Green Hydrogen : Can Australia lead the world?

those of you of an Australian persuasion might recognize this guy he's called dr. Alan Finkel and he holds the position of chief scientist for Australia I imagine that probably means he's got his hands quite full right now discussing strategies for a safe long-term exit from lock down but he also plays an important role in advising on the science around his country's transition to sustainable energy in November 2019 the Australian government released its national hydrogen strategy and in a statement released on 23rd of December Dr Finkel said we are truly at the dawn of a new industry that could contribute to jobs export income energy storage and vitally global emissions reductions and just a couple of weeks ago a 300 million dollar project was announced for Western Australia bringing large-scale hydrogen production powered by wind and solar to that region sounds great doesn't it but like all energy technologies hydrogen has its advantages and its disadvantages not least of which is the possibility of fossil fuel companies muscling in on the action and cheating on carbon emission regulations in an effort to lower prices and gain unfair market advantage so it's Australia really ready to lead the world in such a disruptive energy technology and have they set a clear path to navigate the pitfalls hello and welcome to just ever think we've looked at hydrogen in a couple of earlier videos on this channel and you can jump back to look at one of them by clicking up there somewhere hydrogen extracted from hydrocarbons in a process called steam reforming is already widely used to produce ammonia for nitrogen fertilizers and for the production of other chemicals oil refineries add hydrogen to heavy oil to produce transport fuels and methanol can be produced as a byproduct of separating hydrogen out from fossil fuel all those processes produce carbon dioxide so it's fair to say that historically hydrogen has never really been regarded as a low carbon contributor to the energy transition but that legacy industry has resulted in a lot of experience of how to handle hydrogen which is after all a highly explosive and quite corrosive element hydrogen pipelines have been operating without incident over hundreds of miles in many countries for decades and there's also a very long and safe track record of transporting hydrogen by road haulage in specialized vehicles hydrogen offers many potential benefits both as a direct fuel and as an energy carrier for long term storage it does look like it's increasingly unlikely to surpass battery electricity for domestic vehicles but it is proven to be a great solution for larger commercial vehicles like trucks ships trains and even airplanes the only byproduct of a hydrogen fuel cell is water compressed hydrogen canisters can be shipped easily by road and rail and where the geography allows it may be possible to store enormous quantities of hydrogen in salt caverns providing almost instantly available energy to boost and stabilize grid electricity during the long winter months when solar and wind power are least effective so how do we get the hydrogen without the co2 emission problem well scientists and governments have been discussing the possibility of producing hydrogen via electrolysis using renewable energy since the early 1970s but until recently the costs have been really quite prohibitive as dr. Frankel explained in a recent paper called hydrogen for Australia's future the drivers behind the interest in hydrogen are a 100 fold reduction in the price of solar electricity in the past four decades coupled with Japan's commitment to be a long-term large-scale customer for hydrogen produced through low emission methods Frankel says Japan currently imports 94 percent of its energy in the form of fossil fuels to reduce its emissions government and industry have put ambitious hydrogen uptake targets at the heart of a comprehensive energy transition plan but he also warns his fellow Aussies we're not alone in this race Norway Brunei and Saudi Arabia are all boosting their credentials as future hydrogen suppliers he says this is the time for Australia to stake its claim as a supplier of choice not just to Japan but to other nations like South Korea hungry for a 21st century fuel and let's not forget too that other countries like the United Kingdom Germany in the United States are also actively pursuing hydrogen as a significant addition to their low or zero emissions energy policies and of course our global economies and industries are currently driven by more or less unchanged capitalism which means all those countries will be working hard to achieve market dominance so why does Australia think it might have the edge well in an August 2018 report published by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency their CEO evolve week next tells us if Australia can tap into our abundant wind and solar resources to produce hydrogen using renewable energy we could export hydrogen at large scale the report points out that Australia has a significant advantage for exporting to Japan and across Asia due to what Frisch next says our it's ideal location excellent renewable energy resources well established energy trading relationships and experience in large scale energy infrastructure construction and crucially as well as providing a boost to the Aussie economy a new hydrogen industry would provide a much needed lifeline to many regional communities because hydrogen production facilities are likely to be located close to the supply of renewable energy particularly large-scale solar farms in the more remote areas the Arena report finds that Australian hydrogen exports could potentially contribute 1.7 billion dollars to the economy every year and provide nearly three thousand jobs by 2030 and that's where this new 300 million dollar project comes in it's called the Aerosmith hydrogen project and it'll be built in a place called dong Gaara a small town about 320 kilometers north of Perth in an interview with the online site renew economy a spokesman for infinite blue energy said the facility will produce about 25 tons of green hydrogen every day via electrolysis of water powered entirely by renewable energy supplied from about 85 megawatts of solar power supplemented by 75 megawatts of wind generation capacity that on-site supply of wind and solar is the key to lowering the cost of renewable hydrogen production at Australian facilities works on the project are expected to commence by the middle of the year with first production plan for the final quarter of 2020 to ultimately infinite blue energy hopes to see the integration of large-scale electricity storage and generation using hydrogen that