Norway

Hydrogen and carbon capture and storage are pivotal to decarbonize the European energy system in a broad range of pathway scenarios. Yet their timely uptake in different sectors and distribution across countries are affected by supply options of renewable and fossil energy sources. Here we analyze the decarbonization of the European energy system towards 2060 covering the power heat and industry sectors and the change in use of hydrogen and carbon capture and storage in these sectors upon Europe’s decoupling from Russian gas. The results indicate that the use of gas is significantly reduced in the power sector instead being replaced by coal with carbon capture and storage and with a further expansion of renewable generators. Coal coupled with carbon capture and storage is also used in the steel sector as an intermediary step when Russian gas is neglected before being fully decarbonized with hydrogen. Hydrogen production mostly relies on natural gas with carbon capture and storage until natural gas is scarce and costly at which time green hydrogen production increases sharply. The disruption of Russian gas imports has significant consequences on the decarbonization pathways for Europe with local energy sources and carbon capture and storage becoming even more important. Given the highlighted importance of carbon capture and storage in reaching the climate targets it is essential that policymakers ameliorate regulatory challenges related to these value chains.

Hydrogen safety is a general concern because of the high reactivity compared to hydrocarbon-based fuels. The strength of knowledge in risk assessments related to the physical phenomena and the ability of models to predict the consequence of accidental releases is a key aspect for the safe implementation of new technologies. Nuclear safety considers the possibility of accidental leakages of hydrogen gas and subsequent explosion events in risk analysis. In many configurations the considered gaseous streams involve a large fraction of nitrogen gas mixed with hydrogen. This work presents the results of a large scale explosion experimental campaign for hydrogen-nitrogen-air mixtures. The experiments were performed in a 50 m3 vessel at Gexcon’s test site in Bergen Norway. The nitrogen fraction the equivalence ratio and the congestion level were investigated. The experiments are simulated in the FLACS-CFD software to inform about the current level of conservatism of the predictions for engineering application purposes. The study shows the reduced overpressure with nitrogen added to hydrogen mixtures and supports the use of FLACS-CFD-based risk analysis for hydrogen-nitrogen scenarios.

Decarbonising energy systems is a prevalent topic in the current literature on climate change mitigation but the additional climate burden caused by methane emissions along the natural gas value chain is rarely discussed at the system level. Considering a two-basket greenhouse gas neutrality objective (both CO2 and methane) we model cost-optimal European energy transition pathways towards 2050. Our analysis shows that adoption of best available methane abatement technologies can entail an 80% reduction in methane leakage limiting the additional environmental burden to 8% of direct CO2 emissions (vs. 35% today). We show that while renewable energy sources are key drivers of climate neutrality the role of natural gas strongly depends on actions to abate both associated CO2 and methane emissions. Moreover clean hydrogen (produced mainly from renewables) can replace natural gas in a substantial proportion of its end-uses satisfying nearly a quarter of final energy demand in a climate-neutral Europe.

Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are programmable robotic vehicles that can drift drive or glide through the ocean without real-time control by human operators. AUVs that also can follow a planned trajectory with a chosen depth profile are used for geophysical surveys subsea pipeline inspection marine archaeology and more. Most AUVs are followed by a mother ship that adds significantly to the cost of an AUV mission. One pathway to reduce this need is to develop long-endurance AUVs by improving navigation autonomy and energy storage. Long-endurance AUVs can open up for more challenging mission types than what is possible today. Fuel cell systems are a key technology for increasing the endurance of AUVs beyond the capability of batteries. However several challenges exist for underwater operation of fuel cell systems. These are related to storage or generation of hydrogen and oxygen buoyancy and trim and the demanding environment of the ambient seawater. Protecting the fuel cell inside a sealed container brings along more challenges related to condensation cooling and accumulation of inert gases or reactants. This paper elaborates on these technical challenges and describes the solutions that the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI) has chosen in its development of a fuel cell system for long-endurance AUVs. The reported solutions enabled a 24 h demonstration of FFI's fuel cell system under water. The remaining work towards a prototype sea trial is outlined.

Hydrogen is seen as a key energy carrier to reduce CO2 emissions. Two main production options for hydrogen with low CO2 intensity are water electrolysis and natural gas reforming with Carbon Capture and Storage known as green and blue hydrogen. Northern Norway has a surplus of renewable energy and natural gas availability from the Barents Sea which can be used to produce hydrogen. However exports are challenging due to the large distances to markets and lack of energy infrastructure. This study explores the profitability of hydrogen exports from this Arctic region. It considers necessary investments in hydrogen technology and capacity expansions of wind farms and the power grid. Various scenarios are investigated with different assumptions for investment decisions. The critical question is how exogenous factors shape future regional hydrogen production and export. The results show that production for global export may be profitable above 90 €/MWh excluding costs for storage and transport with blue hydrogen being cheaper than green. Depending on the assumptions a combination of liquid hydrogen and ammonia export might be optimal for seaborne transport. Exports to Sweden can be profitable at prices above 60 €/MWh transported by pipelines. Expanding power generation capacity can be crucial and electricity and hydrogen exports are unlikely to co-exist.

