Green hydrogen is a big bet and the odds have changed. Once stymied by the cost and availability of renewable energy, the now hotly tipped power of the future, produced as it is from the most abundant chemical substance in the universe, is beginning to look like a serious contender. 

Now cheaper and more readily available, wind and solar power are helping to fuel both a change in the odds and in the stakes on green hydrogen. So too are concerns about energy security and the need in many countries to go ‘cold turkey’ on Russian gas. The industrial, heavy duty energy alternative to fossil fuels, claim countries from the UK to China, is green hydrogen.

In the UK there is an increasingly frenetic race to get green hydrogen plugged into the energy mix, both to power industry and drive heavy duty transport. The government realises (at last) that only by producing hydrogen at scale, rather than in isolated pilots, can costs be brought down and adoption accelerated. 

In this respect it is putting some of its money where its mouth is via support for initiatives such as Hynet, one of two priority low carbon industrial clusters in the UK, and the Whitelee green hydrogen project near Glasgow, which has received nearly £10mn in government funding to develop the UK’s largest electrolyser.

Now cheaper and more readily available, wind and solar power are helping to fuel both a change in the odds and in the stakes on green hydrogen.

‘It has never been more important to champion projects like this one,’ commented Alistair Jack, Secretary of State for Scotland, in an upbeat speech to mark the launch of Whitelee. Conflict, COVID-19 and indeed COP26 mean that this particular politician is almost certainly right. Located alongside and powered by the Whitelee wind farm, the largest of its kind in the UK, green hydrogen will be good for Scotland and should be a welcome addition to the UK’s overall energy mix.

Glasgow, meanwhile, will hope to live up to its reputation as the low carbon, net zero supporting host of last year’s COP26 summit. Amid all the furore of COP, the city boasted its own net zero target of 2030 and the Whitelee green hydrogen project can be expected to play its part. 

Once built, the Whitelee electrolyser will be able to produce up to 4 t/d of hydrogen, enough when stored to power the city’s bus fleet. Indeed, more than enough, claim the project promoters, to provide the equivalent of zero-carbon fuel for 225 buses travelling to and from Glasgow and Edinburgh each day.

ITM Power, which has developed the Whitelee electrolyser and similar facilities for use both in the UK and overseas, is understandably bullish about the prospects for green hydrogen. 

At a recent tour of its new electrolyser ‘Gigafactory’ in Bessemer Park, Sheffield, the largest of its kind in the world, the company announced that in addition to Whitelee it had secured €32mn of EU funding to build a 100 MW electrolyser at Shell’s Energy and Chemicals Park at Wesseling in Germany. The project is part of the EU Hydrogen Accelerator Programme, which will develop infrastructure, storage facilities and ports to replace the demand for Russian gas. 

This will be achieved, notes the programme, with 10mn tonnes of imported green hydrogen and 5mn tonnes of domestically produced product. That means 200 GW of installed electrolyser capacity in Europe by 2030, a scaling up which should dramatically reduce the cost of green hydrogen. 

The interior of ITM Power’s new ‘Gigafactory’ electrolyser manufacturing facility in Sheffield

Photo: ITM Power

Germany and China

This is all good news for Shell, which plans to become a big player in the supply of green hydrogen to industrial and transport customers in Germany as part of its own transition plans. ‘We will be involved in the whole process,’ says the company’s Downstream Director Huibert Vigeveno, ‘…from power generation, using offshore wind, to hydrogen production across sectors. We want to be the partner of choice for our customers as we help them decarbonise.’

Help customers and, of course, help itself as Shell seeks to reduce its production of traditional fuels by 55% by 2030. In doing so the company plans to transform its refinery footprint to five core energy and chemical plants, with green hydrogen an important part of the offering at Wesseling and elsewhere.

The UK’s green hydrogen production could also benefit from efforts to re-energise the development of onshore wind farms. Following the tightening of planning rules around onshore wind farms in 2015, applications in England declined by 98.5% and, while Conservative MPs have led the charge against further development, polls suggest that onshore wind is popular, particularly for many who see it as an alternative to nuclear power. 

The prospect of more wind-powered green hydrogen production could further boost that popularity as people begin to appreciate the potential for low carbon industry and transport.

Other nations agree. While China is still doing lockdown battle with COVID, its National Development Reform Commission (NDRC) recently announced plans to produce up to 200,000 tonnes of green hydrogen by 2025 and have about 50,000 hydrogen-fuelled vehicles in the same time scale. This is a tall order for the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, but China is a trading nation and, as climate change shows signs of impacting on future trading relationships, it is going to tackle the problem head on.

‘Development of hydrogen is an important move for energy transition and a great support for China’s carbon peak and carbon neutrality goals,’ says Wang Ziang, Deputy Director of the High Technology Department at the NDRC. China currently produces 33mn t/y of non-green hydrogen, about 80% of it from coal and gas. The rest is mainly a by-product from industrial sectors. Estimates suggest that China’s green hydrogen production currently stands at under 30,000 t/y so the race to scale up fast is on.

UK and Europe

The same applies in the UK and other parts of Europe, where small prototype projects must be scaled up quickly to bring down the cost of green hydrogen and make it viable as an alternative to fuels like diesel. 

ITM Power is also involved in Gigastack, the UK’s flagship renewable hydrogen project aimed at providing green energy to industry in the north-east, including Phillips 66’s Humber refinery. If successful, the project is projected to bring the levelised cost of hydrogen (LCOH) down from just under £8 as calculated in the initial base case for the project, to around £2.80 over the next 10 years. 

As happened successfully with offshore wind, the UK government’s Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) is seeking to kick-start the market through funding support, the aim being to implement what is a fully integrated end-to-end solution. In addition to ITM and Phillips 66, the Gigastack consortium is led by Ørsted and Element Energy, all apparently committed to making green hydrogen work in a real-life industrial setting.

The consortium notes that: ‘The Gigastack programme will send a strong signal to the UK manufacturing supply chain, stimulate UK-based jobs and act as a catalyst to the government’s ambition to build back better in the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.’ Jobs are an important levelling up message for a region such as the north-east and, with the prospect of 1,700 permanent posts around Immingham, the government believes there is every reason to embrace what it projects as a green revolution. If all goes according to plan, Gigastack is projected to be in commercial operation by the end of 2025.

Transport and storage

Gigastack and projects like it recognise that green hydrogen as a fuel source that can be scaled needs infrastructure. Hydrogen already plays a leading role in agriculture – think ammonia for fertiliser – and in food processing, personal care products and medical supplies. The big bet on green hydrogen as a fuel source is ensuring, first, that it is hooked up to plentiful supplies of renewable energy and, second, that operational developments include safe and cost-effective transportation and storage. 

There are a number of storage/transportation options. Hydrogen can be trucked and stored as a pressurised gas and it can also be transported expensively by pipelines, which need to be engineered to prevent the gas escaping. It can also be shipped in tankers as a liquid and can be moved around in chemicals carriers such as ubiquitous ammonia (NH₃), the second most common inorganic chemical in the world, of which about 180mn t/y are consumed. 

Ammonia is completely carbon free and costs less than diesel, which means that there are now a number of companies developing ways to cost effectively extract the hydrogen.

Like the UK, China is focused on what it sees as a joined-up approach to green hydrogen. The NDRC notes that China aims to establish a comprehensive hydrogen sector spanning transport, energy storage and industry. That means producing green hydrogen as a static energy source and for green mobility in the form of fuel cells to run cars, buses, trucks, aircraft, ship, locomotives and construction equipment. Hydrogen could even be deployed to run electric vehicle charging stations, runs the thinking. It looks as if this big bet has become one worth taking.