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[Music]
the next talk will be held by hanberg
it's about hydrogen beyond the hype
hanur is a journalist and he wrote about
the Technologies um um that we have and
that will help us um to tackle the
problem of climate change over the next
years and without further Ado uh H over
thank you
Han yeah hello um yeah I said I today I
want to talk about uh hydrogen and how
it may be used as a solution to our
emissions problems so there is a
currently a lot of interest in hydrogen
as a climate solution and you could also
say there's a lot of hype
um now uh if you follow this space a bit
longer then maybe this sounds familiar
because like the idea of a something
like a hydrogen economy that that b goes
back to the 70s like where I wasn't even
born but uh and then again it kind of
became quite popular in the early 2000s
uh particularly in the US uh there was a
push to to build cars that drive with
hydrogen um but ultimately uh not much
came out of those previous instances of
hydrogen hype to say but um it looks
currently that this time this may be a
bit different that this may be a bit
more real than these previous inst es
where hydrogen was discussed as a
solution
so right now particularly in the EU and
also in Germany there's uh from the
political side a very strong push in
that direction the EU published a
hydrogen road map a while ago and also
Germany has its own strategy for
hydrogen
deployment um and I guess this is a
number that just uh shows that this is
that this is serious like the EU has
plans to invest uh 140 billion euro into
hydrogen projects within the next couple
of years so that's that that's quite
quite a large sum that that's going into
this
space um and hydrogen is interesting
because it it can help us bring down
emissions in sectors that are the
so-called hard to decarbon sectors which
basically means it's there's no easy
solution to to make these sectors
climate neutral or reduce the emissions
substantially um but before we talk
about the future and how hydrogen may
help us being a climate solution we we
should talk a bit about how hydrogen is
used today and because there already is
a a quite large industry that is using
hydrogen um and actually that's quite a
dirty industry um so uh right now
hydrogen is usually made from fossil
fuels the the most relevant method to do
that is process called steam methane
reforming methane is the main ingredient
of natural gas or you could also say
fossil gas uh and there's also some
hydrogen that is made from coal with a
process that's called coal
gasification and this uh production of
hydrogen today is responsible for around
2% of the CO2 emissions worldwide so
it's I mean it's not not huge but it's
quite substantial so so right now
hydrogen is more of a climate problem
than a climate
solution um and the uh the majority of
hydrogen is used in two sectors one is
ammonia production and ammonia is a an
important ingredi for fertilizers so
that is basically used to grow our food
uh and the other one is is removal of
sulfur within oil refineries uh which is
of course hopefully something that in
the future we will get rid of because we
want to get rid of fossil fuels and
therefore there shouldn't be any oil
refineries anymore but that's like the
situation today and these are uh uh
everything else is not very relevant
these two sectors consume basically
almost all of the hydrogen that is
produced
today uh but how could this change in
the future like how could hydrogen
become a climate
solution uh the uh what we want to get
is so-called green hydrogen where
there's a technology called electrolysis
which is basically we use electricity
and that electricity of course ideally
should come from solar or wind or other
clean sources of electricity and we can
use that to to take water and then we
split the water into oxygen and
hydrogen um so the picture you can see
here that is in an
electroly in in prau that is north of
Berlin at a company called anat Tru
that's already be uh installed about a
decade
ago um but overall hydrogen from
electrolysis that only exists in very
small scales today so it's less than a
per of the global hydrogen production
comes from this uh this direct
electrolysis um yeah so okay but in the
future hopefully this will be more and
as we heard there there is quite some
investment into this so what what can we
do with this hydrogen and what should we
do with this
hydrogen so one thing that is very
important to keep in mind here is that
when we do something like we use
electricity to split up water so we're
converting the electric energy into into
a chemical energy in the hydrogen but
every conversion of energy introduces
losses we lose some of the energy as
heat that goes into the at atmosphere
so if we can we want to avoid this so uh
so the the thing to keep in mind here is
that whenever we can use electricity
directly without this conversion into
hydrogen and maybe then even back into
electricity when we use something like a
fuel cell then it's likely better to use
the electricity directly so uh one thing
I really want to emphasiz here is that
this is not about cars like here you can
see this a few fuel cell Cur but this is
uh this is basically like a lot of
people are seem to be very excited about
fuel cell cures but uh basically most
experts agree that this is not going to
