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Reducing emissions from closely polluting industries, corresponding to chemical compounds and metal, is a conundrum that firms and governments the world over have lengthy been making an attempt to crack.
However in Austria, Germany and Italy, a bunch of gasoline firms consider they now have a solution — in a 3,300km hydrogen pipeline.
These firms, which embody Italy’s Snam and Germany’s Bayernets, are engaged on a challenge to move inexperienced hydrogen — made with renewable sources of vitality — from the sunshine-rich north of Africa and southern Italy to areas additional north, the place there are few different methods to wean industries off fossil fuels.
The “SoutH2 Hall” pipeline challenge connecting north Africa with Italy, Austria and Germany is meant to be a part of a a lot wider hydrogen “spine”, which infrastructure firms in Europe are selling. The purpose is to assist the buying and selling bloc meet its local weather targets and to offer safer vitality provides in future. Different initiatives embody a proposed €2.5bn undersea pipeline — “H2Med” — to hold hydrogen from Spain to France.
![A hydrogen pipeline near the steam reformer furnace at the Linde hydrogen plant in Leuna, Germany, July 2020.](https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/https%3A%2F%2Fd1e00ek4ebabms.cloudfront.net%2Fproduction%2F8c94c90a-8b09-4fa4-b786-a661ed9f8840.jpg?dpr=1&fit=scale-down&quality=highest&source=next&width=700)
Daryl Wilson, govt director of the Hydrogen Council, an business physique, says oil and gasoline are already shipped or piped from areas such because the Center East, so it’s pure to look at how hydrogen is also transported lengthy distances by means of related strategies.
“Lengthy distance transport of vitality is [already] a part of our actuality,” notes Wilson. “The sources of vitality that we use immediately are sometimes very distant from the locations of excessive demand” — principally densely populated city areas.
In future, he says, sources will turn into “extra numerous” as different elements of the world enhance their capability to provide renewable vitality. However the identical drawback will persist: vitality will nonetheless seemingly be produced removed from the areas of biggest demand.
A report printed final yr by the Hydrogen Council, whose members embody BP, Shell, BMW, and McKinsey, instructed that 400mn tonnes out of the expected 660mn tonnes of hydrogen wanted by 2050 to satisfy local weather targets will probably be transported long-distance.
Infrastructure firms argue that inexperienced hydrogen will be produced simply in sunny and windy international locations corresponding to Morocco, Italy and Spain by means of the electrolysis of water utilizing renewable energy. Some current pure gasoline pipelines might then be repurposed, and new infrastructure constructed, to move the sunshine, colourless gasoline additional north to serve industries corresponding to refining, energy era, fertiliser manufacturing and transport.
“Blue” hydrogen, produced from pure gasoline with the related carbon dioxide captured and sequestered, can also be being pursued by some international locations, such because the UK.
![Arrays of photovoltaic panels at Iberdrola SA’s Puertollano II solar plant in Puertollano, Spain, on Thursday, May 19, 2022.](https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/https%3A%2F%2Fd1e00ek4ebabms.cloudfront.net%2Fproduction%2F05370908-1966-4aaf-96e9-a8679cdff2d3.jpg?dpr=1&fit=scale-down&quality=highest&source=next&width=700)
Some hydrogen sources, corresponding to ammonia, are already shipped lengthy distances, Wilson factors out. He says these operations may very well be stepped up so they’re used as a gas supply, fairly than purely for his or her present functions — in fertiliser manufacturing, for instance.
Hydrogen can also be into consideration in some international locations to switch pure gasoline heating in houses.
Nonetheless, local weather campaigners and a few scientists warn that the potential of unpolluted hydrogen is being overhyped by gasoline firms, which may very well be left with billions of euros price of stranded belongings if they don’t establish a future use for his or her pipelines or manufacturing.
Hydrogen sceptics additionally query the economics of transporting hydrogen lengthy distances and argue that renewable energy needs to be used straight the place attainable — for instance, to energy warmth pumps in houses and for electrical automobiles. Inexperienced hydrogen manufacturing includes an instantaneous vitality loss, to interrupt the chemical bond between oxygen and hydrogen.
“What you’re doing is degrading that electrical energy all the way down to hydrogen due to large inefficiencies,” says Tom Baxter, visiting professor on the College of Strathclyde in Scotland, and a founding member of the Hydrogen Science Coalition of lecturers and engineers who search to offer impartial recommendation on the topic.
“In case you have a look at hydrogen in the meanwhile, on the whole, you produce hydrogen beside the place you need to use it as a result of it’s a pig of a factor of transport; it’s very leaky . . . and it’s corrosive,” Baxter explains.
Iberdrola is likely one of the largest firms in Europe pursuing inexperienced hydrogen. Jorge Palomar, its world hydrogen improvement director, says a system of European hydrogen pipelines “could also be a good suggestion for the long run” however there must be a greater understanding of what hydrogen could also be used for, and the place. The place electrification is feasible, pan-European interconnectors — cables that export electrical energy throughout borders — needs to be improved, Palomar says.
![A worker walks through the site during the final stages of construction at Iberdola’s Puertollano green hydrogen plant in Puertollano, Spain, on Thursday, May 19, 2022](https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/https%3A%2F%2Fd1e00ek4ebabms.cloudfront.net%2Fproduction%2F460fe0d7-fd97-4d26-bd27-e34d3d0be88f.jpg?dpr=1&fit=scale-down&quality=highest&source=next&width=700)
Within the meantime, Iberdrola is backing inexperienced hydrogen manufacturing close to the place it’s already utilized in a dirtier type. Extremely polluting “gray” hydrogen, produced from fossil fuels, is already extensively used within the chemical and petrochemicals industries.
However some international locations, corresponding to Japan, wouldn’t have the luxurious of electrifying giant swaths of their economies, factors out Wilson.
“Our selections about vitality infrastructure are difficult and at all times located within the particularity of the situation,” he says. “Japan and Korea [for example] wouldn’t have giant endowments of renewable vitality functionality . . . so it’s not even a option to be placing up loads of wind and photo voltaic farms as a result of the useful resource is just not there [on the scale required].
“The energy-efficient strategy, the cost-effective strategy and the low-carbon strategy is to ship hydrogen or ammonia lengthy distances for Japan to import that vitality,” Wilson insists.
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