Hydrogen Council report finds cost of hydrogen solutions to fall sooner than previously expected
22 January 2020
The Hydrogen Council has published a new report, Path to Hydrogen Competitiveness: A Cost Perspective, demonstrating that the cost of hydrogen solutions will fall sharply within the next decade, sooner than previously expected.
As scale-up of production, distribution and equipment manufacturing continues, cost is projected to decrease by up to 50% by 2030 for a wide range of applications, making hydrogen financially competitive with other low-carbon alternatives and, in some cases, even conventional options.
Significant cost reductions are expected across different hydrogen applications. For more than 20 of them, such as long-distance and heavy-duty transportation, industrial heating, and heavy industry feedstock, which together comprise roughly 15% of global energy consumption, the hydrogen route appears the decarbonization option of choice—a material opportunity.
The report attributes this trajectory to scale-up that positively impacts the three main cost drivers:
Strong fall in the cost of producing low carbon and renewable hydrogen;
Lower distribution and refueling costs thanks to higher load utilization and scale effect on infrastructure utilization; and
Drop in the cost of components for end-use equipment under scaling up of manufacturing.
To deliver on this opportunity, supporting policies will be required in key geographies, together with investment support of around $70 billion in the lead up to 2030 in order to scale up and achieve hydrogen competitiveness. While this figure is sizable, it accounts for less than 5% of annual global spending on energy. For comparison, support provided to renewables in Germany totalled roughly $30 billion in 2019.
Commissioned by the Hydrogen Council and delivered by McKinsey & Company in partnership with E4tech, the report collected and analyzed 25,000 data points from 30 companies representing the entire hydrogen value chain across four key geographies (US, Europe, Japan/Korea and China). An independent advisory group comprising industry experts also reviewed the data.
With apologies, I will duplicate a post I made on another thread, as it is directly relevant.
'The meme that hydrogen is just an energy carrier, always produced from other sources, is not only untrue, but:
' The main subject of the meeting was the development of hydrogen energy, with a focus on the natural hydrogen.
This topic is gaining interest as more researchers and companies are looking to geologic sources of this gas as a potential solution to meet increasing demands for clean energy. While the occurrence of natural hydrogen has been recognized for a long time, it was only recently considered as a potentially scalable clean energy solution, when multiple discoveries demonstrated that it is more abundant than previously thought.'
And:
'Dr. Michael Webber, who is Chief Science and Technology Officer for ENGIE and is the Josey Centennial Professor in Energy Resources at the University of Texas at Austin, presented his keynote on pathways for natural hydrogen energy integration. He stated that natural hydrogen could be the next revolution in the energy production comparable to the shale boom. In order to be successful and timely, he suggested that existing energy infrastructure must be integrated into any new solution, otherwise the replacement of infrastructure alone will be prohibitively expensive in terms of cost and time.'
https://www.hydrogenfuelnews.com/researchers-discuss-natural-hydrogen-at-deep-decarbonization-symposium-at-the-ohio-state-university/8539208/
In other news Gazprom is developing methane pyrolysis, which converts natural gas to hydrogen at a fraction of the energy cost of electrolysis but without the CO2 emissions of natural gas reforming.
They intend to supply it mixed in to their existing NG pipeline infrastructure:
https://fuelcellsworks.com/news/gazprom-develops-climate-neutral-production-for-hydrogen/'
Posted by: Davemart | 22 January 2020 at 04:34 AM
Make the hydrogen at point of use, no pipelines.
Posted by: SJC_1 | 23 January 2020 at 10:58 AM