happen and the reason is simply that
that you have this efficiency loss when
you when you have a car with a fuel cell
then you first convert electricity into
hydrogen and then you convert it back
into electricity and the losses are much
bigger than when you use a battery so
and uh I I kind of noticed that whenever
I write something an article about
hydrogen then in the and I didn't write
anything about cars but in the comment
section there will always be a
discussion about hydrogen for cars so so
I really want to empathize that that
this is not what this is about and this
is not uh certainly not where this is
going in the
future um but there are areas where it's
not easily possible to use electricity
or where it's even even just
impossible um and their hydrogen can
play a role and one very important
sector is the production of Steel so uh
steel today uh so when you produce steel
what you have is is iron ore and that is
on a chemical level mostly iron
oxide so you you have something which is
a a reduction process which means means
you you have uh you have iron with uh
with oxygen and you need to get this
oxygen out and how you do this today is
that you use coal and the steel industry
is currently responsible for around 8%
of the worldwide CO2 emissions so that's
that's quite big and these emissions
aren't Just Energy emissions but these
are emissions from this chemical
reduction
process and uh several companies are
currently working on something that is
called direct reduced iron that can be
used with hydrogen so this is a
technology that already exists today but
today it's usually usually using natural
gas so it's not really a solution if you
do it with natural gas but you can
switch that natural gas for hydrogen and
then use hydrogen instead of coal to
produce steel um the most advanced uh
project is a company in Sweden ssab that
they have announced that they want to
completely switch to that process within
the next couple of decades but there are
a number of companies who are working on
this so
yeah um another sector where hydrogen
can be uh an interesting option is is
the whole sector of chemicals and
particularly Plastics so I mean Plastics
today they are usually made from oil
sometimes also from natural gas but it's
all fossil fuels um and one thing that
could be done is that you can use
hydrogen and then you need also CO2 and
you can turn this into methanol and then
you can use methanol as a basis for all
kinds of chemical processes and can
produce something like Plastics but also
other chemicals and that could be a
replacement for the petrochemical
industry now um
a challenge here is that you need CO2
for this and this uh um there you need
to be careful what what what these uh
projects that are trying to do this what
exactly they do because you could of
course say okay we have too much CO2 we
can go to the next Coal Power Plant and
then we get the CO2 from their emissions
and then we make methanol from this but
then you you're at the end whatever
you're producing will likely end up in
an incinerator and then you have the CO2
emissions again and also you really
don't want to do something that creates
an incentive to keep a Coal Power Plant
running and the alternative is to you
could filter the CO2 out of the air
which is a technology called direct air
capture but that uh that needs a lot of
energy that uh basically needs a not lot
of electricity so that this this road to
use hydrogen for chemicals it can be
done but it needs a lot of energy so and
it's so that makes it quite
expensive yeah and other interesting
sector for hydrogen is the production of
ammonia as I said earlier ammonia is is
already made from hydrogen today it's
ammonia is made from fossil hydrogen and
then you also need nitrogen but nitrogen
is the main ingredient of the air around
us so so we have plenty of that um so
the it's a very obvious step to say okay
this ammonia production today we should
switch that from fossil hydrogen to
Green
hydrogen um but also we uh it is
discussed whether ammonia could be used
as a fuel for example and one sector
that's particularly looking at that is
uh the shipping industry like
particularly large container ships
there's uh currently no really good
solution for them to make them run on
renewable energy but uh ammonia is
discussed as one option
and it has the advantage over other
things like methanol methanol you could
also use in a ship but then you have
this problem where do you get the CO2
from and that if you want to get the CO2
from the air it needs a lot of energy
and and with ammonia you don't really
have that problem because you don't need
a carbon atom in it that I put you the
chemical formulas here because ammonia
is basically hydrogen and
nitrogen uh so that's a an interesting
option um and there are plenty of other
things where hydrogen could play a role
uh one is Aviation you may have heard
that uh last year there was an
announcement by uh by airus that they
want to develop a hydrogen powered
planes
es up to medium distances but it's
probably needed because there's really
no and of course we you can reduce
Aviation but uh there probably still
will be some need for
Avi so yeah um hydrogen may be an option
in shipping but it may also be like for
the smaller ships they will probably be
electric and as I said earlier for the
larger particularly container ships they
