The US goes big, Wales goes rogue (one?)

25th February 2022

A review - with links – of some of the hydrogen news catching my eye this week

“We need something that takes today’s role of natural gas” said Goldman Sachs this week (and I’m sure they weren’t the only ones).

That something will be needed in particular, they said, “to manage seasonality and intermittency” - and it will be hydrogen. The result, they reckon, will be a “trillion dollar market per annum”, based on taking over “at least 15% of the global energy markets” (by 2050).

Clearly eyeing up that opportunity, along with an essential need for a ‘beyond fossil fuels strategy’, is Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas).

It has unveiled a “10-20 GW green hydrogen plan for Los Angeles, powered by 25-35 GW of wind and solar”. If it gets built, the company says it “will be the largest dedicated US green hydrogen and distribution infrastructure”.

On the renewables front, that 25-35 GW is described as a mix of “curtailed and new wind and solar power”. This, along with “2GW of energy storage” will power those 10-20 GW of electrolysers and distribute the resulting hydrogen through “402-1,207 km of new trunk and distribution pipelines”. “Up to four natural gas power plants” could be converted to run on hydrogen.

Given that California started this year with a total of “22.9GW of utility-scale renewable energy in operation”, it’s fair to say that doubling this capacity up isn’t an imminent prospect.

The company foresees a three-phase approach “with a robust stakeholder process”. One key stakeholder in that part of the world is the California Public Utilities Commission, who would have to approve any of this. Thus phase 1 has kicked off with submission to them of the concept and the plan to undertake “preliminary front-end engineering and design scope, and feasibility analysis, which will take 12-18 months”.

Keen to prove that everything is still bigger in Texas, and to not be outdone by those pesky west-coasters, US developer Apex is planning “to build a giga-scale Texan green hydrogen port complex”.

It’s partnering with investors and the Port of Corpus Christi Authority to “decarbonise industrial Gulf of Mexico petro-infrastructure” by making use of the “highest quality wind and solar resources in Texas”.

The Port of Corpus Christi is “the third-largest port in the US” and part of “the so-called Texas ‘chemical coast’, a 350-mile stretch along the Gulf of Mexico”, which has “one of the world’s largest concentrations of crude oil processing and petrochemical facilities”. As a result, this delightful sounding idyll is “one of the leading US sources of greenhouse gas emissions”.

As with all such early stage ‘giga’ projects, plans are suitably vague. There is talk of not just hydrogen but “other unspecified derivative green fuel products and development of a new, dedicated green fuels pipeline” to decarbonise “hard-to-abate sectors including chemical, fertiliser, refining, shipping, and transportation”.

Staying in the US, but on a more modest and tangible level ,was the announcement by Chevron and Iwatani, that they plan “to co-develop and construct 30 hydrogen fueling sites in California by 2026”.

Chevron will “fund construction of the sites” at its own-brand retail locations, while Iwatani will operate and maintain them, and “provide hydrogen supply and transportation logistics services”. “The stations will initially fuel light-duty vehicles” (California is rare in having any significant number) but sensibly will have “the flexibility to service heavy-duty vehicles over the long term”.

Unlike those previous two US projects, there’s no mention of solar and wind here. Indeed “Chevron plans to supply a portion of the fuelling sites with excess hydrogen production capacity at its Richmond Refinery”, so can expect criticism over how ‘clean’ this fuel really is.

There is talk of future hydrogen production “from pilot projects in Northern California”, whatever they may be.

Also eyeing up 2026 is Airbus, which plans to test a hydrogen engine and fly a “converted test aircraft, an A380” by the end of that year. This is in partnership with CFM International, a 50/50 joint company between GE and Safran Aircraft Engines.

The test jet “will be equipped with liquid hydrogen tanks” which will feed a jet engine “mounted along the rear fuselage of the A380 test jet to allow engine emissions, including contrails, to be monitored separately from those of the engines powering the aircraft”.

Choosing “the world’s largest passenger airline” for the test allows the engineers in charge “more room for things like the tanks and the testing equipment”. Given that the commercial expectation from Airbus is to “initially produce a regional or shorter-range aircraft” using hydrogen, the expectation is that any product resulting from this test will “be much smaller”.

