Hydrogen, a simple and abundant element, has vast potential to become an alternative energy source. But extracting it is not always green nor affordable, not to mention the challenges of storage and transportation. Jaime Ho speaks to Frederic Carron, Vice President, Middle East & Asia, Energy Business, Wartsila on what it all means, and what’s in store for the potential of green hydrogen.
this
is the climate conversations and I'm Jamie
home today.
I'm talking about the most abundant element in the universe and some believe it has a part to play in getting us to net zero. It's hydrogen when harnesses the fuel, it has the potential to transform our power plants, factories and vehicles. Unlike fossil fuels, it emits only water vapor when burned. But the catch is that hydrogen is hardly found as a pure gas on earth and extracting it is not always green nor affordable,
storing and transporting highly flammable gas is also difficult.
Despite these challenges, experts say hydrogen can play a significant role in that Net zero economy. Even if it takes time and money
with me to discuss, this is fredrik, which specializes in innovative technologies and lifecycle solutions for the marine and energy markets Welcome Frederick,
I'm
going to jump straight into the first question and you know, we've spoken about alternative energies on this podcast series in several episodes, but hydrogen hasn't been discussed as extensively as I would like, partly because I think it has a reputation for being tough to harvest, so to speak compared to other alternative energies as a start. Perhaps you can just run through,
give us a sense of why, you know, hydrogen is maybe even green, hydrogen is a little bit more complicated than other clean energy sources.
Thanks johnny, I'll get into that. And what I'm thinking of is maybe I can give a few facts some of the basics before trying to answer your question a bit more precisely, most of us, we know that hydrogen is the most abundant element in the, in the university, I think it's about 74% of all elements is hydrogen. One of the problem with hydrogen is that on earth, hydrogen does not come on its own because it's a very reactive elements. It's normally bonded with some of our molecules on this planet. We are finding hydrogen mostly in water and in hydrocarbons. It means that to be able to produce hydrogen, you need to extract these hydrogen atoms from the molecules.
There are currently two ways of doing that. The most common way right now is reforming and this is when you try to extract the hydrogen from the hydrocarbons which is fossil fuel. The inconvenient with this process is in addition to creating hydrogen, It also releases Sio two. That's not something that we want.
The second way of producing hydrogen is called electrolysis
and this is producing Ideagen from water using electricity to make that transformation.
That's the first part. First you need to be able to get this a trojan atom from these molecules where it's in
what may be interesting to know also for our auditors today is that there is already quite substantial hydrogen production, which is happening, I think it's about 100 million tons per year, which is already being produced. This is produced right now from this reforming process, so produced from fossil fuel
and the uses mostly for refinery processes and also for fertilizer production. What's interesting to know is that in this case the hydrogen is not used for its energy content or as a kind of energy carrier as we are. I think right now saying that hydrogen is mostly talked about,
but it is used for its chemical properties and in this case it clearly cannot be replaced by any other source of energy. That's why these industries refineries and fertilizer producers need really the hydrogen, as I wasn't mentioning, it is also a known fact that I'd rogen could be used as an energy supplier
that's been talked about for actually quite a long time. So it's not a new discussion.
It's been talked about for more than a century. I would say, there was even sometimes in the history during the oil crisis in 1973 where it was really seen as potential fuel that could come very soon, but finally it has not materialized
and there are some good reasons for that. I think what you were asking about the difficulty of producing, but also the economics of hydrogen needed to be right for it to compete with the actual for social which is available. I have a natural gas o or liquid Schulte.
Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, it sounds as if it is a problem of scale of cost and also of course of the emissions that are associated with extracting hydrogen itself. Right. Obviously, as you say, it's not something new. It's been there on the cards for a long time
and now it's coming back on stream as sort of a potential alternative. What do you think are the kinds of technological leaps that are going to be necessary? And how long is that going to take for hydrogen to really be able to be sourced at scale and at a cost and at the level of emissions that's going to be worthwhile. How long is it gonna take?
I don't
really have a crystal ball, but I will, I will
try to
give you some elements that maybe can answer your question. The first part is about how can green hydrogen, because we are talking in this case of green hydrogen, which is hydrogen generated for this electrolysis process and when the electricity to produce hydrogen electrolysis process is produced from renewable energy, because that's really what people are looking for
because in this case, as you rightly mentioned then, you can really see that there is a net zero effect, There is no C 02 emission at the same time. So, we are really talking talking about that, how to get to a point where green hydrogen can be a competitive fuel. There are three
factors actually influencing the price of green hydrogen. The first one
Is of course the price of electricity because you need electricity to produce hydrogen and you are doing it from renewables. The long term projection is still that renewable electricity price will come down. We see the prices of solar and wind coming down for instance already in the last 20 years. And this is already creating what we call the energy transition.