it may that they will use ammonia and
it's not clear whether there will be an
in between space to use hydrogen
directly
process but it seems right now that
um um it seems that
this uh it seems right now that this is
uh may also go go into the uh electric
and Battery Direction so it's not clear
whether this is going to happen then you
can do all this what is uh summarized
under this name e fuels which means
basically you're doing something like
diesel or kerosene and make it out of
hydrogen but that you have a similar
problem to what I earlier mentioned with
the methanol that you need CO2 and that
all of this is very inefficient and so
it's very expensive so very likely you
will only use use this in sectors where
you don't have an alternative which uh
is primarily longdistance
Aviation um then also you can use
hydrogen for heating both in industrial
applications and also to heat your
houses and flats but it's questionable
whether this is a good idea because
almost always you can use electricity
directly there and that is more
efficient then there's also the the
whole discussion about electricity
storage like you could use you could use
excess renewable energy when you have
too much uh electricity and use that to
produce hydrogen and then particularly
in winter when we have situation uh
which where maybe there's not a lot of
wind and not a lot of sun and then you
need extra electricity for uh and then
you could use the hydrogen to produce
electricity uh the the problem with that
is that this is also very expensive
particularly because it kind of assumes
that you have Electro Reser produce the
hydrogen but you're not running it all
the time you're only running it when you
have excessed electricity so this will
likely be needed because we need some
electricity storage options particularly
long-term storage but it's also
something where you probably want to
look at Alternatives whenever you can
and and use these before you use this
expensive
option um yeah uh
one thing that that is quite important
is to to realize that the scale of this
is enormous so right now we have almost
no green hydrogen and we we need to grow
this to to massive sizes and just some
numbers to to get an idea about that
these numbers are mostly from this
German hydrogen strategy so right now
there's 55 5 terawatt hours of hydrogen
used per year in
Germany um that is mostly for ammonia
and for
refineries uh but if we want to convert
steel into to use hydrogen then this uh
it's projected then in 2050 we will need
something like 80 terawatt hours and the
whole renewable electricity production
in Germany last year u in 2019 the last
year where we have the numbers already
was
251 and now if you assume we add the I
don't know we use it for ammonia
production for shipping and then we use
it for the chemical industry and then we
also have some losses uh today they are
around 20% if we have better technology
maybe better electris will bring this
down to 10% losses but all in all uh
there there will be a huge amounts of
electricity needed to produce all that
hydrogen and likely more electricity
than what we use in electricity
today
um so we need a lot more renewable
electricity I mean this this is a very
key message and and also uh I find it
some a bit funny when you have
politicians particularly from the more
conservative Spectrum when they say yeah
hydrogen is this great climate solution
but then they are pushing back on
extending wind energy and it doesn't
really match like if we want to go that
hydrogen route and I think we we have to
we will just need a lot more renewable
electricity
um but also for a country like Germany
where it's just it's relatively dense
and space is limited then this probably
means that we there will be a need to
import
hydrogen and th this brings up an
interesting question because hydrogen is
actually quite difficult to transport if
you want to transport it via a ship you
have to first compress it because it's
not very dense uh and that needs extra
energy so interesting question becomes
if you want really want to import
hydrogen or if you want to import
something that is made from hydrogen uh
and one uh thing again is is you could
say maybe we produce ammonia somewhere
else where there's a lot of renewable
electricity and then import the
ammonia uh and we already need ammonia
for the fertilizer production so this
may be a better
option and uh one thing here that I I
find uh
kind of captures this very well is that
if you have a molecule of ammonia that
contains more hydrogen than actually a
molecule of hydrogen so if you have it
in its its natural state without when
it's not compressed or something then
then ammonia is is just a more dense
carrier of hydrogen than hydrogen
itself um yeah one thing of course also
that played a role here is costs um
because uh right now uh if you produce
hydrogen in a green in a clean way then
this is more expensive than fossil
fuel-based hydrogen which is the reason
why it's not made very often
today and when we want cheaper green
hydrogen we need basically two things we
need cheap renewable energy and that is
I mean you probably know that that solar
power and wind energy already is is
massively cheaper than it used to be a
few years ago and there's still
potential that it gets even cheaper so I
I'm not not very worried about that but
the other side is we need cheap
