Green hydrogen: the illusions of a green technology that has not developed

One of the green dreams is that of "Green Hydrogen," which originates from the splitting of the water molecule into hydrogen and oxygen, in imitation of photosynthesis. The dream because it uses neither coal nor methane, like the blue or gray one.

Last year, BloombergNEF predicted that by 2030 green hydrogen would become cheaper than all other "colors" of hydrogen. The analyst firm did not provide specific reasons for its predictions, only saying that the current situation where even blue hydrogen, produced from natural gas, with carbon capture is cheaper than green hydrogen is expected to reverse over the next eight. years. This was one of the predictions that did not age well during the pandemic, with all the supply chain problems and the release of pent-up demand leading to shortages and higher prices among commodities. BloombergNEF's prediction, like most of the future of low-carbon energy, was based on the assumption that the cost of raw materials for wind and solar would have only one way to go, towards reduction. Too bad that, like all forecasts related to green technologies, it was completely wrong.

"The global commodity crisis has created new challenges for the clean energy sector, increasing input costs for key technologies such as solar modules, wind turbines and battery packs," said Albert Cheung, chief of analysis at BloombergNEF . in the comments on a new report on investments in the energy transition.

According to the company, these increased by an impressive 27 percent last year. This is despite the pandemic and commodity inflation, which, Cheung noted, was "an encouraging sign that investors, governments and businesses are more engaged than ever in the low-carbon transition and see it as part of the solution to the current turmoil on the energy markets ”. Unfortunately, this may still change.

Now, the first thing it takes to produce green hydrogen is water to break it down into its constituent elements. The second thing you need is a solar park or a wind farm to generate the electricity needed for this split process. Powering hydrolysis with hydropower is also a low-carbon option, but it hasn't attracted as much attention in discussions of green hydrogen as wind and solar.

The electrolysis process is expensive. His chance to become competitive with fossil fuel derived hydrogen was to see the costs of wind and solar energy decrease further – and substantially – or alternatively see the cost of fossil fuel hydrogen production rise.

The bets appear to have been on the first of these options and appear to have been wrong. The costs of wind and solar are rising, which means that the cost of producing green hydrogen is also rising rather than falling. This cost is the main component in the composition of green hydrogen costs, as the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies noted in a recent report on the matter.

But there is also another component: the cost of the electrolyser itself. Unfortunately, machines are, as it were, rare metal intensities, particularly the preferred proton exchange membrane ones, which are more suited to the intermittent nature of solar and wind energy because they use precious metals as catalysts.

The enigma of green hydrogen is huge and difficult to solve. The energy transition lobby has argued that the transition would be impossible without hydrogen and, indeed, the element holds a lot of promise as an energy carrier. But this promise is, for now, mostly theoretical and, given the cost situation, is likely to remain theoretical for the observable future. Green hydrogen will remain a dream for a long time

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The article Green hydrogen: the illusions of a green technology that has not developed comes from ScenariEconomici.it .

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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/idrogeno-verde-le-illusioni-di-una-tecnologia-verde-che-non-si-e-sviluppata/ on Wed, 02 Feb 2022 07:00:27 +0000.