MHI Ebook - HYDROGEN-POWERING A NET ZERO FUTURE
MHI Ebook - HYDROGEN-POWERING A NET ZERO FUTURE
MHI Ebook - HYDROGEN-POWERING A NET ZERO FUTURE
For both roles, there are technologies that are either already available or
in advanced stages of development to make use of hydrogen in several key
applications.
Building hydrogen to the scale needed to fulfil these functions will require
the intermediate step of decarbonizing traditional hydrogen production
through carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) until production from
electrolysis powered by renewables becomes commercially viable.
The momentum that built up in 2019 has continued into 2020, with January
alone seeing German chancellor Angela Merkel highlighting the importance
of hydrogen for decarbonizing her country’s steel sector3 and the U.K.
starting its first trial of injecting hydrogen into its gas grid for domestic
heating4.
5 The Energy Transitions Commission, Reaching Net Zero Carbon Emissions: Mission Possible, 2018
The Hydrogen Council estimates that by 2030, 250 to 300 terawatt hours
(TWh) of surplus renewable electricity could be stored in the form of
hydrogen7 – that’s more than the entire annual amount of electricity
generated by many major advanced economies, including Australia
and Italy⁸.
In addition to this theoretical storage potential, independent research
commissioned by the Japanese government shows that projected demand
for green hydrogen as a fuel, rather than just as a form of storage, could
require up to 16TWh of renewable power generation by 20509.
¹⁰ Mitsubishi Power, World’s Largest Renewable Energy Storage Project Announced in Utah, 2019
11 Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles wants to build a hydrogen-fueled power plant. It’s never been done before, 2019
12 Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles wants to build a hydrogen-fueled power plant. It’s never been done before, 2019
The advantage of this solution is that existing power plants can be renewed
to low-carbon or CO₂-free power generation just by converting burners and
associated equipment. Mitsubishi Power is now working with Vattenfall to
deploy this technology at its Magnum power plant in the Netherlands. This
project aims to convert one of the three existing Mitsubishi Power units,
which house M701F gas turbines (440MW/unit), to be 100% hydrogen-firing
by 2025.
McKinsey’s analysis predicts that with the addition of carbon pricing, blue
hydrogen will be cost competitive with gray hydrogen by 2030. Dependent
on local natural gas prices, blue hydrogen may already be cheaper than gray
hydrogen in some parts of the world: the IEA identifies hydrogen production
from coal with CCUS as the cheapest form of clean hydrogen production¹⁶ in
China today, cheaper even than hydrogen from natural gas without CCUS.
There are 19 CCUS plants operational around the world today, with a further
32 planned or under construction. The largest facility is in Texas and uses
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Engineering (MHIENG) technology¹⁷. CCUS
represents the best hope for scaling up hydrogen production in the short-to
medium-term. Using blue hydrogen to establish supply chains and growth
in demand for the gas will ensure that by the time green hydrogen projects
become commercially viable, they have a ready-made market to sell into.
Blue gets us to green.
The Petra Nova Carbon Capture Plant in Thompson, Texas is the world’s
largest post-combustion carbon capture facility. Owned and operated by
Petra Nova (a joint venture of NRG and JX Nippon Oil & Gas Exploration),
the facility captures more than 90% of the CO₂ from a 240MW power
plant. Operational since the end of 2016, in its first 10 months it captured
more than 1 million short tons of carbon¹⁸. This captured CO₂ is used
in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) that has boosted production at the West
Ranch oil field in Texas significantly19.
Petra Nova uses MHIENG’s carbon capture technology, called the Kansai
Mitsubishi Carbon Dioxide Recovery Process (KM-CDR Process™), jointly
developed with Kansai Electric Power Co., Inc. It employs a specially
developed amine-based solvent called KS-1™ to absorb CO₂ from the flue
gas, cleaning the plant’s emissions. The CO₂-rich solvent is then moved
to a regenerator, where steam separates the CO₂ from the solvent. This
99% pure CO₂ is sent to a compressor to be transported via pipelines and
used for EOR. The CO₂-free solvent, meanwhile, is recycled and used in the
process all over again.
