Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles have already been marketed by companies such as Hyundai, Honda and Toyota, as well as several other Chinese companies. But transport is far from the only direction of hydrogen energy.
Over the high-profile news of recent years about miniature "solar tiles", about huge offshore wind turbines, about underground storage of CO2, about Tesla storage devices and other delights of the Energiewende (energy transition), it is not yet very legible, but the distant rumble of a new thunderstorm of all traditional oil suppliers is already heard. electricity and gas. This thunderstorm can pass in the distance, or it can destroy the entire traditional business of energy giants and, at the same time, the economies of countries that export hydrocarbons, or it can become a life-giving rain, supporting the emergence of the new economy.
This new attack is only the most common element in the universe. Hydrogen. Some forecasts around this element in thirty years there will be an industry with an annual turnover of two and a half trillion dollars and thirty million jobs, which will be able to displace almost 20% of fossil fuels from the world economy.
Let's try to figure out what the chances of these scenarios are.
Where did he come from?
Since Lavoisier named hydrogen two hundred and thirty-five years ago, he has been able to occupy a prominent place in the industry. Hydrogen is used to produce methanol, ammonia and edible margarine, and oil is processed with it. It is impossible to “take from nature” hydrogen in its pure form, so other substances have to be processed - the main method of its production continues to be steam reforming of hydrocarbons. The world produces about sixty-five million tons of hydrogen in just a year (if we compare: natural gas is produced almost forty times more).
We drew attention to the special properties of hydrogen as a fuel back in the middle of the last century - its heat of combustion is several times higher than that of gasoline, natural gas or diesel fuel of the same mass, and no emissions are generated, only water vapor. In the United States in 1970, there were publications about transferring transport to hydrogen fuel, at the same time the term "hydrogen economy" became popular - this is a kind of image of the future, in which American cities completely move away from the "hydrocarbon economy", hydrogen is used as a fuel for homes, cars, power plants, and energy is stored with hydrogen and produced with wind and sun where needed. In other words, the hydrogen economy is based on hydrogen as the most environmentally friendly and versatile energy carrier that connects heat power,the electricity and transport sector. Soon, the oil crisis arrived, and the development of hydrogen transport was given greater importance. So, for example, in the USSR in the 1980s there appeared "hydrogen" minibuses of the RAF, an aircraft based on the Tu-154, and a hydrogen rocket engine for "Energia". The fate of this project is unenviable - for example, it took at least a third of the useful volume of the passenger compartment to be allocated for fuel tanks on the plane, which greatly affected the cost of transportation. In the plane, at least a third of the useful volume of the passenger compartment had to be allocated for fuel tanks, which greatly affected the cost of transportation. In the plane, at least a third of the useful volume of the passenger compartment had to be allocated for fuel tanks, which greatly affected the cost of transportation.
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Why hasn't it worked out yet?
There was no global transition of transport to hydrogen in the twentieth century - the cost of a kilometer run on hydrogen was much higher than on conventional fuel. The main reason is the high cost: producing hydrogen from hydrocarbons (steam reforming) or water (electrolysis) requires a lot of energy. In addition, the steam reforming of hydrocarbons is accompanied by the release of a greenhouse gas - CO2, to combat which, among other things, the idea of transferring transport to hydrogen was directed. The production of hydrogen using electrolysis (the decomposition of water into oxygen and hydrogen using electricity) turned out to be even more expensive than steam reforming, and to produce the required electricity, it was necessary to burn fuel with all emissions. All this reduced the initial interest a little,and the hydrogen economy as a whole, until the very end of the twentieth century, remained only the “image of the future”.
What has changed?
The “energy transition” in the global electric power industry led to the rapid development of renewable energy in the 2000s – 2010s, primarily solar and wind generation. The cost of these technologies is constantly decreasing (the present value of electricity from solar and wind generation in the United States, according to Lazard, decreased by 70-80% in 2009-2016). The market is growing rapidly (in 2016, according to IRENA, 71 GW of photovoltaic solar power plants and 51 GW of wind farms were commissioned in the world, and in 2017, 90 and 40 GW, respectively, are expected to be confirmed) - so, In just the last two years, more wind and solar generation capacities have been commissioned in the world than the total capacity of all power plants of the Unified Energy System of Russia.
Annual investments in the sector amount to more than $ 250 billion - twice as much as investments in fossil fuel generation. Solar energy price records in Mexico, Dubai, Peru, Abu Dhabi, Chile, Saudi Arabia, wind energy in Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Mexico and Morocco reached the level of about 1.7 rubles per kWh (when comparing: residents of Moscow and the region pay two to three times more for electricity in their homes).