Global warming’s major cause is the emission of greenhouse-effect gases (GHG) especially carbon dioxide (CO2) whose main source is the combustion of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels serve as the primary energy source in many industries including shipping which is the focus of this study. One of the measures proposed to tackle GHG emissions is the development of green shipping corridors - carbon-free shipping routes that require the transition to alternative fuels which are gaining competitiveness. One of the reasons for that is carbon pricing which taxes CO2 emissions. However the lack of consensus on the most cost-advantageous alternative fuel in the long run results in the delay of the implementation of green shipping corridors. To make it more accessible for stakeholders to conduct an economic analysis of the various options a framework to determine and minimize the costs of transitioning from fossil fuels to any alternative fuel is proposed over the period of one voyage considering the lost opportunity cost the deployment cost of bunkering vessels at the necessary call ports the cost of converting the vessel the car-bon emissions tax cost and the fuel cost. This will allow stakeholders to choose the most economical alternative fuel accelerating the development of green shipping corridor initiatives. To validate the effectiveness of the framework it was applied in a case study involving a shipowner seeking to transition from heavy fuel oil (HFO) to Ammonia Hydrogen Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) or Methanol. This study faced limitations due to the unknown costs of installing bunkering vessels for Ammonia and Hydrogen. However it evaluates the cost-effectiveness of alternative fuels providing insights into their short-term economic viability. The results showed that Hydrogen is the most costadvantageous fuel until a deployment cost per bunkering vessel of 1990285$ for a sailing speed of 22 knots and 2190171$ for a sailing speed of 18 knots is reached after which LNG becomes the most economical option regardless of variations in the carbon tax. Moreover a sensitivity analysis was conducted to determine the effects of variations in parameters such as carbon tax fuel prices and vessel conversion costs in the total cost of each fuel option. Results highlighted that even though HFO remains the most economical fuel option even when considering a high increase in carbon tax the cost gap between HFO and alternative fuels narrows significantly with the increase in carbon tax. Furthermore the sailing speed impacts the fuels’ competitiveness as the cost difference between HFO and alternative fuels decreases at higher speeds.

Industrial and public interest in hydrogen technologies has risen strongly recently as hydrogen is the ideal means for medium to long term energy storage transport and usage in combination with renewable and green energy supply. In a future energy system the production storage and usage of green hydrogen is a key technology. Hydrogen is and will in future be even more used for industrial production processes as a reduction agent or for the production of synthetic hydrocarbons especially in the chemical industry and in refineries. Under certain conditions material based systems for hydrogen storage and compression offer advantages over the classical systems based on gaseous or liquid hydrogen. This includes in particular lower maintenance costs higher reliability and safety. Hydrogen storage is possible at pressures and temperatures much closer to ambient conditions. Hydrogen compression is possible without any moving parts and only by using waste heat. In this paper we summarize the newest developments of hydrogen carriers for storage and compression and in addition give an overview of the different research activities in this field.

Underground hydrogen storage (UHS) in porous media is proposed to balance seasonal fluctuations between demand and supply in an emerging hydrogen economy. Despite increasing focus on the topic worldwide the understanding of hydrogen flow in porous media is still not adequate. In particular relative permeability hys teresis and its impact on the storage performance require detailed investigations due to the cyclic nature of H2 injection and withdrawal. We focus our analysis on reservoir simulation of an offshore aquifer setting where we use history matched relative permeability to study the effect of hysteresis and gas type on the storage efficiency. We find that omission of relative permeability hysteresis overestimates the annual working gas capacity by 34 % and the recovered hydrogen volume by 85 %. The UHS performance is similar to natural gas storage when using hysteretic hydrogen relative permeability. Nitrogen relative permeability can be used to model the UHS when hysteresis is ignored but at the cost of the accuracy of the bottom-hole pressure predictions. Our results advance the understanding of the UHS reservoir modeling approaches.

The cost of green hydrogen production is very dependent on the price of electricity. A control system that can schedule hydrogen production based on forecast wind speed and electricity price should therefore be advantageous for large-scale wind-hydrogen systems. This work presents a novel price-based control system integrated in a techno-economic analysis of hydrogen production from offshore wind. A polynomial regression model that predicts wind power production from wind speed input was developed and tested with real-world datasets from a 2.3 MW floating offshore wind turbine. This was combined with a mathematical model of a PEM electrolyzer and used to simulate hydrogen production. A novel price-based control system was developed to decide when the system should produce hydrogen and when it should sell electricity to the grid. The model and control system can be used in real-world wind-hydrogen systems and require only the forecast wind speed electricity price and selling price of hydrogen as inputs. 11 test scenarios based on 10 years of real-world wind speed and electricity price data are proposed and used to evaluate the effect the price-based control system has on the levelized cost of hydrogen (LCOH). Both current and future (2050) costs and technologies are used and the results show that the novel control system lowered the LCOH in all scenarios by 10–46%. The lowest LCOH achieved with current technology and costs was 6.04 $/kg H2. Using the most optimistic forecasts for technology improvements and cost reductions in 2050 the model estimated a LCOH of 0.96 $/kg H2 for a grid-connected offshore wind farm and onshore hydrogen production 0.82 $/kg H2 using grid electricity (onshore) and 4.96 $/kg H2 with an offgrid offshore wind-hydrogen system. When the electricity price from the period 2013–2022 was used on the 2050 scenarios the resulting LCOH was approximately twice as high.

Green hydrogen represents a promising solution for renewable energy application and carbon footprint reduc tion. However its production through renewable energy powered water electrolysis is hindered by significant cost arising from repair maintenance and economic losses due to unexpected downtimes. Although reliability engineering is highly effective in addressing such issues there is limited research on its application in the hydrogen field. To present the state-of-the-art research this study aims to explore the potential of reducing these events through reliability engineering a widely adopted approach in various industries. For this purpose it examines past accidents occurred in water electrolysis plants from the hydrogen incident and accident database (HIAD 2.1). Besides a literature review is performed to analyze the state-of-the-art application of reliability engineering techniques such as failure analysis reliability assessment and reliability-centered maintenance in the hydrogen sector and similar industries. The study highlights the contributions and potentials of reliability engineering for efficient and stable green hydrogen production while also discussing the gaps in applying this approach. The unique challenges posed by hydrogen’s physical properties and innovative technologies in water electrolysis plants necessitate advancement and specialized approaches for reliability engineering.