Also talking turbines has been Mitsubishi Power, which “plans to establish the Takasago Hydrogen Park in Hyogo Prefecture, Japan”.

This won’t be a nice, relaxing park with cherry trees and a duck pond, but rather one “intended to help Mitsubishi Power commercialise hydrogen gas turbines using hydrogen as a fuel”. So it will “set up all aspects of hydrogen-related technologies”; not just for turbines but to “test and demonstrate technologies such as hydrogen production and storage” too.

Operations should begin “in the next fiscal year”, to support the company’s goal of “the commercialisation of hydrogen gas turbines by 2025”.

Hydrogen storage also raised its head this week by winning some money from the UK government, via its “Longer Duration Energy Storage Demonstration Programme”.

A total of 24 projects will benefit from the first set of grants under the programme, “with £6.7 million (US$9.11 million) pledged” so far.

Among the winners of projects funded to build “first-of-a-kind prototypes” were two metal hydride storage propositions, one to “a storage medium described as Carbon Hydrillite” (and before you ask: no, sorry, I’ve no idea) and one focused on “reducing use of platinum in electrolysers”.

Of funding designed to assist “demonstration projects of technologies considered close to commercialisation”, a “membrane free green hydrogen electrolyser” is one of those given a boost in trying to leap the ‘chasm of death’ into deployment.

Already at the deployment stage will be “the UK's first hydrogen fuel cell waste truck”, unveiled this week in Aberdeen, Scotland. It will start emptying bins “from early March” and make use of “green hydrogen from existing refuelling infrastructure” (Aberdeen already has hydrogen buses, for example).

This waste truck is “one of seven which will be deployed across seven pilot sites in northwest Europe, including the Netherlands, France, Belgium and Germany”. All are part of the ‘HECTOR’ project part-funded by the Interreg North-West Europe Programme. This data gathering programme ends “in June 2023”.

The waste truck unveiled has been manufactured by “Geesinknorba, one of Europe’s largest providers of innovative refuse collection vehicles and compactors” based on a chassis “manufactured by Hyzon Motors”.

It’s not the latter’s only contribution to the news this week – they’ve also been “signing a vehicle supply agreement with MaserFrakt, a major Swedish transport group”.

This isn’t ‘giga’ scale stuff by any means: Hyzon “will supply two HyMax-250 fuel cell electric trucks”. Still, they will be “the first hydrogen-powered heavy trucks in commercial operation” in Sweden. Each “64-ton” truck will carry “98 kilograms of hydrogen stored onboard”, enabling “a range of up to 680 kilometres”.

For their part, MaserFrakt “has already established a fleet of 1500 vehicles, half of which already operate without fossil fuels”. There’s no breakdown of what those other clean drivetrains are, other than to say that the company’s sustainability roadmap encompasses, in addition to fuel cells, “liquified biogas and battery electric”. They have previously “announced plans to support hydrogen infrastructure development, through agreements for hydrogen supply with Svea Vind Offshore and a hydrogen filling station with NEL”.

And finally, a ‘world first’ from Wales, in the UK.

You may wish to look away now, if you like to think of hydrogen and electrification as locked in a Star Wars-like battle to the death (and I’ll leave you to decide which is the Jedi and which the Empire).

That’s because the “Milford Haven: Energy Kingdom” project, a trial in a commercial building, is having the audacity to use “an air source heat pump, hydrogen boiler and data-led smart controls to look at the potential for delivering hybrid lower carbon heating”.

Yes, this will “combine hydrogen boiler and heat pump technologies”, using smart controls to “switch between using the heat pump or hydrogen boiler depending on a range of energy supply factors linked to cost and availability” (such as renewable power supply and temperature boost requirements).

For example, the system can “make use of renewable electricity when cheap and plentiful, to warm up the building fabric, and then fall back on hydrogen as an alternative fuel during more expensive periods of peak demand for electricity”. The availability of renewable electricity is assessed “every two minutes”.

The project is being supported via the UK Research and Innovation agency.

Disappointingly, this is simply by way of funds, rather than through use of The Force.