Extract from ABC News
Green hydrogen is touted as the fuel of the future, but to get there we have to make it cheaper.
It's currently between $5 and $6 per kilo.
To compete with fossil fuels, the CSIRO estimates green hydrogen would have to cost about $2 a kilogram.
For that to happen, experts say we need to scale up production.
This week, Australia's richest man, Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest, opened the country's largest electrolyser manufacturing plant in Gladstone, central Queensland.
These devices perform the electrolysis that generates green hydrogen.
The billionaire has backed hydrogen for an emissions-free future "without sacrifice" (fellow billionaire Elon Musk has put his money into batteries, calling hydrogen-powered cars "mind-bogglingly stupid").
CSIRO electrolyser expert Sarb Giddey says making more electrolysers will make the technology cheaper.
But we still have a "long way to get" to that $2 a kilo goal, says Steven Percy from Swinburne University of Technology's Victorian Hydrogen Hub.
"We’ve been creating hydrogen for years and we have the technology, we just have to work towards bringing down those costs," he says.
How is hydrogen made?
Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe but needs energy to separate it from other elements.
You can extract it from fossil fuels, but that's hugely polluting.
To make it "green", you have to split hydrogen from oxygen with an electrolyser powered by renewable energy, so it's low or zero emissions.
Hydrogen has four different "shades", according to how it's extracted:
- Brown: produced using coal with emissions released into the air
- Grey: produced from natural gas with emissions released
- Blue: produced from natural gas with emissions captured
- Green: produced from electrolysis powered by renewable electricity
How can green hydrogen be used?
Green hydrogen has the potential to decarbonise transport and industry, as well as making the electricity grid more stable and reliable.
It's particularly promising for road freight, where hydrogen has an advantage over both batteries and fossil fuels, Dr Percy says.
"Diesel is relatively expensive per unit energy, which means that when we do create hydrogen at a higher price, we're a lot closer at being cost-competitive with diesel," he says.
"Operating a battery electric truck on a route like that is possible but it's going to require numerous hours of charging time whereas with hydrogen, you can refuel those vehicles about as quickly as a diesel truck.
"We just need that infrastructure there to support the decarbonisation."
Decarbonising road freight is what Dr Giddey calls "low-hanging fruit" because we already have the technology to do it.
But he says it may not be possible to use green hydrogen for everything, even where it's most touted to have potential for change, like green steelmaking.
"When we are talking about decarbonising the steelmaking sector, how we can replace the use of coal and natural gas there with hydrogen?" Dr Giddey says.
"Those technologies still need to be developed."
Other possible applications include:
- powering container ships by liquid ammonia made from green hydrogen
- "green steel" manufacturing with refineries burning hydrogen rather than coal
- powering electricity turbines that can generate power at times of peak demand
- an alternative to natural gas for cooking and heating
Can green hydrogen replace fossil fuels?
The price of green hydrogen depends on the cost of electricity and the electrolyser that makes it.
To make electrolysers cheaper, we not only need to make more but make them with cheaper materials, Dr Percy says.
"We need those innovations to happen and the economies of scale to happen.
"I like to look at the solar industry and the rapid decline we saw in solar panel [prices] happen in the space of 10 to 15 years and that was through innovations in how these solar panels were manufactured, innovations in efficiency, and this all led to a rapid decline in solar costs.
"If we see something happen in the hydrogen industry in that sort of time frame, then we’re looking at mid-2030 [parity between hydrogen and fossil fuels]."
Decarbonising will only happen "economically" when the price per kilo drops to $2, Dr Giddey says.
"If we can manufacture electrodes at a much larger scale and automate the manufacturing process, like we do for the car industry, we can reduce the cost of electrolysers," Dr Giddey says.
"Energy costs are already being reduced every year and that is going to contribute to lowering the costs of the hydrogen."
The Gladstone plant is a "good indication that we may be able to reduce the cost of the electrolyser if we are manufacturing it at a larger scale," Dr Giddey says.
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