With impending decarbonisation goals, could the world’s lightest molecule help us achieve those goals while also providing New Zealand with a fresh and lucrative export industry? | Content partnership
The deadlines for New Zealand’s climate action goals are coming up quickly.
Under the Paris Agreement, net greenhouse emissions are supposed to be beneath 2005 levels by the end of the decade.
Both public and private sectors have their hands on a range of levers that will bring that goal closer – along with further more ambitious zero-emission future goals.
There’s the new climate-related disclosure framework, which obliges large companies and financial institutions to report on their climate impact.
There’s the growing prevalence of the battery-powered electric car on the streets and in the garages of well-heeled New Zealanders.
Then there’s the increasing presence of hydrogen-powered transport. Hyundai is first to trial this technology with the importation of New Zealand’s first FCEV Trucks.
Hydrogen is another form of powering an electric vehicle - a fuel cell electric vehicle driven similarly to a battery car, with the same burst of acceleration and almost eerily silent manoeuvring.
From the outside they look similar, and having appeared almost simultaneously in the public consciousness, one could be forgiven for foreseeing a Betamax versus VHS gladiatorial match, with one format emerging victorious from the fracas.
But New Zealand Hydrogen Council chief executive Dr Linda Wright certainly doesn’t see it that way.
She said the specific pros and cons of each form of technology make them complementary - suited for different purposes, but ultimately both necessary paths to lower emissions.
"There will be certain areas where there will be a commercial decision over what's the right application for a particular industry, but they are absolutely complementary,” she said. “It's about dovetailing the two together. We need everything we can throw at this. It's not that one or the other is going to win out, it's about what are the roles for both.”
Wright has led the Hydrogen Council since 2018, but she’s had her eye on the tech for years, tracking the level of global investment, which has skyrocketed since countries around the world have started to focus on decarbonisation.
She said hydrogen provides a double win for New Zealand. There’s the chance to lower carbon emissions from long-haul transport like trucks, buses and potentially even planes – but also an export market for low-emissions hydrogen that could be hugely lucrative.
“When you get an increased quantum of investment in research and development, you get increased efficiency, increased scale and decreasing costs,” she said. “Hydrogen had never experienced that quantum of investment, but I could see there was starting to be traction for it. All of that aligns to increase in deployment in hydrogen globally, and along with that a major opportunity for New Zealand because of our renewable capacity.”
Producing hydrogen is nothing new for the world. Hydrogen plays a key role in myriad chemical processes like oil refining, or making plastics and fertiliser.
Wright said New Zealand’s opportunity lies in leveraging our ability to create zero or low-emissions hydrogen to match the appetites of those countries around the world who are also hustling to meet their emissions targets.
"The production, use and transport of hydrogen is already a huge global economy,” she said. “Even if we only focus on using zero-emission hydrogen to decarbonise that existing industry, there's already a quantum scale opportunity for decarbonisation globally.”
She said there’s an opportunity right now to capitalise on what has been phenomenal global investment in hydrogen-run infrastructure.
South Korea is one example - a major global economy with a small landmass, huge population and energy-intensive export industry, with less ability to nimbly move onto creating renewable energy.
“They acknowledge they need to import a renewable fuel, and their fuel of choice is liquified hydrogen, so the level of policy development to stimulate domestic demand in that market and their investment in technology has been massive,” Wright said.
As South Korea decarbonises its electrical supply, they’ll have to get that sustainable fuel from somewhere.
Wright argues New Zealand should be right here waiting.
How to make zero-emissions hydrogen
The demand is likely to be there, but for New Zealand to meet it, we will need to have the generative capacity to create hydrogen at scale while keeping those emissions low to zero.
A certificate of origin scheme is in development to ensure international supply chains provide transparent accounting over where hydrogen comes from and how green its production process was.
To produce that low-emissions hydrogen, Wright said electrolysis was the most common option – using an electrical current to drive the oxygen and hydrogen molecules from water apart, and then using a permeable membrane to separate the oxygen from smaller hydrogen molecules.
This way you end up with hydrogen without carbon dioxide byproducts. Of course, carbon dioxide may have been produced during the generation of the electricity used to stimulate the chemical reaction.
According to the Hydrogen Council, producing hydrogen via electrolysis at a refuelling station requires about 55 kWh/Kg H2 of electricity. Around nine litres of water would net a kilogram of hydrogen.
New Zealand has the fourth highest renewable electricity percentage in the OECD (around 85 percent each year) and with a goal to extend this to 100 percent by 2035, there’s room for renewable electricity to be used in the production of hydrogen.
Decarbonising our fleet
But New Zealand is met with the exact same challenge as countries like South Korea - weaning ourselves off the fossil fuel teat after generations of addiction.
Battery-powered electric vehicle offerings have seen big uptake amongst consumers, with worldwide EV sales rising 41 percent during 2020, despite the pandemic taking a big bite out of car sales otherwise.
But commuters and suburban motorists might not see much use in switching to a hydrogen-powered vehicle.
However, Wright said that’s not where the victory for hydrogen lies.
"People naturally sort of look through the limited lens of passenger transport, but that isn't the opportunity for hydrogen – it’s more at that heavy end,” she said.
That could be trucks, coaches or buses on difficult, long or steep routes.
"Transport companies are telling me that the weight of the battery reduces the payload, so then they have to ask the question, are we in the business of carrying payload or carrying batteries?”
Other issues like the power load and time necessary to charge a fleet of electric buses in one depot and the general time constraints of charging a battery are also sidestepped by hydrogen, which can refuel a vehicle in similar amount of time to filling a gas tank with diesel.
“There are lots of different infrastructure issues associated with EVs that are not mentioned,” Wright said.
She stressed that the best way forward required dovetailing the two nascent technologies together.
"No country in the world will electrify its entire economy, it's impractical and infeasible and insanely costly. There are fundamental operational barriers,” she said. “So we have to also use an alternative. The hydrogen proposition for every country, including New Zealand, is where is the opportunity to electrify and where is the opportunity to use hydrogen as part of decarbonisation of the economy.”
Getting the government on board
So if there’s something of a balance that needs to be struck between the different paths to decarbonisation, there will also need to be a firm hand on the rudder.
Wright said a hydrogen strategy and regulatory framework from central government would be important to assure overseas investors of New Zealand’s commitment and make sure safety standards were up to scratch.
As part of the Emissions Reduction Plan, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment are in the process of developing a hydrogen roadmap which will inform the New Zealand Energy Strategy, due to be finalised by the end of next year.
"Having a strategy will be helpful, because we tend to be quite insular in New Zealand in terms of thinking about the domestic situation,” Wright said.
“We often don't see the scale of how things are unfolding or the level of investment that’s happening globally ... But to me nothing speaks louder than the level of investment that the private sector are putting in to actually getting kit on the ground and placing orders internationally.”
MBIE has put just under $20 million into hydrogen investment via the Provincial Growth Fund, as well as a sizeable sum into research and development.
Wright said a coordinated approach between private and public sectors was what was needed.
"We need key organisations to get a backbone network up and running with the support of government,” she said. “There needs to be a couple of cornerstone projects and also some hydrogen hubs where you build the infrastructure for multiple purposes and get multiple parties capitalising on that investment.”
Wright said government help to achieve a closer cost parity between hydrogen and diesel or petrol could help bed in the technology.
"The internal combustion engine has enjoyed a century of rollout to build the infrastructure and so there does need to be investment in infrastructure in order for large-scale deployment,” she said.
She said policy positions like the polluter-pays mechanism seen in the landfill tax could help get that infrastructure rolled out and adequately funded.
“It’s a lever the government could use to bring about behavioural change."
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