In focus: ‘Hydrogen to go, please’

Another week has gone by with (green) hydrogen filling our headlines, from new hydrogen carrier projects and hydrogen-powered vessels, to oil giants looking at hydrogen as the next best thing to invest into as they start adding new revenue drivers.

Starting with some of the biggest names in the oil and gas sector, this week we saw BP saying it expected to increase the proportion of its capital expenditure in transition growth businesses to more than 40 per cent by 2025, with an aim of raising this to around 50 per cent by 2030.

The oil and gas major – which gave an update on the progress in executing its transformation to an Integrated Energy Company (IEC) on Tuesday – wants to generate earnings of $9-10 billion from these businesses by 2030, driven by five transition growth engines: bioenergy, convenience, electric vehicle (EV) charging, renewables, and hydrogen.

BP sees both renewables and hydrogen as transition growth engines. With a renewables pipeline and 4.4 GW developed to FID at the end-2021, the company said it was on track for its target of having developed 20 GW of renewable power capacity by 2025 and 50 GW by 2030.

In hydrogen, BP has built a portfolio of options in advantaged markets worldwide with a potential capacity of 0.7-1.3 million tonnes a year. These also enable additional value creation through integration with renewables and CCS, according to the company.

In more news from the oil and gas arena, Shell, which is also positioning itself as an energy company, announced this week that it would work together with containment specialist GTT to develop innovative technologies to enable the transportation of liquid hydrogen (LH2), including a preliminary LH2 carrier design.

The two companies signed a cooperation agreement for which Shell said was part of its strategy to develop a hydrogen energy supply chain by creating scalable and safe LH2 shipping technologies.

Under the deal, GTT will develop a preliminary LH2 carrier design as well as an LH2 cargo containment system for mid-size LH2 carriers.

“Shell’s strategy is to become a net-zero carbon energy supplier by 2050 or sooner…  Therefore, safe and efficient bulk transport of LH2 will be a critical enabler and we believe GTT brings key expertise to this project that will ultimately help to accelerate and unlock this future energy source”, said Carl Henrickson, General Manager Shipping & Maritime Technology, Innovation and Digitalisation at Shell.

When it comes to the field of liquid hydrogen use, new developments also continue popping up. This week, news came from the French project Energy Observer, which is launching a design of a multipurpose cargo ship fuelled by liquid hydrogen.

The move came after Energy Observer had developed an autonomous laboratory vessel with the first complete hydrogen chain, capable of producing its own hydrogen with its surplus of renewable energies.

With maritime transport accounting for 3 per cent of CO2 emissions annually on a global scale, the ambition of Energy Observer and its partners is to present prototype solutions leaning towards zero-emission for the transport of goods, and LH2 technology allows for zero-emission navigation while offering very high transport capacities and autonomy, according to the partners behind the project.

While hydrogen production and hydrogen-related solutions are increasingly becoming the go-to business areas for the oil and gas and maritime industries, the focus on its ‘green’ component is increasingly driving new projects and partnerships in the renewables sector, one of the latest being that between the tidal energy technology developer Sabella and the engineering company H2X-Ecosystems.

The two recently signed a memorandum of understanding for the development of green hydrogen production system powered by tidal energy, with Sabella stating that the agreement was part of its development strategy for the green hydrogen production market.

Sabella’s Managing Director Fanch Le Bris said the company was also in discussions with various industrial and academic partners to develop a complete hydrogen production system from the electricity produced by its tidal turbines. This system will be intended to be applied to other renewable marine energy sources, in particular for offshore wind and wave energy, according to Le Bris.

Hydrogen, especially the ‘green’ one, is also becoming significant in national strategies for energy transition.

According to Dan McGrail, Chief Executive of RenewableUK, ramping up the roll-out of innovative technologies such as green hydrogen is one of the vital moves for the UK to stay on track for net-zero.

McGrail said this after the UK government announced it would increase the frequency of the Contracts for Difference (CfD) auctions. The auctions for funding through the CfD scheme will be held every year instead of every two years as was being done so far.

Increased CfD round frequency is said to underline the UK government’s commitment to accelerate low carbon electricity generation to achieve a fully decarbonised electricity system by 2035, according to the UK Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) said.

“We need build up to 4GW of new offshore wind capacity every year to stay on track for net zero, which means quadrupling our current annual rate. Similar increases in onshore wind, solar and other clean power sources are vital too, as well as ramping up the roll-out of innovative technologies like floating wind, green hydrogen and marine power”, RenewableUK’s Dan McGrail said.