Can We Produce Enough Green Hydrogen to Save the World?

(FuelCellsWorks) ... 'Hydrogen and fuels derived (from it) is capable of reducing the carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels in the very, very long term, down to zero,’ said Klaus Scheffer, project manager at Siemens. ‘You don’t need fossil energies in a future world. I hope my kids will see that.’

The technology is green hydrogen – using an electric current to convert water into oxygen and hydrogen – and if this is powered with renewable energy then it produces no carbon emissions. If this is, in turn, used to provide a clean source of fuel for industry or to balance the electricity grid, it could help alter the future of the planet.

The main problem so far has been how to make hydrogen in large quantities cleanly. Currently, about 96 percent of global hydrogen is produced by reforming methane, which produces carbon dioxide as a waste product. Green hydrogen produced with this electrolysis method, however, is a much cleaner alternative.

Scheffer is helping to create a source of green hydrogen for use at a steel plant in Linz, Austria, as part of a project called H2FUTURE. The goal of this project is not just to produce green hydrogen from renewable energy, but to see if it can in turn be used to produce steel with a lower carbon footprint, dubbed green steel.

Aside from producing hydrogen, REFHYNE has another purpose that helps make a business case for its use. The electrolyser can be turned on or off very quickly, meaning it can provide a grid balancing service to cope with periods of high or low demand in the electrical grid.

It’s also something being investigated in Denmark, where a project called HyBalance has developed a demonstration plant in Hobro that produces hydrogen from water electrolysis when the amount of electricity being produced by renewables exceeds that needed by the grid.

The gas is either sold to industry or used for powering hydrogen cars, with the overall goal being to show that hydrogen can be produced in large enough quantities via renewable energy to be useful to industries.

At a later stage, the hydrogen could be kept in salt caves for future use – a low cost way to store large quantities. READ MORE