But we see that this will keep on unfolding. Maybe not at the same rate, but still should be coming down in the long run. So that will help in the production cost. We also expect that if the right policies are there at the same time, there could be a scale effect. And then the price of the electrolyzer itself
will be able to come down. And the last point is, once you have electricity, once you have your electrolyzer,
you need to ensure that the electrolyzer is used at maximum capacity is what we call capacity factor. So planning how the electrolyzer will be used most efficiently is going to be important because I think we should not forget that for green hydrogen to make sense. It should use renewable energy. Yes, but actually it should use excess renewable energy
the best way for the planet to be able to reach. The next Ceo target is first to use renewable as directly as possible generating electricity when possible. And then if you have access, then you can think of producing fields like green hydrogen. Those
are really excellent points. And I caught on and and I do know that we're talking about green hydrogen now.
But maybe this is a good
time as well to talk about other colors that have been associated with hydrogen most commonly blue and gray explained to us what the differences are and and how these features into the role that hydrogen can play overall
there's a rainbow of almost of hydrogen that people are talking about the most common forms or colors of hydrogen green. I think I've already explained that part, the gray hydrogen is hydrogen which is produced through this reforming process,
meaning that you are using hydrocarbons as the feedstock for producing the hydrogen. And in this case the process is releasing Sio two and with great hydrogen, you are not capturing and using the C. 02. So you just released Ceo to India, which is not ideal. Blue hydrogen is still using hydrocarbons as the feedstock for producing hydrogen. But in this case there is a system and process in place to capture the C. 02 which is produced through the process and try to either store the Ceo to bury it for instance,
or reuse the CEO to in some of our processes. So this is a better, more efficient and also, especially more environmentally friendly way to produce hydrogen. There are some other colors that people are talking about for instance, being hydrogen, which is hydrogen produced in this case from electrolysis, but with nuclear energy for instance. So there is a very wide variety area
that's interesting. So, I mean most hydrogen now that's been processed is presumably gray. So as we sort of look into the various options, is it necessarily always going to be progressive in that you have gray, then you need to move into blue first and then you trans transition more and more into green Or are there sort of technological leaps that can actually move us very quickly from potentially gray to green? Or is that sort of also contingent on developments in alternative energies elsewhere?
That's the evolution you see going from gray to blue and then from blue to green at what pace is that going to happen?
There is no consensus really in the industry, what we feel is that economically speaking, blue hydrogen for instance, should remain cheaper than green hydrogen for the next maybe 10 years. But after this, we feel that there are some places, some countries which should be able to produce
green hydrogen at a cheaper cost than blue hydrogen and in this case it will be the snowball effect in terms of demon and also in terms of price reduction and then a green hydrogen should be the fuel of choice at this time we'll
take a quick break and be right
back. So climate
conversations, podcast is supported by Sabrina jerome building cities shaping lives. So would you say that therefore that you would expect most of the action or the
technological advances and the leaps forward to come from places that are moving much faster on renewable energies. Therefore right and therefore lowering the price of those renewable energies and then allowing for hydrogen to be deployed, they're much more cheaply in the longer term. So is that where it's all going to be? And if that's the case
bringing back
to Singapore, what's the role of a place like Singapore in helping with the technological advances?
That's a good question. I'll try to answer it in two different times. The first one, I think you're spot on countries which have already invested a lot in renewables should be the country's coming first with solutions in terms of green hydrogen production.
This can be countries like Germany, I think we all know that Germany is really leading the way in promoting the use of hydrogen in in the future. Also cases like Australia, I think in front, but just because they are already in front, also in terms of renewable energy usage, maybe two to link it back. Also to what I was saying earlier, even if in the next 10 years,
the blue hydrogen might be slightly more economical than green hydrogen. It doesn't mean that nothing should happen on the green hydrogen side. And that's what also these countries
like Australia or Germany are doing a lot to promote. Already some policies that are encouraging investments, pilot projects because the next 10 years need to be a time where we are validating technologies in terms of storage in terms of transportation in terms of production of the androgen, but also in terms of the use of the hydrogen in the different potential industry,
there will be a number of parameters later on that will decide which industry would be able to use the hydrogen first. When is it going to be relevant for this or that industry to use this? And that will be the same question I would say for Singapore.
Would the hydrogen makes sense to be used for power generation at some point for maybe air conditioning, Would it be used for aircraft? Would it be used for busses? There are a number of parameters which are there. What is pretty unique to Singapore? Is that
Singapore is at the same time
of course, a place where with quite sizable population and where there is demand for energy, but it's already a energy up in a way. You have a big petrochemical complex in Jurong Island and also it is a shipping hub. It's it's one of the biggest ports in the world. And there could be a lot of synergies between different sectors between the petrochemical industry. As I was explaining, refineries are big consumers of hydrogen power generation can be a consumer of hydrogen at least for what we call balancing power because the first source of power
ideally in the future is still going to be renewable, but you could still use hydrogen for balancing uh, some of these intermittent, see with the renewable
but also for the shipping industry, we know that this is an industry that really has some targets in terms of emission reduction and they would be also potentially capable of using hydrogen maybe not in the hydrogen form, it might be in a different form where you associate again hydrogen with some of the
components to make the transportation easier. It can be like ammonia, but for Singapore, it will be important to have all these different sectors to talk together and try to plant some infrastructure that could benefit or
using against Singapore as sort of the hook to ask my next question. Obviously we import a lot of our energy. So if we're looking at that, that then brings into question the viability of transportation of hydrogen give us a sense as well how easy difficult it is and how different it is when it comes to
transporting and moving hydrogen.