could offer 24/7 supplies of power the company already has plans for a follow-up project that will have the capacity to produce as much as 75 tons of renewable hydrogen a day and ultimately they hope to have many similar projects established across Western Australia the country's highly respected Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization or CSIRO has produced a national hydrogen roadmap which expects the demand for renewable hydrogen import by Asian nations to reach 3.8 million tons by 2030 it's thought that between 10 and 20 percent of Japanese and Korean hydrogen demand could be met by Australian exports with a mid case forecast of 500,000 tons per annum by 2030 and this report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance Group calculates that renewable hydrogen could be produced for between 70 cents and a dollar 60 per kilo in most parts of the world before 2050 that makes it competitive with natural gas in many parts of the world and cheaper than producing hydrogen from natural gas or coal with carbon capture and storage as industry and press quite understandably focus their attention on reducing co2 emissions a key challenge for standard hydrogen electron is's is sometimes overlooked though and that's the fact that it requires enormous quantities of purified water to work properly water scarcity is a major problem in places like Australia and California where green hydrogen electrolysis is being so enthusiastically pursued so innovations like this one from Stanford University could be transformational that seem appears to have overcome the issue of anode corrosion from the chloride in salt water increasingly effective working time of the anode from about 12 hours to more than a thousand hours that means that in the future the water required for hydrogen electrolysis could be drawn directly from our oceans that's the technology we'll take a closer look at later in the year despite all that though irena still published this infographic illustrating how they see the near and medium-term transitional future of hydrogen production remaining a combination of green hydrogen and hydrogen derived from hydrocarbons with carbon capture and storage so how can we be sure that co2 emissions will really be reduced by adding hydrogen into our energy mix let's go back to Australia's chief scientist Alan Finkel to give us a steer on that one he says if hydrogen is produced from either coal or natural gas using best practice carbon capture and storage generally referred to as CCS then the amount of carbon dioxide generated is very small less than naught point eight kilograms of carbon dioxide emitted for every kilogram of hydrogen produced but since carbon dioxide is left behind as a residual part of the hydrogen production process there is no additional step and little added cost for its extraction and because the gas mixture at the output of the process is at much higher pressure than flue gases the extraction of carbon dioxide is more energy efficient and it's more easy to store Finkle assures his readers that energy importing countries have been explicit that their interest is in clean hydrogen and he says that thanks to Geoscience Australia's online CCS assessment tool there are numerous known suitable CCS reservoirs across the country Australia is developing a credible certificate of origin scheme Finkle explains ensuring the clean credentials of every kilogram of hydrogen bought and sold can be verified providing an effective mechanism to deter dishonest practices Fink includes that the idea of fossil fuel companies promising to implement CCS for their hydrogen production facilities only to later renege on their commitment is unfounded I'll let you draw your own conclusions from those comments but it's not hard to see why some environmental groups worried that relying on carbon capture and storage provides a potential loophole that the fossil fuel producers could exploit CCS is not so far been a success story in the United States for example there are very few full-scale working examples of CCS technologies and the only ones that are economically viable seem to be the ones that use CCS - for co2 under pressure in - untapped underground seems to get at previously inaccessible oil reserves in a process known as enhanced oil recovery those companies enjoy the grotesque bonus of government subsidy for implementing an apparently low carbon technology while growing their profits from the extra oil the captured co2 gas allows them to extract nothing straightforward in the wonderful world of energy resources as I've said on many occasions there's no doubt that energy storage is the key to a successful transition to a sustainable future but if creating that storage also creates secondary almost hidden carbon dioxide emissions then we'll have failed to move away from our collective delusion that we can stay on a business-as-usual trajectory and still have any hope of survival as a species much past the end of this century human beings are remarkably innovative though a new carbon free ways to store energy are being developed all over the world all the time 2020 is shaping up to be a pivotal year for these technologies and we'll be taking a look at many of them in more detail as we go through the rest of the year that's it for this week though a massive thank you as always to the channel supporters over at patreon who make these programs possible and I must just give a shout out to the folks who join the patreon team since last week with pledges of $10 or more a month they are Ian Larry David Fife Kevin Sharpe Paul Spann ttyn mark Hector Phil Krug Mark Muir Graham lil William Knox daniel picah Maya bill Platt Maya and Phillip we sell a big thank you to all those folks and to everyone else who's joined since last time you can get involved with all that if you want by visiting WWE and Comm forward slash just never think and you can show you support for the channel for free by hitting the like button and by subscribing both of which raise the channels visibility with the youtube search algorithm and get our message to more and more people each week it's dead easy to subscribe all you need to do is click down there or on that icon there and don't forget to hit the bell icon so you get notified about new content as always thanks very much for watching have a great week and remember to just ever think see you next week

Channel: Just Have a Think

Views: 249,615

Keywords: hydrogen, green hydrogen, renewable hydrogen, brown hydrogen, blue hydrogen, steam reforming, fossil fuels, alan finkel, Australia, australian hydrogen, climate change, climate crisis, climate emergency

Id: EkuVE0SA1B8

Length: 13min 10sec (790 seconds)

Published: Sun May 24 2020