Policy & Socio-Economics

On 26 June the World Energy Council held a webinar presenting the results of its latest Innovation Insights Brief on hydrogen engaging three key experts on the topic:Nigel Brandon Dean of the Faculty of Engineering Imperial College LondonCraig Knight Director of Industrial Solutions Horizon Fuel Cell TechnologyDan Sadler H21 Project Manager for EquinorDuring the webinar the experts answered a series of policy technical and safety questions Read More

The results of a techno-economic model of distributed wind-hydrogen systems (WHS) located at each existing wind farm on the island of Ireland are presented in this paper. Hydrogen is produced by water electrolysis from wind energy and backed up by grid electricity compressed before temporarily stored then transported to the nearest injection location on the natural gas network. The model employs a novel correlation-based approach to se Read More

Policy led decisions aiming at decarbonizing the economy may well exacerbate existing regional economic imbalances. These effects are seldomly recognised in spatially aggregated top-down and techno-economic decarbonization strategies. Here we present a spatial economic framework that quantifies the gross value added associated with low carbon hydrogen investments while accounting for region-specific factors such as the industrial specialization of r Read More

Power to hydrogen (P2H) provides a promising solution to the geographic mismatch between sources of renewable energy and the market due to its technological maturity flexibility and the availability of technical and economic data from a range of active demonstration projects. In this review we aim to provide an overview of the status of P2H analyze its technical barriers and solutions and propose potential opportunities for future research and in Read More

Low-carbon hydrogen has the potential to play a significant role in tackling climate change and poor air quality. This policy briefing considers how hydrogen could be produced at a useful scale to power vehicles heat homes and supply industrial processes.Four groups of hydrogen production technologies are examined:Thermochemical Routes to HydrogenThese methods typically use heat and fossil fuels. Steam methane reforming is the dominant com Read More

There is a growing conversation around the role that hydrogen can play in the future of the UK and how to best harness its potential to secure jobs show climate leadership promote industrial competitiveness and drive innovation. The Government’s ‘Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution’ included hydrogen as one of its ten actions targeting 5GW of ‘low carbon’ hydrogen production by 2030. Britain is thus joining the EU US Japan Germany an Read More

Because of differences in irradiation levels it could be more efficient to produce solar electricity and hydrogen in North Africa and import these energy carriers to Europe rather than generating them at higher costs domestically in Europe. From a global climate change mitigation point of view exploiting such efficiencies can be profitable since they reduce overall renewable electricity capacity requirements. Yet the construction of this capacity in North A Read More

Detailed analysis of pathways to future sustainable energy systems is important in order to identify and overcome potential constraints and negative impacts and to increase the utility and speed of this transition. A key aspect of a shift to renewable energy technologies is their relatively higher metal intensities. In this study a bottom-up cost-minimizing energy model is used to calculate aggregate metal requirements in different energy technology including h Read More

Hydrogen is currently enjoying a renewed and widespread momentum in many national and international climate strategies. This review paper is focused on analysing the challenges and opportunities that are related to green and blue hydrogen which are at the basis of different perspectives of a potential hydrogen society. While many governments and private companies are putting significant resources on the development of hydrogen technologie Read More

Greenhouse gas emissions need to be drastically reduced to mitigate the environmental impacts caused by climate change and to lead to a transformation of the European energy system. A model landscape consisting of four final energy consumption sector models with high spatial (NUTS-3) and temporal (hourly) resolution and the multi-energy system model ISAaR is extended and applied to investigate the transformation pathway of the European energy s Read More

The building sector is one of the key energy consumers worldwide. Fuel cell micro-Cogeneration Heat and Power systems for residential and small commercial applications are proposed as one of the most promising innovations contributing to the transition towards a sustainable energy infrastructure. For the application and the diffusion of these systems in addition to their environmental performance it is necessary however to evaluate their eco Read More

Since Japan promulgated the world’s first national hydrogen strategy in 2017 28 national (or regional in the case of the EU) hydrogen strategies have been issued by major world economies. As carbon emissions vary with different types of hydrogen and only green hydrogen produced from renewable energy can be zero-emissions fuel this paper interrogates the commitment of the national hydrogen strategies to achieve decarbonization objectives focusing Read More

