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It has become increasingly evident that we need many solutions to beat back climate change.
- A carbon-free fuel is of paramount importance. Possibly hydrogen?
- An enabling technology to deal with the intermittency of renewables is necessary. Possibly hydrogen?
- A long-duration storage solution must be found. Possibly hydrogen?
- Any climate change solution must be economical and supported by policy and industry. Possibly hydrogen?
To meet the need, the H2 Refuel Accelerator was created to scale up young startups with enabling technologies for the green hydrogen industry. The program was developed by a consortium consisting of the Urban Future Lab at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering, Greentown Labs and Fraunhofer USA, with funding from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), Shell and Toyota.
Rethink hydrogen.
While the technology to produce clean hydrogen from water and electricity has been commercially available for more than 50 years, we are finally seeing technological innovation responding to actual market conditions. Renewables are finally cost competitive and widely deployed. They provide power more cheaply than coal-fired electricity and, in many places, at a lower cost than electricity powered by natural gas. However, renewables bring an intermittency problem as well as a capacity utilization problem. Hydrogen could be the enabling technology that solves those issues. Electrolyzers that make hydrogen out of water and electricity could be collocated with wind, solar or hydro assets, to make hydrogen when the renewables might normally be curtailed. Such practice could increase capacity factor and project economics for those renewables and allow them to perform as baseload. Currently, these renewables host on-site gas turbines, diminishing the carbon reduction of the overall asset.
Gas was perceived to be cleaner than coal but it comes with its own problems, such as fugitive methane emissions, which have a significantly greater short term global warming potential than CO2. Natural gas consumption, and its attendant infrastructure, has grown dramatically worldwide in the past decade. Unfortunately, although that lowers carbon emissions somewhat, the global warming potential of increased methane emissions is extremely destructive.
Hydrogen provides flexibility. It can be integrated directly into existing gas infrastructure. It can be easily transported in tanks as liquid natural gas is now or moved in existing pipelines. It can be used in existing power-producing turbines or as fuel for transportation. It can be easily moved thousands of miles, from renewable generation sites to distant load centers, with few losses. There are differences that need to be dealt with when replacing natural gas with hydrogen in both the burning and the transporting of these fuels. These include differences in energy density, flame temperature, speed and molecule sizes. Newer seals, tighter and welded connections in pipelines, new burner designs and micromixers can alleviate these issues. New turbines made by large original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) such as GE, Mitsubishi and EUTurbines are already addressing these issues.
Since hydrogen can be made from renewables and stored in a tank, it can be thought of as both a fuel and a storage solution. Think of it as energy from renewables that is stored in a tank for use at a later date, time and place. That is very different from the usual output of a wind turbine or a solar array, which must be transmitted and used immediately. Its flexibility as either a fuel or a storage medium is similar to petroleum, with none of the fossil fuel deficiencies. Long duration, even seasonal storage, has been the holy grail sought by the renewables industry. We have had it all along.
Today’s clean hydrogen is quite different from the hydrogen of 50 years ago. We are able to mitigate its explosive potential with better seals and valves and connectors. We can bring the costs down with new electrolyzer membranes, new reversible processes and new tank designs. Until now, hydrogen has been made from methane using the steam methane reforming (SMR) process which is energy-intensive, uses a dirty fossil fuel and produces vast amounts of CO2 as a by-product. The new cleaner process, often called P2G for Power to Gas, uses electricity to split water into its component parts hydrogen and oxygen. If done with renewables, the process creates no emissions. In addition, the heat generated by the electrolysis process can be captured and used for heating.
Policies together with efforts by industry and positive economic forces will help to drive the transition to clean hydrogen. Government support in countries such as Germany, Japan, Australia, Scotland and China is funding large, clean hydrogen production demonstration projects. Clean hydrogen is also getting industry support from the oil and gas, utilities and automotive industries, as exemplified by Shell, Toyota and Mitsubishi. Chemical companies that use hydrogen to produce fertilizers and the semiconductor industries are also significant users of hydrogen and should soon be entering the field. Investments emanating from both industry and government can help to build a skilled workforce more quickly than either alone.
We are now where solar and wind were 20 years ago. Technology is advancing more rapidly in the 21st century than it ever has. The improvements needed to make clean hydrogen more efficient and cost-competitive are just around the corner. For decades, clean hydrogen was an exciting solution looking for a problem, a high cost, cutting edge technology with no product-market fit. Now, low-cost renewables, the need for storage, pre-existing industrial hydrogen and gas infrastructure as well as strong national and regional policies are forcing innovation and enabling a market for green hydrogen.
The time has come.
With assistance from Joe Silver and Audrey Belanger Weiss
