carrier of green electrons, but can be converted to green ammonia, green methanol, methocyclohexane (MCH), or other liquid organic hydrogen carriers (LOHC).

2. Some mobility applications may be too long and require too much charging to be battery powered, think long haul aviation, shipping and to a more varied extent rail, truck and bus. It should be noted that battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) are both electricity-based.

3. About 80 to 100 million tons of hydrogen are currently produced each year, mainly from natural gas in a process called SMR and for ammonia production and petrochemical refining. Ammonia-based products such as agricultural fertilizers will always be needed, requiring green hydrogen to decarbonize. Green hydrogen will be needed to refine metals and biofuels, even in the absence of fossil fuel refining.

4. As we see a reduction in oil production, many plastics, polymers and other petroleum-based products will disappear from our supply chains. Chemicals derived from electricity may be needed as a base to replace the production of a range of chemicals and materials that we use today.

Now, we’re doing all of this with one overriding goal in mind – the fastest, cheapest global reduction in carbon emissions to the Earth’s atmosphere. I tend to think that there are four main tools at our disposal:

1. Energy efficiency

2. Renewable electrification

3. Green chemicals and fuels

4. Carbon capture, use and storage

Once you’ve made your process as energy efficient as possible, you use direct renewable energy, and then, if necessary, turn to green hydrogen as the carrier of that renewable energy in chemicals and fuels. Each stage of renewable energy storage, conversion and transmission adds financial and material costs and involves energy losses. It will make no sense to add these costs and losses if they are not necessary.

In the Scaling Green Hydrogen CRC, we bring together a diverse group of leading organizations to build a strong foundation for the role green hydrogen can play in extending electrification to other areas of the economy that we need to decarbonize. Our estimate is that one terawatt of smelting will be needed in Australia by 2040, or 800,000 times the size of the existing operational unit at Tonsley.

The sun keeps shining, the wind keeps blowing and the water keeps moving. We need to capture as much of this constant flow of renewable energy as possible, from rooftops, on land and at sea for Australia to reach its potential. Green hydrogen is part of electrification, helping renewables finish the decarbonization job.

This article originally appeared on Paul Hodgson’s Linkedin page. It has been republished with permission.