A hydrogen filling
A hydrogen filling stationwould operate more likea small chemical plant thana conventional service station.South Africa is not ready for greenhydrogen commercialisationStellenbosch University Associate Professor Craig McGregor and Bruce Douglas Young of the AfricaEnergy Leadership Centre, University of the Witwatersrand, warn that the implications of South Africaintroducing green hydrogen need to be carefully considered. Transport, infrastructure, water usageand high costs are among the factors in their risk-assessment framework. McGregor is also Director ofthe Solar Thermal Energy Research Group. This article first appeared in The Conversation Africa.Every day, millions of engines and factories burn fossil fuels,releasing carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that traps heatin the earth’s atmosphere and contributes to climate change.Now imagine a clean fuel that does not pollute and producesonly water as waste. That’s the promise of green hydrogen, which ismade by using solar and wind power to split water into hydrogenand oxygen.Countries worldwide, including South Africa, see green hydrogenas a vital tool for tackling climate change. There are plans to usegreen hydrogen in South Africa for everything from producingfertiliser for farms to powering factories and heavy trucks.As governments worldwide push for green hydrogen as a cleanenergysolution, a critical reality is being overlooked: producinggreen hydrogen is only one piece of a complex puzzle. Thesuccess of green-hydrogen projects depends on simultaneouslydeveloping infrastructure that will transport the green hydrogento industry. It will also need industries to adopt new technologyor convert existing equipment so that they can switch from usingfossil fuels to using green hydrogen.Producing one kilogram of green hydrogen needs up to30 litres of fresh water. This means that desalination or waterrecycling plants will be needed if green hydrogen hubs are setup in water-scarce areas.Think of it like building a new railway system. You wouldn’tconstruct a train station without first laying train tracks and makingsure that trains are available to run on it.Yet South Africa aims to build seven gigawatts of hydrogenproduction capacity by 2030 – enough to power up to sevenmillionhomes at once.We are chemical engineers, with over five decades ofcombined experience in the petrochemical industry, who haveresearched the potential for green-hydrogen commercialisationin South Africa.Drawing on our experience, our latest research is about whyambitious energy projects succeed or fail. We researched how tomanage the risks of setting up a green-hydrogen industry – fromproject execution through to market readiness – in a way that’s fairto both developed and developing countries.To develop our risk-assessment framework, we analysedhistorical data from pioneer energy plants globally and examinedsome of the challenges experienced by megaprojects (those thatcost more than R20-billion or -billion to build). We compareddifferent ways to use green hydrogen by measuring how manyCO2 emissions are avoided for each ton of hydrogen used. Thishelped us understand which applications are the most effectivefor cutting emissions.26 | www.opportunityonline.co.zaPHOTO: fanjianhua on Freepik
GREEN HYDROGENWhat our risk assessment found was striking: projects thatrush to use new technology at massive scale typically see theircosts double or triple from initial estimates. And over half ofthese projects fail to meet their production targets in their firstsix months.Our risk analysis also shows that the funds needed to buildproduction plants globally, including in South Africa, are just afraction of what it will cost to build a functioning green-hydrogeneconomy. The government will have to take these risks intoaccount or the result will be stranded assets: expensive facilitiesthat can’t be fully utilised because the supporting infrastructureisn’t in place.The risks we foundHydrogen, including green hydrogen, can only be moved aroundthrough expensive specialised pipelines, or by being compressedusing extreme pressure. Other ways to move it include firstconverting it into other chemicals like ammonia or converting itto liquid form at -253°C. Up to 48% of the energy content can belost in transportation alone through compression, liquefaction,conversion to carriers (like ammonia or methanol) and pipeline orshipping inefficiencies, all of which require significant energy input.Most existing natural gas pipelines cannot handle pure hydrogenwithout substantial modifications. These technical complexitiesmean new infrastructure must be built almost from scratch.If these hurdles in transporting green hydrogen are overcome,the next problem is that green hydrogen needs customers withfacilities equipped to use it. For example, the steel industry islooking at moving away from polluting ovens to producing steelusing green hydrogen. This would produce almost no carbondioxide emissions but requires entirely new infrastructure.Fuelling stations are another example. For an ordinary fuelstation to be converted so that it could serve hydrogen vehicles,it would need either massive cooling plants and cryogenic storagetanks (which store liquefied gas at below -250°C) or high-pressurestorage vessels and compressors. A hydrogen filling station wouldoperate more like a small chemical plant than a conventionalservice station.The South African government’s green hydrogen strategy wantsto carry out 24 feasibility studies to see how green hydrogen couldbe made and used by local industry. There are also plans to export it.But the cost of producing and transporting green hydrogen isup to five times the cost of a fossil-fuel alternative. Hydrogen is alsoGreen hydrogen converted togreen ammonia has potential inthe field of fertilisers but therecould be implications in higherfood prices.very difficult to transport across the ocean. This means there is nochance of big green-hydrogen exports happening in the short tomedium term.These factors create risks for a potential green-hydrogen industrythat will make it difficult for green-hydrogen projects to attractfinancing. Production facilities costing billions cannot be justifiedif transportation systems and end users aren’t ready and waiting.It is also worth considering that, in many cases, solar or windpower are cheaper and more efficient than green hydrogen. Forexample, green hydrogen is an expensive and inefficient way topower cars compared to battery electric vehicles or to heat homescompared to electric heat using heat pumps.A path forwardOur research suggests that the South African government shouldfocus first on industries that will find it easy to switch from fossilfuels to green hydrogen.For example, green hydrogen could be produced and convertedto green ammonia in one place, without needing new pipelines.Green ammonia can be used to make farm fertilisers that aretransported as solid pellets and so no extra infrastructure is neededto move and sell bags of green fertiliser.However, the higher cost of green ammonia-based fertiliserwould be a problem for local sales. Nitrogenous fertiliser is usedon staple crops such as maize. Higher fertiliser costs would have aknock-on effect for food prices.The transition to green hydrogen requires careful coordinationacross the entire supply chain. Rather than a “build it and theywill come” approach, production, transportation and usageinfrastructure must be built at the same time.As countries race to meet climate targets, policy makers mustdiscuss all the infrastructure a green-hydrogen industry needs.Without coordinated development across the entire value chain,the transition to clean energy could be set back.ABOUT THE AUTHORSCraig McGregor is Associate Professor in Mechanical andMechatronic Engineering and Director of the Solar ThermalEnergy Research Group, Stellenbosch University.Bruce Douglas Young is Senior Lecturer, Africa EnergyLeadership Centre, University of the Witwatersrand.ABOUT THE CONVERSATION AFRICAThe Conversation is funded by the National ResearchFoundation, eight universities, including the CapePeninsula University of Technology, Rhodes University,Stellenbosch University and the Universities of Cape Town,Johannesburg, KwaZulu-Natal, Pretoria and South Africa. Itis hosted by the Universities of the Witwatersrand and theWestern Cape, the African Population and Health ResearchCentre and the Nigerian Academy of Science. The Bill &Melinda Gates Foundation is a Strategic Partner.PHOTO: Wolfgang Weiser on Pexels