The International Energy Agency predicts that by 2040, the share of electricity generation from solar and wind power plants in the world will be from 13% to 34% (in 2016 - 5%). It is clear that the share of these sources in some regions will be even greater.
So, the electric power industry is increasingly switching to sources of generation that are stochastic and depend on the time of day and climatic conditions. The influence of fluctuations in the generation at wind and solar power plants (when the sun suddenly stops shining and the wind blows) on the power system, if their share in the region is high, is comparable to the chaotic switching on / off of a large CHP - several times a day. Moreover, sometimes these stations generate much more than all consumers of the power system need, and then the cost of electricity turns out to be "negative" - such news comes regularly from Germany, for example.
We learned how to cope with such fluctuations by creating energy storage devices that “charge” during periods of excess energy and “discharge” during periods of energy deficiency. If in the twentieth century the role of such storage devices was played only by pumped storage stations, today electrochemical storage devices are actively developing, the most famous of which are Tesla's "fresh" projects in California and Australia. Navigant Research predicts an increase in the annual commissioning of storage capacity for renewable energy sources from about 2 GW in 2018 to 24 GW in 2026 - twelve times in eight years. Annual revenue in this market will grow proportionally to $ 24 billion by 2026.
The growing need for energy storage made people think again about hydrogen.
Renewable energy - at gas stations
It was possible to produce hydrogen by electrolysis before, but then it was necessary to use the energy of traditional thermal power plants that burn fuel. When it comes to surplus and cheap electricity from solar and wind farms, free from CO2 emissions, why not convert it into hydrogen, which can be used as a clean fuel, for example, for cars? Moreover, this will make it possible to abandon hydrocarbons as raw materials for hydrogen production. Many innovative companies in Europe and the world follow exactly this path. UK-based ITM Power participates in the Hydrogen Mobility Europe (H2ME) project, which aims to launch a network of twenty-nine hydrogen filling stations in ten European countries by 2019.which will serve two hundred hydrogen fuel cell cars and one hundred twenty-five hybrid trucks. Sweden's Nilsson Energy specializes in grid-isolated solutions that use solar and wind energy to generate and store hydrogen and use it to fuel cars and power buildings.
Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles have already been marketed by Honda, Toyota, Hyundai and a number of Chinese companies. The target vision of the international consortium Hydrogen Council, founded in Davos in 2017 by the largest industry companies under the chairmanship of Toyota, is more than 400 million passenger cars, 15-20 million trucks, 5 million buses running on hydrogen by 2050 (that is, about 20-25% of total). 78% of global automotive executives surveyed by KPMG in 2017 believe such vehicles will be a breakthrough in the electric vehicle sector, overshadowing battery-powered cars.
But transport is far from the only direction.
Hydrogen to every home
Stationary fuel cells (fuel cells) - a dynamically developing technology that allows you to receive electrical and thermal energy from hydrogen or natural gas directly in the house area or in the basement of the house. There is only one emission when using hydrogen - clean water that can be used for air conditioning. Compact modular units the size of a refrigerator are absolutely silent. According to the forecast of Navigant Research, the capacity of stationary fuel cells will grow from 500 MW in 2018 to 3000 MW in 2025.
Such installations are combined with renewable energy sources, electrolyzers, energy storage units and allow you to create full-fledged autonomous energy supply sources for the household. The present cost of electricity from natural gas fuel cells in the United States, according to Lazard ($ 106-167 per MWh), is already approximately equal to the indicators of nuclear ($ 112-183 per MWh) and coal ($ 60-231 per MWh) power plants and less than the present value of individual rooftop solar panels ($ 187–319 per MWh). In Japan, thanks to large-scale government subsidies, there were already more than 120,000 such installations in 2014, and the target values are more than 1 million by 2020 and more than 5 million by 2030.
As technologies become cheaper (mass production, standardization) and reach their self-sufficiency, the Japanese government plans to start introducing hydrogen fuel cells - it is expected that this will happen by 2030. Fuel cells are undoubtedly the most important promising segment of distributed energy technologies, the potential of which in Russia, according to a recent study by the Skolkovo School's Energy Center, is sufficient to cover at least half of the need for generating capacities by 2035.
Power-to-Gas
Hydrogen obtained from renewable energy sources can be mixed into gas transmission and gas distribution networks. Such a station has been operating in Frankfurt am Main since 2014, adding up to 2% hydrogen to the local gas distribution network (such a limitation of the hydrogen content makes it possible not to change anything at all either in the networks or at consumers). There are several similar objects in Germany, they are also found in Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands. Sometimes hydrogen is mixed into biogas, increasing its value.
