Report: Hydrogen ministerial meeting to call for 10M fuel cell vehicles in 10 years
23 September 2019
The Nikkei reports that the second Hydrogen Energy Ministerial Meeting—a policy platform for global utilization of hydrogen—scheduled to open in Japan on Wednesday will call for 10 million fuel cell vehicles—including trains, planes and automobiles—in 10 years.
Currently, only around 10,000 vehicles around the world run on fuel cells.
Japanese Industry Minister Isshu Sugawara will chair the meeting that will be attended by officials from the US, Europe and the Mideast. The Nikkei said that the Minister included the 10 million goal in his draft chairman’s statement, which also includes a goal to increase the number of hydrogen fueling stations to 10,000 in 10 years. There are now several hundred fueling stations globally.
The goal of 10 million vehicles is not a commitment, but an ambitious, common global target. The chairman’s statement will also include a call for common standards and research agenda, the Nikkei said.
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The meeting will endeavor to map out a possible hydrogen supply chain. The draft statement raises the possibility of cross-border trading and calls for determining international shipping routes and support for market trading.
The Japanese government believes that by expanding the market, costs will fall, creating a positive feedback cycle.
The Hydrogen Energy Ministerial Meeting was inaugurated in 2018 as the first platform to encourage countries worldwide to promote global-level utilization of hydrogen and to further consolidate collaboration among member countries in a synergistic manner. Japan hosted the first meeting, which brought together responsible ministers and officials from 21 countries, region and organizations as well as more than 300 representatives of companies, governmental stakeholders, and experts in the field of hydrogen.
Participants proactively exchanged views on the importance of hydrogen toward energy transition and decarbonization, current situations and future perspectives of hydrogen-related technologies, need for international collaboration to create a new market for hydrogen that is self-sustainable in terms of business, and other issues. Finally, the member countries released the Tokyo Statement as a chair’s summary of the meeting.
This could be the start of the near future global H2 economy.
Improved lower cost clean H2 production, compression, storage and distribution stations together with improved lower cost FCs for vehicles, trains, ships and airplanes would support accelerated development of clean energy production from REs to curtail and reduce pollution and GHGs.
Posted by: HarveyD | 23 September 2019 at 10:27 AM
The delusion is strong in these ones.
Hydrogen is inherently expensive to ship; it can only be transported as a liquid or by pipeline, and liquefaction requires a substantial amount of the embodied energy. This makes it a local or regional commodity as the losses in transit will make local production cheaper. Ironically, as Japan is made largely of lava flows and other mafic rocks, it could go carbon-neutral by importing coal, gasifying it to hydrogen and CO2, and injecting the CO2 underground where it would be quickly fixed as carbonates.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | 26 September 2019 at 07:30 AM