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| Thu, 30th Apr 2020 14:41:00 |
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'It's much cheaper to produce green hydrogen from waste than renewables' |
While the renewables and fossil-fuel industries have been battling to win the argument over how the clean hydrogen required for the energy transition should be produced, a third option is now competing for the limelight — and offering a carbon-negative solution: hydrogen from waste.
California start-up Ways2H can take municipal solid waste (MSW) — the rubbish thrown away by homes and businesses — as well as plastics and hazardous medical waste, and convert them into hydrogen — at a far cheaper cost than green H2 produced from renewables via electrolysis.
"[The cost] is very much dependent on what kind of feedstock we have, but typically we are now comfortable at $5 per kilogram," chief executive Jean-Louis Kindler tells Recharge. "And we can go down to about half that, let's say $3 a kilogram… [within] five years."
By comparison, the cost of green hydrogen from wind or solar costs about $11-16 per kg today, according to Hydrogen Europe, although it adds that this cost could halve by 2023-25.
"We can supply renewable hydrogen, just like solar and wind-powered electrolysed hydrogen, but without using the vast space that solar panels require," says Kindler. "Plus, our technology solves another issue, which is the waste crisis."
Part of the reason why the cost of Ways 2H's hydrogen is relatively low is that the raw materials are cost-negative — municipalities pay companies so-called "tipping fees" to take away their waste.
"We expect tipping fees of about $70 per tonne," Kindler tells Recharge. "We see situations in California where municipalities have to pay well over $100 per tonne of their waste to have it processed.
"I saw a French company that had been fined because they were sending plastic waste from France all the way to Malaysia. If they want to get rid of this waste, they have to pay."
Ways2H's plants can also operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year — unlike electrolysers powered purely by wind and solar — an efficiency that contributes to lower production costs.
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