18 NRG, Petra Nova - Petra Nova - Carbon capture and the future of coal power, N/A
19 Spectra, Carbon Capture Technology for an Evolving Energy Landscape, May 2018
These are sectors that rely on fossil fuels either as the raw materials for
their products, or for energy. Quite often the energy application comes in the
form of extreme levels of heat, which cannot be simply electrified. In 2018
industry accounted for 29% of energy consumption and 42% of direct CO₂
energy-related and process emissions20, according to the IEA.
Along with CCUS and alternative fuels such as biogas, hydrogen can be used
both as a feedstock for industry’s raw materials and in heat applications to
help decarbonize sectors such as chemicals, cement and steelmaking.
With such high emissions levels, the industry is already feeling the pinch
from carbon pricing in some parts of the world. In Europe, for example, CO₂
pricing rose sixfold between 2017 and 2019, and is expected to continue to
rise as new rules in the EU Emissions Trading System come into place in
2021 that tighten the supply of emissions credits.
21 Spectra, Swapping carbon for hydrogen, and how the steel industry can do it, October 2019
22 Primetals Technologies, The Winding Road Toward Zero-Carbon Iron, January 2020
23 BusinessGreen, Steel giant ArcelorMittal targets carbon neutral European operations by 2050, June 2019
24 The Energy Transitions Commission, Reaching Net Zero Carbon Emissions: Mission Possible, 2018
25 DW, World's first hydrogen train rolls out in Germany, September 2019
26 Bloomberg, This Bus Filling Station Is Latest in Japan’s Hydrogen Quest, January 2020
27 The Energy Transitions Commission, Reaching Net Zero Carbon Emissions: Mission Possible, 2018
28 IEA, The Future of Hydrogen - Seizing today’s opportunities, June 2019
29 Nouryon, Nouryon and Gasunie study scale-up of green hydrogen project to meet aviation fuels demand, May 2019
The UN’s International Maritime Organization (IMO) has set a target for the
international shipping industry to halve its greenhouse gas emissions by
205030. With battery technology currently only a viable solution for short
journeys such as ferry crossings, alternative approaches are being sought
to decarbonize the sector. MHI Group believes that the IMO’s emissions
targets will drive demand for ammonia as a low-carbon shipping fuel.
The heating of buildings, water and use of heat in industry accounts for
more than half of global energy use31. In Europe, heat and hot water account
for 79% of energy use by EU households32. The vast majority of European
homes rely on natural gas boilers for heat, and hydrogen offers a potential
alternative that could make use of existing gas infrastructure. In the
U.K., work is underway to test this theory. The H21 project is testing gas
infrastructure’s potential to carry a 100% hydrogen heating network, with a
live trial scheduled to take place in either 2021 or 202233. Meanwhile, Keele
University began feeding a 20% blend of hydrogen into the natural gas used
by buildings on campus34.
Mitsubishi Power produces a 250kW class solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) unit
called MEGAMIE, which combines fuel cell technology with a gas turbine to
generate both electricity and heat. The unit is currently used in university
campuses, factories and commercial buildings, and it can run on LNG,
biogas or hydrogen as a fuel. If LNG or biogas is used, the methane from
the gas is combined with recirculated water vapor from the exhaust to
create hydrogen and carbon monoxide (CO). The SOFC generates electricity
from the chemical reaction between oxygen in the air and hydrogen and
carbon monoxide extracted from the fuel. The emissions are water and
CO2, but at 47% lower than the CO2 emissions from conventional power
generation, including the benefit of heating. Using green hydrogen as the
fuel drops CO2 emissions to zero. Of the eight sites currently using this
technology in Japan, two are currently using hydrogen in their SOFC fuel
mix. Mitsubishi Power is currently testing a new 1MW capacity version of
the SOFC.
There is now a global effort across many industries and sectors to make
hydrogen commercially viable for a range of applications. MHI Group
companies are doing their part to deliver the technologies and solutions that
will realize this potential, and help establish a viable market with robust
demand for hydrogen over the next decade.