In the UK, hydrogen is seriously considered as a way to drastically reduce emissions from households (85% of households in the country burn natural gas for heating). For the city of Leeds, with a population of more than 780,000 people, in 2017, a detailed assessment of the investment need was carried out for the complete conversion of the gas supply system to hydrogen - from replacing boilers at consumers to the creation of underground hydrogen storage and steam reforming units. The amount of investment is estimated at one hundred and sixty billion rubles. This project is going to be scaled to the whole country, especially since British cities during the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century already used artificial "city gas" containing up to 50% hydrogen. In the meantime, gas companies plan to gradually increase the share of hydrogen to 20%,avoiding large-scale reconstruction of gas networks and boilers at consumers.
Since 2013, Japanese companies have been discussing with RusHydro the possibility of creating a hydrogen production plant in the Russian Far East using power-to-gas technology for export. The Japanese side's calculations are based primarily on the use of cheap electricity from hydroelectric power plants. Under an agreement signed at the Eastern Economic Forum in the fall of 2017, Kawasaki Heavy Industries is to update the feasibility study for this project. As the infrastructure in the Far East develops and the cost of electrolysis and hydrogen logistics technologies decreases, interest in such projects will obviously only grow. Considering the huge potential of renewable energy in this region, one can predict the emergence of promising export projects here.
Hydrogen - integrator of gas chemistry and energy
But the most impressive project is now in the north of the Netherlands. In this region, located directly above the Groningen gas field (the cause of the "Dutch disease"), biogas energy has been booming for several years. Already five years ago, cars drove through the streets on groen gas - biomethane produced here from the waste of the agricultural industry in the region with an area of two Moscow. It is not surprising that it was here, with the support of the European Union, that the Chemport Europe project was launched a year ago, the main goal of which is to create a full-fledged gas chemical cluster operating exclusively on local biological resources and hydrogen with zero CO2 emissions. Woody biomass is processed, the carbohydrates formed in the process are used in chemistry. Electricity from offshore wind turbines is converted into hydrogen and oxygen by electrolyzers. Oxygen and hydrogen are used in chemistry, and oxygen is also involved in the gasification of processed biomass from local fields of over a million hectares. Gasification makes it possible to obtain synthetic gas - a pure mixture of hydrogen, CO2 and CO. Pure hydrogen from wind turbines is also added there. From this gas, nitric acid, methanol, ethylene, propylene, butylene are obtained - substances that can completely displace oil and natural gas from their stable positions as raw materials for the chemical industry.which can completely displace oil and natural gas from their stable positions as raw materials for the chemical industry.which can completely displace oil and natural gas from their stable positions as raw materials for the chemical industry.
The project initiators declare their desire to bring the cost of synthetic gas closer to the cost of natural gas. Syngas can be sent for liquefaction (bio-LNG), refueled by vehicles and used for other classic needs.
The initial investment in the project is € 50 million, of which € 15 million is provided by grants from the European Union.
Hydrogen Olympic Village
An Olympic village is being built in Tokyo for the 2020 Olympics, which will receive up to 17,000 guests. The main source of energy in the village will be hydrogen: cars, gas stations, fuel cells, heat and electricity in houses, gas in stoves and boilers - all this will run on hydrogen.
Is everything so cloudless?
Among the skeptics of hydrogen energy are not only conservatives, but also, for example, Elon Musk (although, of course, he has a conflict of interests: Tesla's lithium-ion batteries are a direct competitor to power-to-gas technology). It indicates the dangers of handling hydrogen during storage: leaks are almost impossible to detect and there is the potential for an explosive mixture to form. Some Tokyo residents have expressed similar concerns. Time will tell whether these problems can be effectively and cheaply solved against the background of the development of competing technologies. In the meantime, hydrogen refueling stations continue to appear in the centers of world capitals.
Bets have already been placed
So far, global investments in hydrogen energy are estimated at around € 0.85-1.4 billion per year, according to various estimates. The Hydrogen Council consortium plans to invest $ 13 billion over five years in hydrogen filling station networks and hydrogen cars. According to the US Department of Energy, the fuel cell sector already employs 16,000 people (with a growth potential of up to 200,000), and financial support from the US government budget has been about $ 100 million a year for many years. Several dozen companies, research centers and universities around the world are working to reduce the cost of hydrogen technologies, in particular, the goal is to reduce the cost of hydrogen production by electrolysis from $ 11.5 to $ 5.7 per kilogram,as well as reducing the cost of fuel cells (three to five times) and hydrogen storage (two to three times). Obviously, when these goals are achieved, the "hydrogen economy" will be much closer to us than it may now be imagined.
How will this affect the global oil and gas markets? What will this mean for the Russian economy? How do we find our place in the hydrogen economy world? All these are questions, the answers to which need to be prepared now.
