Why hydrogen infrastructure ambition is a long way from reality

At the Paris headquarters of the International Energy Agency (IEA), researchers tracking the progress of hydrogen as a clean alternative to fossil fuels have a list of more 100 pipelines for the gas, across more than a dozen countries.  

But the vast majority of these projects are either concepts or undergoing feasibility studies. Only one is actually under construction: a 30km pipeline in the Port of Rotterdam. 

The Rotterdam project, which got under way last October, is the first leg in a plan to build a European hydrogen network that could reach 28,000km by 2030 and span 28 countries by 2040, according to the European Hydrogen Backbone, a group of 33 energy infrastructure operators.  

Gasunie — the Dutch state-owned gas network operator — believes that, as the Netherlands starts using less gas in order to meet its climate commitments, up to 85 per cent of its pipelines could be converted to carry hydrogen instead. 

And there may be no better place to begin the experiment than Rotterdam, which has access to offshore renewable energy, shipments of hydrogen through its port, and several refineries keen to use the gas. 

At the end of the port, Shell is building its own ‘green’ — or renewable energy powered — hydrogen plant, which will be the largest in Europe. It is to use electricity derived from offshore wind and a 200MW electrolyser to split the gas from water. When it is operational, it will feed hydrogen to Shell’s own Pernis refinery a few kilometres further up the port. 

But Amir Mansouri, head of the project at Shell, stresses that it is at the bottom of the learning curve when it comes to building out hydrogen infrastructure. “To put it into perspective, this is the largest renewable hydrogen facility under construction in Europe, and it constitutes just five to 10 per cent of the hydrogen demand of Pernis,” he points out.

Mansouri adds that there are several challenges to overcome for the project, which will combine 10 of the 20MW electrolysers made by engineering company Thyssenkrupp Nucera. “What is the interplay of the 10 electrolysers as you ramp them up and ramp them down?” he asks. “What is the degradation of that? How much can you really get out of it? We’re spending a lot of time to understand it.”

At the moment, I will say that it is quite a fragile business case

Another challenge, when thinking about spending on hydrogen infrastructure, is the ability to understand the pricing of a market that does not yet exist.

Even Mansouri, who began his career at Shell delivering complicated deep-water oil projects, and went on to help Shell develop its hydrogen strategy, is not sure what the future for green hydrogen will be.

“At the moment, I will say that it is quite a fragile business case,” he admits. That makes the viability of future green hydrogen plants difficult to assess: “It would be highly unpredictable, or highly uncertain, to say how many more you can build,” Mansouri adds. “We are focused on getting this one right.”

At the moment, ambition is running ahead of reality. According to the Hydrogen Council, there are now more than 1,400 clean hydrogen projects being planned, but only 7 per cent have reached their final investment decision. The EU expects there to be 40GW of electrolyser capacity in Europe by 2030, but there is only roughly 1GW available, globally, today.

Cameron Smith, chief executive of Fortescue Hydrogen Systems, says more government support is needed for “product corridors”, such as the pipelines to carry the gas, the transmission lines to connect to electrolysers, and “the equipment we need to manage those electrons: power electronics, transformers, inverters and rectifiers”.

He points out that long-proven alkaline water electrolysers need steady baseload power and are less effective when the supply of renewable energy ebbs and flows. Fortescue and others are therefore experimenting with new electrolyser technology to try to work with renewable power.  

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But new technology takes time, notes Javier Cavada, the European chief executive of Mitsubishi Power. “Sometimes, when I come to conferences, it seems that the hydrogen economy needs to happen in two to three years, quickly quickly,” he observes. “Sorry, this is not feasible. We need the whole of the 2020s and the beginning of the 2030s to make it happen.” 

Cavada says the first stage of the buildout needed for clean hydrogen was a huge increase in renewable electricity production. At the moment, he argues, every new renewable power plant should be feeding electricity to the grid, rather than to hydrogen electrolysers. “That’s the common understanding by society, and by industry,” he says.  

Nevertheless, Mitsubishi Power is building gas power plants that can be easily switched to run on hydrogen, in case of future demand. “We do not have any technical or supply chain bottlenecks,” Cavada explains. “But, I’m sure you appreciate, we cannot build a supply chain when we don’t know when the volume will come.”