Green hydrogen will no doubt play a key role in Britain’s long-term decarbonisation, offering a route to net zero for processes that cannot easily be electrified.
Innovation in the sector has been enthusiastically funded, and, to some degree, where certain technologies are facing structural and policy barriers, hydrogen steps up—if not to break them down, then to provide some hope of an alternative.
Green hydrogen is also offered as an alternative in the face of political and social barriers to renewable generation sources like large-scale solar developments and onshore wind, both of which have endured legislative hardship in recent years.
To that end, the Labour government has pledged £500 million of investment into green hydrogen production, targeting a 5GW installed capacity by 2030. Scotland’s government has also promised to up the country’s green hydrogen development, making up to £7 million in funding available to projects with a production capacity of 5-400MW.
According to Solar Media market research, the cumulative planned capacity for green hydrogen projects for which a planning application (either scoping or full planning status) has been submitted is already 1.8GW.
Where green hydrogen helps
While this is encouraging, there is a long way to go. The biggest barrier to net zero has widely been acknowledged to be the UK’s electricity grid, which does not have the capacity to handle the added strain of mass electrification and the necessary influx of variable generation sources.
The UK government has long referred to hydrogen use as a means of providing network resilience, but the issue becomes somewhat circular when cost is considered. Without the cheaper electricity provided by renewable generation, hydrogen production is very expensive, but if hydrogen is the solution to balancing the grid, without it renewables will never fully connect.
In January this year, a paper released by the think tank Policy Exchange suggested that green hydrogen could be completely powered by curtailed wind. It stated that in 2022, the volume of wasted wind generation was sufficient to produce over 118,000 tonnes of green hydrogen, rising to 455,000 tonnes by 2029.
Some of this potential has been realised in Scotland, where high levels of wind generation mean the nation lends itself to lower-cost hydrogen production. The planned Argyll hydrogen hub on the West coast of Scotland will power an electrolyser using a connection to the 46MW Carraig Gheal wind farm near Oban.
However, there are grid balancing alternatives, not least the UK’s battery storage capacity, which is already being overlooked and is cheaper than the curtailment costs the electricity system operator (ESO) hands over to ‘turn off’ wind generation at times of oversupply—not least at far lower cost than green hydrogen.
Prioritising cost-effective use
As Niall Haughian, chief operating officer at Hywaves, a company that develops technology to increase the production of green hydrogen, told Current±, it is naïve to say hydrogen electrolysers will be useful in the short term as a way of diverting excess electricity: “No off-taker will sign up to that madness.”
The upfront building costs for hydrogen electrolysers, not to mention the obstacles in operations and engineering, mean that just utilising green hydrogen as seasonal storage is too expensive to deliver any return on investment.
Indeed, funnelling funding into future-focused projects diverts from the area that should be of the highest priority: those industries already using hydrogen. With a focus on transitioning from grey hydrogen to green, the clean energy carrier has an important role to play in decarbonisation.
Haughian cites three areas of priority: ammonia production, oil refinery and semiconductors—2% of the world’s emissions come from ammonia alone. Another element making these sectors ideal for green hydrogen uptake is the vast amounts of capital behind them; they can absorb the cost.
Next on the agenda would be heavy industries that cannot otherwise be electrified. Current± has previously explored the possible benefits of green hydrogen for the steel industry, where CO2-heavy processes could be replaced by a method called direct reduction of iron, which involves the reaction between hydrogen and iron ore without melting and produces water vapour but emits no CO2.
Where green hydrogen will not help (yet) is in decarbonising domestic emissions. Haughian says he has seen “a lot of silliness”, with some suggesting green hydrogen-based solutions for home heating and in fuel cells for passenger vehicles. For Haughian, “the only part hydrogen will play in transport will be a feedstock in sustainable aviation fuel, which will be in the long run.”
At this early stage, the use case for green hydrogen in aviation has been shown, with the successful trial of hydrogen refuelling by easyJet, carried out at Bristol Airport. Dubbed Project Acorn, the information and insights collected will be used for research by groups like Hydrogen in Aviation (HIA) to ensure that the UK’s infrastructure, regulations, and policies keep up with the technological advancements in carbon-emission-free flying.
That said, piloting a hydrogen-powered passenger plane is a long way off without drastically increasing airfares; were it an option, it is unlikely that many would be willing to pay. Again, as Haughian points out, this is a long-term goal.
That does not mean efforts to popularise the technology elsewhere are nonexistent: car manufacturer BMW has promised to launch its first hydrogen-powered series of vehicles to the public in 2028, following a successful test of its BMW iX5 Hydrogen pilot fleet. What proportion of the public this will be accessible to, given the likely price tag, is another question.
Ultimately, before hydrogen applications can expand beyond the funding-rich industries reliant on fossil fuel gases, innovation will be needed, not only in electrolysers but in the storage and transport of green hydrogen, too.
