Special report
Green hydrogen-powered cruise ships could play a role in the pathway to net zero.
as temperatures continue to rise. Considering 95% of hydrogen production continues to involve fossil fuels, she may well have a point.
Brande new
Brande is probably not the first spot you’d expect to find the offshore hydrogen revolution. Just look around you: Brande is in the middle of rural Denmark, with nary a wave or a shoreline in sight. But explore the site, some 160 miles from Copenhagen and 30 from the sea, and you’ll soon realise how impressive the project really is. Developed by Skjaerbaek and his team at Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy and bolstered by a one-off permit from the Danish government, it involves connecting an electrolyser to an existing onshore turbine.
The point, explains Skjaerbaek, is to “demonstrate that we can generate green hydrogen directly out of a turbine” – before eventually expanding the concept to offshore turbines off the Danish coastline.
“Hydrogen has great potential to decarbonise industry and we’re working on a new steel- making process that will eliminate CO2 Danielle Lane
.”
530 million
The predicted global demand for tonnes of green hydrogen by 2050.
PwC 34
By any measure, you have to think the Brande experiment is going well – apart from proving the scalability of Siemens Gamesa’s electrolysis system, some of the resulting hydrogen has ended up powering Copenhagen taxis. Nor is it the only place that energy companies are finding success with green hydrogen. Off the Dutch coast, for instance, is Hollandse Kust West. As part of a new wind farm at the site, Vattenfall is planning on equipping a trio of wind turbines with electrolysers. Working together with transformers and batteries, the resulting hydrogen will then be sent via pipeline to the port of Rotterdam, where it’ll finally be integrated into Europe’s hydrogen network.
Between them, the Dutch and Danish projects are part of a broader transformation of the world’s hydrogen portfolio. Though things are admittedly starting from a low ebb, PwC reports that global demand for green hydrogen could reach 530 million tonnes by 2050, along the way displacing the equivalent of around 10.4 billion barrels of oil. Not that any of this is simple. For one thing, the Brande experiment only worked because Siemens Gamesa secured a special dispensation from the Danish state, absolving them from paying to use the grid as they ran electricity from the turbine into the electrolyser. And as Skjaerbaek explains, technology was another issue. “When the hydrogen comes out of the electrolyser, it’s around 35 bar, depending on what technology you use,” he says. “You cannot really transport hydrogen at that pressure because it fills a lot of space.” To get round this difficulty, Siemens Gamesa partnered with a hydrogen distribution company, developing a “joint system” to compress the hydrogen down and actually get it to the end consumer. Lane, for her part, is similarly conscious of the question of storage, noting that Vattenfall was recently involved in converting a Swedish cave into a green hydrogen storehouse. Inaugurated this summer, the facility at Luleå could eventually help cut Sweden’s carbon dioxide emissions by a tenth.
Pipe dreams?
What, then, does the future of green hydrogen look like? Certainly, the technology is there to be adopted – and schemes like Hollandse Kust West suggest green hydrogen could soon be coming to a factory near you. At the same time, Lane envisages even more exciting uses for the molecules. “Hydrogen has great potential to decarbonise industry and we’re working on a new steel-making process that will eliminate CO2
,” she says, adding that the scheme,
of which the Luleå project is part, will ultimately remove environmentally disastrous coking coal from the steel manufacturing process. Skjaerbaek basically shares this optimism. Especially given Europe’s increasingly precarious energy outlook, he argues that the continent needs to “accelerate” its transition towards solutions like green hydrogen. That’s especially true, he continues, given the potential efficiencies of hydrogen even compared with other types of green energy. Though wind energy is clearly an improvement over coal or gas, he stresses that you’re still transporting the resulting electricity over relatively inefficient copper cables. But if politicians have the foresight to build the right infrastructure, Skjaerbaek suggests you can “generate hydrogen directly and put it into a pipe, where you have very low losses”. Given how quickly the planet is heating up – and how soon Europe’s energy reserves may begin to run dry – you have to hope they’re listening. ●
World Wind Technology /
www.worldwind-technology.com
Scharfsinn/
Shutterstock.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45