This discussion paper is for stakeholders who would like to shape the development of Victoria’s emerging green hydrogen sector identifying competitive advantages and priority focus areas for industry and the Victorian Government.The Victorian Government is using this paper to focus on the economic growth and sector development opportunities emerging for a Victorian hydrogen industry powered by renewable energy also known as ‘green’ hy Read More

Achieving climate-neutrality requires considerable investment in energy storage systems (ESS) to integrate variable renewable energy sources into the grid. However investments into ESS are often unprofitable in particular for grid-scale battery storage and green hydrogen technologies prompting many actors to call for policy intervention. This study investigates investor-specific risk-return preferences for ESS investment and derives policy recommendation Read More

Hydrogen is crucial to Europe’s transformation into a climate-neutral continent by mid-century. This study concludes that the European Union (EU) and UK could see a hydrogen demand of 2300 TWh (2150-2750 TWh) by 2050. This corresponds to 20-25% of EU and UK final energy consumption by 2050. Achieving this future role of hydrogen depends on many factors including market frameworks legislation technology readiness and consumer choi Read More

To address the climate emergency France is committed to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. It plans to significantly increase the contribution of renewable energy in its energy mix. The share of renewable energy in its electricity production which amounts to 25.5% in 2020 should reach at least 40% in 2030. This growth poses several new challenges that require policy makers and regulators to act on the technological changes and expanding need for flexibi Read More

This report is part of DNV’s suite of Energy Transition Outlook publications for 2021. It focuses on how key energy transition technologies will develop compete and interact in the coming five years.Debate and uncertainty about the energy transition tend to focus on what technology can and can’t do. All too often such discussions involve wishful thinking advocacy of a favoured technology or reference to outdated information. Through this report we br Read More

The Hydrogen Strategy Group chaired by Australia’s Chief Scientist Dr Alan Finkel has today released a briefing paper on the potential domestic and export opportunities of a hydrogen industry in Australia.Like natural gas hydrogen can be used to heat buildings and power vehicles. Unlike natural gas or petrol when hydrogen is burned there are no CO2 emissions. The only by-products are water vapour and heat.Hydrogen is the most abundant element i Read More

Gi Editor Sharon Baker-Hallam sits down with Chris Stark CEO of the Committee on Climate Change to talk about this year’s Sir Denis Rooke Memorial Lecture the economic opportunities to be found in going green and why 2020 is a critical year in the ongoing battle against rising global temperatures

With the move to a hydrogen-based primary steel production envisioned for the near future in Europe existing regional industrial clusters loose major assets. Such a restructuring of industries may result in a new geographical distribution of the steel industry and also to another quality of vertical integration at sites. Both implications could turn out as drivers or barriers to invest in new technologies and are thus important in respect to vertical integration of site Read More

In which way and in which sectors will renewable energy be integrated in the German Energy System by 2030 2040 and 2050? How can the resulting energy system be characterised following a −95% greenhouse gas emission reduction scenario? Which role will hydrogen play? To address these research questions techno-economic energy system modelling was performed. Evaluation of the resulting operation of energy technologies was carried out from a sy Read More

The unbridled use of fossil fuels is a serious problem that has become increasingly evident over the years. As such fuels contribute considerably to environmental pollution there is a need to find new sustainable sources of energy with low emissions of greenhouse gases. Climate change poses a substantial challenge for the scientific community. Thus the use of renewable energy through technologies that offer maximum efficiency with min Read More

Fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) have clear societal and environmental benefits and can help mitigate the issues of climate change urban air pollution and oil dependence. In order for FCVs to have the biggest impact on these issues they need to be employed in large numbers. First though they need to be adopted by consumers. Their acceptance depends on positive consumer attitudes towards the vehicles. Currently there is a limited understanding within th Read More

As the EU energy system transitions to low carbon the technology choices should consider a broader set of criteria. The use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) prevents burden shift across life cycle stages or impact categories while the use of Energy System Models (ESM) allows evaluating alternative policies capacity evolution and covering all the sectors. This study does an ex-post LCA analysis of results from JRC-EU-TIMES and estimates the environme Read More

A new report to the Secretary of State for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy from the Parliamentary Advisory Group on Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) advises that that the UK  should kickstart CCS in order to save consumers billions a year from the cost of meeting climate change targets.