For more than a century, the vast lignite mines of the Australian Latrobe Valley feed the southern state of Victoria.
At its peak, five coal-fired power plants burned brown, fluffy sedimentary rock, one of the dirtiest force resources, throwing vast columns of poisonous smoke into the environment that accounted for more than part of the state’s overall greenhouse fuel emissions.
The world’s first liquid hydrogen ship, the Suiso Frontier, was unveiled last year in Japan.
Now, as global warming centers on people’s minds in a country where climate politics has toppled governments, the first of a transition of force is taking a stand after the closure of two coal power plants and a mine. of lignite in the valley, about 120 kilometers. east of Melbourne.
A Japanese-Australian consortium is about to start generating hydrogen from lignite as a component of a $500 million pilot assignment that its architects noted as the first step in creating one of the world’s first zero-emission power chains.
Kawasaki Heavy Industries, J-Power and Shell Japan have joined Australian AGL Energy and several partners in producing, liquefying and sending hydrogen to Japan, with the intention of burning some of the five billion tons of lignite in the valley, enough to force Victoria to produce more. five hundred years, to produce hydrogen.
Interme, they intend to capture the carbon generated through the procedure and inject it into the underwater basins of the nearby Bass Strait. However, for now, its purpose is to achieve source chain viability and emissions will continue to be released into the atmosphere.
The project, co-financed through the two governments, is the progression of the world’s first liquid hydrogen transport vessel.
Tokyo hopes to offer Japan, a country that imports 90% of its energy, a viable path to decarbonization. With investors like BlackRock calling for a faster transition, Canberra aims to use it to diversify its fossil fuel-dependent economy, generating $70 billion a year of exporting thermal coal and LNG to Asia.
That of a hydrogen-based economy is a precedent in Japan.
For decades, hydrogen, the lightest and most abundant detail in the universe, has been hailed as a revolutionary, blank power capable of offering car fuel, heating homes and storing electricity.
But it has not live up to expectations for several reasons: high production prices for burning fossil fuels; The demanding fuel transport situations Lack of call and inability of hydrogen fuel cells to compete with internal combustion engines or lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles.
Companies leading Latrobe’s allocation can become a catalyst for building a global hydrogen economy, which is expected to be worth up to $11 trillion by 2050, according to Bank of America. Realization of plans or phase of progression in countries ranging from Saudi Arabia to China and Spain.
“Clean hydrogen presents a great business opportunity,” says Jeremy Stone, director of J-Power’s Australian subsidiary.
“It is also one of the critical technologies for decarbonizing the global energy system, especially in energy-constrained countries such as Japan.
“We can’t wait to deal with climate change, which is why this collaborative effort at Latrobe is so important. We will have to start now with the entire hydrogen bureaucracy blank. “
However, skepticism remains. Tesla co-founder Elon Musk called hydrogen fuel cells “stupid,” and said it’s useless to use them in a car compared to charging a lithium-ion battery directly from a solar panel. Other critics question whether hydrogen production from fossil fuels can succeed or go blank as the industry has so far failed to show the advertising merits of capturing and storing car bonds.
However, a growing number of scientists and investors that the world is on the cusp of a hydrogen revolution due to technological advances that reduce manufacturing, garage and deployment prices, expect the fall in sun prices and wind force, in spite of everything, to make the production of “green hydrogen” emissions-free , made using renewable forces to divide water into hydrogen and oxygen, is commercially viable.
With Toyota Mirai, the top hopes are placed on hydrogen as fuel to upgrade oil, fuel and coal. Photograph David Dewhurst
The Paris Agreement on Climate Change boosts hydrogen investment as countries prepare to meet their commitments to greenhouse fuel emissions. BP and Danish wind energy organization Orsted announced plans for a green hydrogen allocation in Germany in November and Airbus unveiled plans for hydrogen passenger aircraft.
In October, Japan and South Korea committed to zero net-emissions economies until 2050, while China set a similar target for 2060.
To achieve these goals, countries will want to deploy large amounts of solar, wind and hydropower to update fossil fuels, which still account for four-fifths of global energy production. Renewable energy already plays an important role in the electricity sector. however, its intermittent nature forces the industry to provide flexible responses involving hydrogen to store, send and send electrical energy when needed.
“Electricity is magical, in terms of versatility and power. But in some applications, it’s simply not the best practical way to supply power to the end user,” says Alan Finkel, Australia’s leading scientist and hydrogen strategy.
“The ultimate glorious application of hydrogen is the ability we have to continue what we’ve been doing for many years,” he says, “to send energy from a continent where it’s abundant to continents where there’s scarcity. “
Australia’s future hydrogen market is at the foot of Tokyo Tower, where commercial fuel company Iwatani has built a fuel station for mobile fuel cars, one of 135 such stations in Japan, a symbol of the country’s decades-long bet on hydrogen.
For reasons of force safety and trade strategy, Japan has long had hydrogen as the ultimate forward-looking option for fossil fuels, and has an ambitious strategy for expanding the use of this fuel. Their plans are to combine hydrogen and herbal fuel to burn in effect. 800,000 hydrogen cars in circulation until 2030, a major advance of the 3757 sold in Japan at the end of 2019.
Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga presses on the importance of hydrogen in achieving the country’s 2050 emissions target, describing it as “an important key to blank energy” and calling for “a revolutionary innovation to identify a low-cost, high-volume hydrogen source chain. “
Japan’s hydrogen order reflects its near total lack of domestic hydrocarbons. Its heavy reliance on Middle Eastern oil imports is a constant source of fear for domestic industry and security planners. Australian coal, on the other hand, is one of the safest. Energy materials in the country.
In an attempt to escape its dependence on fossil fuel imports, Japan has invested heavily in nuclear energy, but the Fukushima crisis in 2011 virtually wiped out the industry, leaving renewable energy. However, Japan’s densely populated mountain islands are a complicated position to build giant solar farms, while its steep continental slope leaves little room for offshore wind turbines.
The country’s largest automotive industry has increased its battery investment after Tesla’s success, but it also continues to target hydrogen. Toyota is launching the current generation of its Mirai mobile fuel sedán, which aims to increase diversity by 30% over 502. miles of the original model, while Honda offers a mobile fuel edition of its Clarity vehicle. For the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, Japan intends to have mobile fuel buses for shipping visitors.
“Electric cars have outperformed hydrogen cars in terms of progression and adoption, but I think hydrogen is catching up due to advances in high-pressure hydrogen fuel garage fuel tanks, mobile fuel generation and hydrogen production from renewable energy,” says John Andrews , professor at RMIT University in Melbourne.
“Elon Musk has been pretty one-off with electric vehicles,” he adds. “Hydrogen cars are likely to play a complementary role in the long run, as they are useful over long distances and for faster refueling. “
Hydrogen production in Latrobe would be the last step in a 10-year project for Kawasaki Heavy Industries, the company that leads the Australia-Japan chain of origin project.
In December, he introduced the world’s largest hydrogen transporter, which will bring fuel 9,000 kilometers from east Australia to Kobe, Japan. A fully forced hydrogen fuel turbine power plant has already been installed in the Japanese city that will provide heat and electricity across the earth. municipal buildings.
“The Kawasaki generation will connect production sites to energy consumers and, in doing so, contribute to the ‘hydrogen route’,” says Motohiko Nishimura, director of Kawasaki Heavy’s hydrogen progression center.
He predicts that supply chains will gradually spread to Asia, as when LNG was imported through Japan, South Korea, China and Taiwan since the 1970s to generate energy.
Kawasaki chose Victoria’s lignite deposits as a possible source of energy to produce hydrogen because they offer a reasonable and abundant source in a politically sound country with a long history of sending energy to Japan, Nishimura says.
However, there are many skeptical Japanese experts: “Hydrogen will have to be produced, liquefied, sent, changed and then used,” says Hiroshi Kubota, professor emeritus at the Tokyo Institute of Technology.
“It’s a massive waste. It’s a kind of national project, but I think it’s practical or economical for Japan. “
Environmental teams have also raised objections to Latrobe’s allocation of its use of lignite. “The time to dig up dirty brown coal is over,” says Cam Walker, an activist from Friends of the Earth in Victoria. renewable energy. “
Nishimura rejects such criticism: “There is no time to waste to expand the skills, infrastructure and market needed for countries to achieve their zero-emissions goals,” he says.
And if the burden of producing hydrogen from renewable energy continues to fall, it can move away from coal-based hydrogen production. “It will have the market,” he adds.
About 70 million tons of hydrogen are already produced per year, basically for use in heavy industries, such as oil refining, ammonia and metal production, which in the vast majority of cases is produced by burning fossil fuels and the emissions it generates are neither captured nor stored.
These classic carbon-intensive strategies can produce so-called “grey” hydrogen, at a cost of around $1. 36 consistent with kg, at $4 to $10/kg of “green” hydrogen, produced by using renewable energy, according to BofA. But the prices of renewable energy and electrolirros used to produce hydrogen from water are falling rapidly.
“We are achieving a turning point where green hydrogen can meet our strength needs, force our cars, heat our homes and be used in industries that do not have an economically viable option for fossil fuels,” says Haim Israel, global director of investment strategy at BofA.
“We have a long way to go, however, it is an energy revolution because it has to . . . With renewable electricity, green hydrogen gives us the chance to achieve a global carbon-free economy until 2050. “
This transition to a solar, wind and green hydrogen economy poses a challenge for fossil fuel export-dependent economies, which are now exploring tactics to exploit the emerging sector.
In July, a consortium led by Air Products, ACWA Power and Neom announced plans for a $6. 8 billion green and hydrogen renewable energy plant in Saudi Arabia, which aims to start sending ammonia to global markets until 2025. millions of tons of hydrogen by 2035, partly driven by fears that the EU and other consumers will adopt zero-emission policies.
Australia has already begun for a transition of forces. In October, Canberra awarded “major allocation” prestige to a $49 billion renewable force allocation to build the world’s largest power plant and export green hydrogen and ammonia from a remote desert inland to Asia.
Called Asian Renewable Energy Hub, it is supported by Vestas, the wind group, Intercontinental Energy, Macquarie Group and CWP Renewables. known as an LNG source.
In addition to energy exports, the allocation would aim to supply LNG producers and Pilbara iron miners. Hydrogen could also attract new corporations to the region, adding production of “green steel,” Hewitt says.
While analysts wonder whether hydrogen can revitalize Australia’s metal industry, which faces a fierce festival by its Asian rivals, many of the changes towards a hydrogen economy are beginning to occur due to lower prices for renewable energy, electrolysts and mobile fuel technology.
© The Financial Times Limited 2020
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