By David Dodge, GreenEnergyFutures.ca
United Hydrogen is an Australian Conglomerate that was formed to speed the development of hydrogen solutions on the road to net-zero.
A lot of attention is paid to net-zero electricity, but scant attention is paid to the 80% of the energy we use in the form of liquids or gaseous forms, such as gasoline, diesel and natural gas.
A lot of conventional energy incumbents and many start-ups are betting on hydrogen to fill that gap.
Green Energy Futures full interview with Richard Allen
Richard Allen is the chair of United Hydrogen. He says the idea is to “identify a solution in that space and then build a business around it.”
“We’re not investors. We’re builders of businesses. And then we use this aggregation obviously to provide the opportunities for individual businesses to be pulled through into other opportunities. So if you’re a producer and you need a market, or you need a customer, we can provide both those solutions across the group,” says Allen of United Hydrogen.
Transportation is responsible for 30% of emissions and Allen says hydrogen can not only help reduce emissions there, it can also help provide baseload electricity which could support higher levels of renewable energy in electricity production.
Planes, trains and trucks
Hydrogen is seen as a solution to power trucks, trains and ships, but Allen says it can also be used for heating buildings, in industry and in electricity production.
“Industry uses a lot of gas for energy, heating and industrial processes. The ability to replace natural gas or any of any other form of hydrocarbon gas with hydrogen is very real,” he says.
“It has a very high energy density. It’s three times the energy density of gasoline,” says Allen.
In our wide-ranging full interview (see video podcast above) Allen talks about solutions and some of the challenges of bringing hydrogen into the big leagues.
There is a lot of work going into using hydrogen as a fuel for big trucks and trains, especially in Alberta. Hydrogen could extend the range of trucks and it offers quick refuelling.
“Those trucks can’t afford to stop and spend hours and hours refuelling from a battery,” says Allen.
However, the distribution of hydrogen does present challenges.
“One of your Canadian companies, ATCO, is very interested in talking to us about how we get hydrogen into their pipelines. Hydrogen obviously has challenges around corrosion or the embrittlement of metals with hydrogen,” says Allen.
Distributed hydrogen?
But another idea being discussed is the distributed production of hydrogen. The idea is to locate production facilities where the fuel is used.
“You could have a hydrogen filling station out in the middle of Alberta or the middle of Western Australia. As long as you’ve got a water source and you’ve got some sun or some wind. You could put a small wind generator, a small solar farm and an electrolyzer there, you could produce hydrogen on the spot, put a refueler next to it, and then you’ve got a fueling station.”
And then there is the question of how the hydrogen is produced.
“If you’re going to use natural gas, then obviously the technologies around carbon capture (CCS) are going to come into play,” says Allen.
Carbon capture is expensive so Allen says “For hydrogen to be the replacement for natural gas, then it’s got to be green hydrogen or very low-carbon hydrogen.”
“If you’re using wind or solar for electrolyzers, then obviously it’s green hydrogen, but stripping hydrogen out of natural gas without capturing the carbon, then you’re not really going forward, you’re just going sideways.”
Green hydrogen cost coming down?
The goal of hydrogen advocates is to get the cost of green hydrogen (hydrogen produced using renewable energy) from $5/kilogram to $2/kilogram.
Allen believes that day is coming. “We’ll see it come down to a level that is certainly competitive with where we sit today with hydrocarbon fuels.”
Despite the challenges, Allen sees a big future for hydrogen to solve this rather big problem. He says the market for hydrogen is expected to reach $201 billion by 2025.
And he points to one other potential benefit: energy security, or energy sovereignty.
Energy sovereignty
“Hydrogen is everywhere. It’s not going to be a fuel source that’s dominated by the Middle East or Russia or any other source. So from a sovereign risk perspective, any country has the ability to be energy-independent.”
It’s a similar argument made for renewable energy and that’s why we see so many individuals, farmers, businesses and others installing solar on their buildings and in some cases building microgrids to divorce themselves from the “system.”
We are in the messy, early stages of hydrogen. We have barely touched on the topic here, but it seems economics and innovation will determine which applications will play a role in a net-zero future.