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| Wed, 12th Aug 2020 12:26:00 |
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Hydrogen storage gets real |
As production costs fall and demand is poised to rocket, James Mitchell Crow finds the hydrogen economy is finally ready for take-off – as long as we can find ways to store it
Japan has an ambitious plan to transform its energy system. But to pull it off, it is going to need a lot of hydrogen.
Japan wants to quit fossil fuels and import clean hydrogen to meet its energy needs instead. In December 2017, its Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry published a roadmap laying out how it intends to gradually drive up demand, and so drive down costs, until clean hydrogen becomes cost-competitive with natural gas.
For the plan to succeed – and similar plans in hydrogen hotspots such as California – chemistry is going to be key.
Hydrogen’s simple appeal as a fuel is that when burned, or consumed in a fuel cell to generate electricity, the only emission is water vapour. No NOx, SOx, CO2 or particulates. Electrochemist John Bockris coined the phrase ‘hydrogen economy’ in a 1970 speech to General Motors – but even then, the concept of using renewable electricity to electrolytically split water molecules and release hydrogen was nothing new. The idea has been examined regularly over the years, but the economics have never stacked up.Things are different this time, says Craig Buckley from Curtin University in Perth, Australia, who has been in hydrogen storage research since 1988 and has seen interest in hydrogen wax and wane several times. ‘This time, all the stars seem to be lining up,’ he says.One key factor is the steadily plummeting price of renewable electricity, the single biggest cost for electrolytic hydrogen production. Since 2010, the price of electricity from wind has fallen 50%, while solar electricity has fallen 80%. ‘Renewable energy has come so far down in price, [hydrogen production] can be competitive with fossil fuels. This has been a bit of a game changer,’ Buckley says.
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