Green Economy Journal Issue 56

ENERGY
ENERGY
GREEN HYDROGEN
How South Africa can capitalise
on it, and why we need to do it now
A recent IEA report makes the call for a massive increase of concessional finance to mobilise largescale
private investment in hydrogen projects in developing countries. But how can hydrogen
(a gas) be green and why is it necessary in the energy system?
In what was dubbed a “landmark” report, the International Energy
Agency (IEA), the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena)
and the UN Climate Change High-Level Champions released the
Breakthrough Agenda Report 2022, which provides an independent
assessment of the historic commitments made by governments at
COP26 in 2021, and the recommendations in the run-up to COP27.
The report delivers a clear call to action for governments along with
key recommendations that can help to rapidly reduce emissions,
cut energy costs and boost food security for billions of people
worldwide, in line with the goal of keeping global warming to a
maximum of 1.5°C (the tipping point). A large focus of the report
was ramping up development of low-carbon and renewable hydrogen
– recommending an increase of less than one-million tons in 2020 to
about 150-million tons by 2030, which requires doubling each year
from today. The report looked at how international cooperation can
increase the availability and affordability of renewable and low-carbon
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Hydrogenation forms a mixture
of lithium amide and hydride
(light blue) as an outer shell
around a lithium nitride particle
(dark blue) nanoconfined in
carbon. Nanoconfinement
prevents interface formation,
which dramatically improves the
hydrogen storage performance.
hydrogen and makes a strong call to increase concessional finance
by multilateral development banks to mobilise large-scale private
investment in hydrogen projects in developing countries.
“What’s different about this report is its focus on international
collaboration,” Simon Sharpe, director of economics for the UN Climate
Change High-Level Champions said at the launch of the report.
“There are many other reports out there saying what countries or
businesses can do individually. This is about how they can work
together to achieve more than the sum of their parts. It can do that with
faster innovation, stronger incentives for investment, larger economies
of scale and level playing fields where we need them. All those things
can make transitions faster, less difficult and at a lower cost.”
Elizabeth Press, director of planning and programme support at
Irena, says that “hydrogen is everybody’s darling at the moment, there
is a lot of policy attention to this… on where international cooperation
can really shift the needle on hydrogen.”
Sandia National Laboratories
Hydrogen research in South Africa was motivated in part
by the potential impact that the transition away from the
internal combustion engine (ICE) to battery EVs would have
on the country’s platinum mining industry. Together, South
Africa and Zimbabwe hold over 90% of the world’s known
PGM reserves. Since 30% to 40% of the supply goes into the
production of catalytic converters for ICE vehicles, the initial
focus of research was on hydrogen-powered fuel cell EVs as an
alternative market. It is estimated that South Africa has the
potential to produce six-million to 13-million tons of green
hydrogen and derivatives a year by 2050. To do so would
require between 140 and 300GW of renewable energy.
President Ramaphosa, November 2022
Doubling every year also requires an accelerated deployment of
renewable power. To reach these targets, a sharp escalation in financing
across the hydrogen value chain is required. Out of the hydrogen
production that exists today, only 1% of it is “climate-proof”. But how
is hydrogen used to create electricity and why is it necessary for us to
include it in the energy mix?
HYDROGEN IN THE ENERGY SYSTEM
Will Swart, an energy engineer at Meadows Energy, explains that
there are several ways to produce hydrogen, but the most common
is through hydrolysis – using electricity to split water molecules into
hydrogen gas and oxygen atoms – this process is very energy intensive,
so it’s only “green” hydrogen if this process is fuelled by renewable
energy (such as wind or solar), not from fossil fuel energy (such as coal)
called “grey hydrogen”, which is what Sasol does.
“And then you can convert that hydrogen back into electricity
through a process where hydrogen reacts with oxygen across an
electrochemical cell producing electricity and water – so, it’s basically
the reverse of when you produce it.”
Tobias Bischof-Niemz, energy expert and CEO of renewable energy
company ENERTRAG South Africa, agrees and explains that hydrogen
acts as an energy carrier – you can either store hydrogen or use it
right away. “If you use the hydrogen in a direct reduction furnace,
for example in a steel plant, then the hydrogen effectively burns and
becomes water again.”
Unless there is a gas leak, there are no emissions that go into the
atmosphere, just water vapour – making it “green”. While Bischof-Niemz
acknowledges that we do have to monitor leaks, he said that even
with an enormous leakage of 10% of hydrogen – which is “actually
impossible, because a lot of the hydrogen will immediately be
converted into something else, like ammonia” – the global warming
potentials of the entire leak would only be less than 1% of today’s
CO 2
emissions.
IS HYDROGEN REALLY NECESSARY?
Well, hydrogen has three real benefits – long-term storage, economic
opportunities from exporting it to other countries and decarbonising
the environment. While long-term storage is not as relevant in a
country like South Africa with less seasonal variability (we have more
consistent solar, for example, unlike countries in Europe), hydrogen is
a technical necessity to decarbonise our environment. Press from Irena
say that a driving force behind green hydrogen development is that it
is a “climate imperative”.
“There are absolutely areas where we know no other solution exists
today, and that the hydrogen needs to be advanced for that purpose,”
says Press. Bischof-Niemz explains that green hydrogen is a technical
necessity in a completely decarbonised, net-zero world because there
is no other (known) way to decarbonise steel, shipping, aviation fuel,
fertiliser or chemicals. For example, large container ships cannot run
on batteries and need a fuel, and a green one at that. “So, naturally we
need a fuel that is made out of the new primary energy which will be
electricity from sun and wind,” says Bischof-Niemz.
The report highlights that there are limited alternative clean energy
solutions in sectors such as heavy industry, shipping, aviation, seasonal
electricity storage and potentially segments of heavy-duty trucking.
Considering that transport has the greatest reliance on fossil fuels
internationally, the need for hydrogen becomes more obvious.
ALL-ELECTRIC NOT FEASIBLE
Ronny Kaufmann, CEO of Swisspower, a strategic alliance of the most
important city utilities in Switzerland, speaks about the importance of
leveraging a country’s natural resources when it comes to the energy
mix and the importance of green hydrogen for storage. Kaufmann says
he does not believe in an all-electric energy system because it “has its
systemic failures and is a romantic view for some people”. Using other
energy sources, such as hydrogen or biomethane, is better than just
producing electricity in certain cases. “But a world where you substitute
all energy resources into electricity will not work. It is better to use
hydrogen than fossil gas – and an all-electric world is not feasible.”
Energy expert Clyde Mallinson says one criticism of hydrogen
development is that South Africa doesn’t require long-term storage.
“This is not currently the case in many higher latitude countries,
who have massive inter-seasonal variances in solar in particular,” he
says. Bischof-Niemz agrees that long-term storage is less relevant in
a country like South Africa, but says it is still needed in sectors that
cannot decarbonise otherwise. Additionally, hydrogen could become
more relevant in South Africa as renewable generation increases and
if we create surpluses. For example, Kaufmann explains that every
country has its own energy technical environment, and for Switzerland
it’s a hot summer and a very cold winter, which means in summer there
is a surplus of electricity. Switzerland produces as much energy in
summer as possible and uses the surplus (from renewables or nuclear
sources) to pump water to the mountains where they have dams. Then
in winter, when electricity demand is higher, they use this water to
generate power.
Researchers have developed a sandwich-structured catalyst that can
generate hydrogen energy by activating water electrolysis.
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Pohang University of Science & Technology (POSTECH)