People are used to talking about Lng solar, what's different about it when it comes to hydrogen and moving it from one place to another.
Hydrogen is different from a natural gas. It has some advantages because hydrogen per kg is containing a lot of energy, but the density of hydrogen is actually very low, which means in practice is for instance, if you compare compressed natural gas to compress hydrogen,
it takes about
3 to 4 time the volume to get the same amount of energy with hydrogen. You can imagine that this is a challenge in terms of transportation. Instead of having one LNG carrier. For instance, you would need 3 to 4 to bring the same volume of energy. Also, what's a bit tricky with hydrogen when you want to transport it by sea for instance,
Is that the temperature at which you can get it under the liquid form is very low. It's a -250° compared to natural gas, which is about 160°. So it also requires more energy and you can have quite a lot of
Energy losses in this process either by compressing or turning into liquid that can be quite inefficient in some cases. One way of transporting aborigine, which is quite efficient is by a pipeline because even if the what with this energy density is different with with H2, the advantages the flow of H2 in pipelines is actually faster
the natural gas. Just because this molecule is so like
that can be a more efficient way. So some countries will have the advantage to have the energy, the green hydrogen production close to the point of demand and can just use pipeline, in which case it can become pretty efficient very quickly. Some of our countries will have the disadvantage
not having maybe the renewable energy production in their own place, then they will need to compress liquefy sending the gas so that can become more expensive
for Singapore. We know that the challenge. I think the biggest
for me, my recommendation for Singapore is first to not be focused on the nitrogen. We need to have a plan for Net 0 2050. And there are many ways to achieve this decarbonization? Probably H two for me will play a role. It might be the final push in getting there.
But the most important is to have an overall plan. And then part of this plan first is how do you get your renewable energy in Singapore? Is it going to be produced on our small island or are we going to do a little bit as E. M. A. Is exploring maybe procuring from Malaysia, maybe for curing from Indonesia. And then if we do that, then can we do maybe the conversion of renewable electricity
island that could be a possibility to
use your own experience as a way to sort of cap off our conversation,
you've been doing
this for several years already with Godzilla as you look into the future therefore. And you did mention sort of time frames of, you know, at least 10 years and obviously for different sort of jurisdictions different countries, the role that hydrogen is going to play, It's gonna vary. But in terms of the technology that at least that is going to be allowing countries who can scale it to an efficient enough level, what kind of timelines would you say? You know, looking at what's happened in the last five years? Is it moving in a sufficiently progressive way? Or is it still sort of linked really to other breakthroughs elsewhere in terms of the cost of alternative energy overall then, do you see it being a big part of it or is it really a final push kind of thing as you mentioned.
Okay, first of all, in terms of the, as I was mentioning, we see green hydrogen probably displacing blue hydrogen
in the next 10 years. That because it will become more economical than blue hydrogen, but it will still not probably be cheaper than natural gas, it will probably just replace the use really for chemical process where you need the molecule to form some other products like ammonia for fertilizers or in the refinery process, they're using hydrogen for this authorization to be able to remove the sulfur from the idol cabinets. So
Beyond that, you still need to have the costs keep on coming down so that it can really compete with natural gas and that's when things can accelerate and that might still take many more years after this. Some countries will be in a better place. It will also depends on the, on the countries, some countries have access to cheap gas, some countries have access to expensive gas and when they will start to adopt green hydrogen might be different. So it's possible that it might take on over 10 years after that for green age to to start to be competitive with natural gas.
That's why we see more seed. Like it's almost a final push. But if we don't start now, we will not get them and when I mean if we don't start now, it's these are companies like us. We are providing technologies so it can be different technologies
electrolyzer for us in the back still a case its power generation equipment. We want to have our equipment which is future proof so that we are going to be able to use hydrogen in our equipment as a as a fuel. And we are doing that. Governments are coming with policy with targets in terms of emission reduction because of course the economics of hydrogen is not everything if really there are policies that are forcing people whatever the price is to adopt hydrogen that could come faster. So it's going to be a mixed back depending on the countries but having targets encouraging technology development and for instance, I can say that in Singapore. This is already happening because we are doing currently a project with capable of shore and marine for instance where capable of showing marine is getting a grant from the E. M. A. As a research project to build what they call a floating living lab. And on this floating living lab they will have different technologies, they will have battery storage but they will also have some of our that's still a power generation equipment
in which we are already planning to blend natural gas and hydrogen with a support percentage just to validate the technology get used with the technology and also help Singapore come with a better understanding of these Children.
Well, Frederick certainly sounds as if everyone is on the right track right now. That's certainly my hope that everything is being done now. So that when the time comes for the final push, the technology is already, it's been a fascinating conversation. Thank you very much.
Thanks a lot for your time
and thanks for listening to the climate conversations. Stay up to date on CNN's coverage of climate change on sienna dot asia. You can also find this and other CNN podcasts on our website and on itunes and Spotify. The team behind this podcast are Christina, robert lynch tooling and Aaron Low. I'm Jamie Hotel next week.
Yeah.