At the Paris headquarters of the International Energy Agency (IEA), researchers tracking hydrogen’s progress as a clean alternative to fossil fuels have a list of more than 100 pipelines for the gas, spanning more than a dozen countries.
But the vast majority of these projects are concepts or undergoing feasibility studies. Only one is actually under construction: a 30 kilometer pipeline in the port of Rotterdam.
The Rotterdam project, which started last October, is the first step in a plan to build a European hydrogen network that could reach a length of 28,000 kilometers by 2030 and cover 28 countries by 2040, according to the European Hydrogen Backbone, a group of 33 energy companies. infrastructure operators.
Gasunie – the Dutch gas network operator – believes that as the Netherlands uses less gas to meet its climate obligations, up to 85 percent of its pipelines could be converted to transport hydrogen.
And there may be no better place to start the experiment than Rotterdam, which has access to sustainable offshore energy, hydrogen transports via the port and several refineries eager to use the gas.
At the end of the port, Shell is building its own ‘green’ (or renewable energy-powered) hydrogen factory, which will be the largest in Europe. The intention is to use electricity from offshore wind energy and a 200 MW electrolyser to split the gas from water. When operational, it will supply hydrogen to Shell’s own refinery in Pernis, a few kilometers away in the port.
But Amir Mansouri, head of the project at Shell, emphasizes that it is at the bottom of the learning curve when it comes to building out hydrogen infrastructure. “To put it into perspective, this is the largest sustainable hydrogen facility under construction in Europe, and it represents only five to ten percent of Pernis’ hydrogen demand,” he points out.
Mansouri adds that several challenges need to be overcome for the project, which will combine ten of engineering firm Thyssenkrupp Nucera’s 20 MW electrolysers. “What is the interaction between the ten electrolysers when you switch them on and off?” he asks. “What is the degradation of that? How much can you really get out of it? We spend a lot of time trying to understand it.”
Another challenge when thinking about spending on hydrogen infrastructure is the ability to understand the pricing of a market that does not yet exist.
Even Mansouri, who started his career at Shell executing complex deepwater oil projects and then helped Shell develop its hydrogen strategy, isn’t sure what the future of green hydrogen will be.
“Right now I’ll say it’s quite a fragile business case,” he admits. That makes the viability of future green hydrogen plants difficult to estimate: “It would be very unpredictable or very uncertain to say how many more could be built,” Mansouri adds. “We are focused on getting this right.”
Ambition is currently ahead of reality. According to the Hydrogen Council, more than 1,400 clean hydrogen projects are now planned, but only 7 percent have made their final investment decision. The EU expects that there will be 40 GW of electrolyser capacity in Europe by 2030, but only about 1 GW is currently available worldwide.
Cameron Smith, CEO of Fortescue Hydrogen Systems, says more government support is needed for “product corridors” such as the pipelines to transport the gas, the transmission lines to connect to electrolysers, and “the equipment we need to get those electrons to manage: power electronics, transformers, inverters and rectifiers”.
He points out that long-established alkaline water electrolysers require a constant baseload current and are less effective when the supply of renewable energy ebbs and flows. Fortescue and others are therefore experimenting with new electrolyser technology to try to work with renewable energy.
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But new technology takes time, notes Javier Cavada, Mitsubishi Power’s European CEO. “Sometimes when I come to conferences it seems like the hydrogen economy has to happen in two to three years, fast fast,” he notes. “Sorry, this is not feasible. We need the entire 2020s and early 2030s to make this happen.”
Cavada says the first phase of construction needed for clean hydrogen was a massive increase in renewable electricity production. Currently, he argues, any new renewable power plant should supply electricity to the grid, rather than to hydrogen electrolysers. “That is the general understanding in society and in the industry,” he says.
Yet Mitsubishi Power is building gas-fired power stations that can easily be switched to hydrogen if future demand arises. “We don’t have any technical bottlenecks or supply chain bottlenecks,” Cavada explains. “But I’m sure you understand: we can’t build a supply chain if we don’t know when the volume will come.”