In the ongoing debate over the need to identify new sources of energy and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, companies around the world have explored the use of various alternative fuels, including compressed natural gas, liquefied propane gas and hydrogen.
Hydrogen has emerged as one of the most promising alternatives due to its vehicle and power plant emissions being virtually zero.
Hydrogen helps optimize the power system for renewables, facilitating further increases in renewable shares. Electrolysis produces hydrogen by using (excess) power supply and enables to valorize it either in other sectors (transport, industry, residential heat) or to store it for future re-use .
Hydrogen has the potential to improve economic efficiency of renewable investments, enhance security of power supply and serve as a carbon-free seasonal storage, supplying energy when renewable energy production is low and energy demand is high.
Hydrogen can provide a cost-effective, clean energy infrastructure, contributing to supply security both at local and country levels. Shipped, piped, on-site generation or trucked, hydrogen is a means to (re)distributing energy effectively among cities and regions.
In many sectors, direct electrification is and will remain technologically challenging or uneconomical. This applies, e.g., to heavy-duty transport, non-electrified trains, overseas transport, and aviation, but also to some energy-intensive industries.
In other sectors, such as light-duty vehicles, direct electrification, although technologically possible, does not always meet performance requirements in range and charging convenience.
In many, if not all of these sectors, where technological and/or economic obstacles prevent direct electrification, hydrogen offers a viable solution.
Hydrogen offers valuable advantages in this context, as it avoids CO2 and particles emission, can be deployed at large scale, and can be made available everywhere. Hydrogen improves the efficiency and flexibility of the energy system.
Electrolysis can convert excess electricity into hydrogen during times of oversupply. The produced hydrogen can then be used to provide back-up power during power deficits or can be used in other sectors such as transport, industry or residential. It thus valorizes excess electricity.
Hydrogen offers a centralized or decentralized source of primary or backup power. Like gas, power from hydrogen (or one of its compounds) is switched on and off quickly.
Thus, hydrogen helps deal with sudden drops in renewable energy supply, e.g., during adverse weather events). In addition, electrolysers may provide ancillary services to the grid, such as frequency regulation.
Hydrogen can also be used in specific fuel cell CHPs in industry and buildings, linking heat and power generation. This enhances the efficiency of generated electricity and heat for these sectors and improves flexibility of the energy system as a whole.
Hydrogen represents the optimal overall solution for long-term, carbon-free seasonal storage. While batteries, super-capacitors, and compressed air can also support balancing, they lack either the power capacity or the storage timespan needed to address seasonal imbalances.
All in all, hydrogen permits to integrate more economically large amounts of intermittent energy sources in the system and provides the much needed flexibility to maintain the resilience of the system.
While transporting electricity over long distances can cause energy losses, pipeline transportation of hydrogen reaches almost 100% efficiency. This benefit makes hydrogen an economically attractive option when transporting renewable energy at scale and over large distances.
Source: UN/World Hydrogen
Joshua Mosshart
https://www.linkedin.com/in/energydevelopmentpartners/
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