The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) believes the production of hydrogen from renewables has the potential to deliver 19 exajoules of energy in 2050. Some 16 TW of solar and wind power generation capacity – 120 exajoules – may be needed to generate green hydrogen or related products from electrolysis by that point.
Today the world hosts around 7 TW of total power generation capacity, around 1 TW of which comes from solar and wind, according to IRENA’s Hydrogen: A renewable energy perspective report.
The agency said the 19 exajoules that could be provided by clean hydrogen in 2050 would correspond to around 5% of global energy consumption. The Hydrogen Council of chief executives has set a target of meeting 17% of demand by that point. Around 14.4 exajoules of hydrogen are produced each year at the moment but around 95% of it comes from natural gas and coal.
The cost of green hydrogen supply is falling and will continue to do so, the authors of the paper state, with most of the relevant technology already at, or near commercial viability. However, IRENA says more needs to be done to reduce the price of electrolyzers and supply-chain logistics.
Reduce costs and energy losses
Advances in electrolysis will be gradual, predicted IRENA, ensuring the price of the process will not be halved from its current $860/kW installed until 2050. The authors of the report did note, though: “Renewable hydrogen will soon become the cheapest clean hydrogen supply option for many greenfield applications.”
The transport of hydrogen currently costs between 1.5 and five times more than the equivalent expense for natural gas and the former continues to suffer from considerable energy losses, from production to conversion to energy. “Reducing these losses is critical for the reduction of the hydrogen supply cost,” the analysts wrote.
The paper reports several large scale green hydrogen projects are being built in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Austria, Japan, Australia, Canada, China, the United Kingdom and the United States. The global footprint of such projects indicates attention is shifting from transporting hydrogen to diverse markets in favor of local deployment, helped by the falling cost of renewable electricity. “However, further R&D, mass production and learning-by-doing is needed to achieve significant cost reductions,” the report added.
Gas infrastructure
Natural gas infrastructure could be converted to transport hydrogen with limited investment, according to the study, although current standards limit the volume of hydrogen that can be deployed in such pipelines. “Gradually increasing the share of hydrogen that can be accommodated by the gas infrastructure can provide reliable long-term signals for [the] large scale deployment of electrolysis from renewable electricity,” the IRENA report stated.
The study also highlighted how modern hydrogen electrolyzers can scale production up and down within minutes or even seconds, making them ideal for providing flexible back-up to a constrained power system. “The production of a very large volume of hydrogen from renewable power, in combination with hydrogen storage, can help provide long-term seasonal flexibility to the system,” the report noted.
The authors of the paper recommend policymakers acknowledge the strategic role of hydrogen in the transition to a decarbonized economy and energy system, and align climate and energy targets with consistent projections for development of the technology. That means setting binding targets for hydrogen production and mandatory blending of the energy source with natural gas, as well as introducing provisions to support the use of hydrogen in transport.
An International Energy Agency report on The Future of Hydrogen stated fossil-fueled production of the fuel is responsible for “annual CO2 emissions equivalent to those of Indonesia and the United Kingdom combined”.
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In fact ‘The Green Hydrogen Economy in the Northern Netherlands (2017)’ report is very detailed and has a cost price of €375/kW at large scale. This is after consultation with specific industry members although it is stated within the report that this figure represents what can be achievable in the relatively short term – all that is required is the scale of hydrogen production to necessitate large installations.
IRENA: “The best case considers a low cost electrolyser of USD 200/kW, which at a broader scale is expected to be achieved only from 2040, although Chinese manufacturers claim that it is a reality already today..”
It would have been worthwhile to check this claim. Either the Chinese companies are making it up, or they are selling simple $200/kw electrolysers that work. My guess is the latter. Quite possibly, the electrolysers are less efficient (in terms of hydrogen produced per kwh), than the state of the art. But that is rational adaptation to the falling cost of renewable electricity, tending to zero for the growing amount that would otherwise be curtailed.
If the Chinese are right, the slow-growth scenario is wrong.
The focus on electrolyser cap cost is wrong/stupid/etc. For most electrolysers running at capacity factors north of 40% the ONLY number that matters is the cost of elec. Everything else just fades away. This is evident to anybody that has made a discounted cash flow model. For example: with energy costs of Euro50/MWh & with ETS prices north of Euro25/tonne then H2 from electrolysis is cheaper than that from SMR. I’m not sure I would want to buy Chinese electrolysers @ $200/kW – sounds a bit like Fluor & Gywint-y-Mor off-shore wind farm (gee those Chinese monopiles are cheap – lets buy them – lawyers are still making money from that heroic cock-up).
A lot of hydrogen is already being produced by electrolysis in situe where it is dispensed, using power from the grid during off-peak demand, or by wind and solar, so the cost of transport is eliminated. As for the efficiency of state of the art electrolysers, there’s no doubt that the cost to produce a Kg of hydrogen is falling, however if the electrolysis can be done with off-peak power, to a certain extent the efficiency is less significant. Electrolysis in situe is a typical way of producing hydrogen for vehicles, particularly in Germany where there are over 50 hydrogen filling stations on their road network. Here in the UK we appear to have about a dozen hydrogen filling stations, and there’s one just off the M1 near Sheffield that is powered by wind (operated by ITM Power)