electrolysers like these basically these
machines that turn water into
hydrogen
and the the key here is that technology
gets cheaper at scale right so if solar
power got cheap because we just build
lots of it and then yeah comp processes
can be optimized
um and I I think really uh wind and
solar is is the thing to look at here
because that is kind of the success
story that that one may build upon
because they they became cheap basically
because some countries started to
install solar energy and wind energy uh
at a time where they were not
competitive in prices so uh yes that
means
this moneyers or maybe indirectly I mean
in Germany we have this renewable energy
law where you pay it with your
electricity prices but someone has to
pay that but uh I think uh this is
really the key one of the things that
needs to happen next when we want to go
in that hydrogen direction that uh you
just need to build up these electr
reserves you need to to install them and
if you install them in large quantities
then the prices will go
down yeah and uh last I want to talk a
bit about who is currently interested in
this space particularly from the
industry and how this discussion is
going sometimes so uh one of the reasons
why why this discussion is so big right
now is that actually the natural gas
industry is heavily lobbying this space
and they are trying to influence the
discussion so there are several
organizations that are mostly made of of
companies from the natural gas industry
that are trying to to to form this
discussion and I mean for one Today
hydrogen production is usually based on
natural gas so naturally they will say
okay uh we can sell you the hydrogen
today it's fossil hydrogen but uh and
that is something to be on the lookout
for like today if someone says yeah we
we do this project with hydrogen I don't
know we use it to power a train or
whatever um
then very often it is that they are not
using green hydrogen but they are using
fossil hydrogen also like there are a
few hydrogen gas stations in Germany for
example and they're also like what you
can buy there is fossil
hydrogen um and I mean obviously that
that is not something that makes sense
as a climate solution uh then there's
also there two ideas how the industry
thinks that they could make a cleaner
hydrogen but still based on on natural
gas uh one of these options which they
call blue hydrogen is that you you you
still make the the hydrogen like you did
before with this steam methane reforming
but you add CCS which stands for carbon
capture and storage which means you're
trying to to take these CO2 emissions
and then store them in underground
somewhere um and another Pro is called
methane pusis where you're chemically
splitting up the methane into hydrogen
and pure carbon um so both of these
processes likely won't mean that you
will have zero emissions uh one reason
for that is that even uh drilling for
natural
gas um even drilling for natural gas and
transporting it you will have leaks in
pipelines and the the natural gas itself
is the greenhouse gas um the other uh
problem with that is in CCS you usually
don't capture all the emissions but uh
and the more you capture the more
expensive it becomes so you may have a
situation where you either have
something that is very expensive or
something that is not much better than
the fossil option you had
before um yeah uh another thing you can
observe right now a lot is that the
natural gas industry is pushing for
hydrogen in Residential Heating so they
will tell you yeah we we can right now a
lot
of houses and flats they they use gas
boilers for heating and they want to
switch that to hydrogen in future maybe
with an intermediate step of having some
mixing in of
hydrogen um from from an efficiency
point of view this does not make a lot
of sense and the reason for that is that
just you can use a heat pump with
electricity and that is just extremely
efficient so it's very likely that the
heat pump will will cover most of the
heating needs in Residential Heating in
the
future um but so why are they so focused
on this Residential Heating and I think
that the reason is that is this that
there's there's a huge natural gas grid
and that consists of very different
things like you have this huge pipes
this on on the left side here is the oal
pipeline which is currently built in
Brandenburg but you also have these all
these smaller pipes that go into
people's homes so the natural gas grid
is just a huge piece of
infrastructure
and if the world gets serious about
climate change and we really massively
reduce emissions then most of this
natural gas grid just becomes worthless
so you you kind of get the idea that if
you own such a grip then you you're
maybe not comfortable with that maybe
you you're wondering what can I do with
this in the future uh so I I think that
is where this this push for Residential
Heating with hydrogen comes
from and the industry basically hopes
that they can repr propose the natural
gas grid for
hydrogen and I mean don't get me wrong
this is it's generally a good idea like
I mean it needs some changes in the
technology because hydrogen is kind of
different from the methane that's
usually used in natural gas but it makes
sense to use existing infrastructure
when when you need it but
uh but if you look at a scenario which I
think is a likely scenario where you're
primarily using hydro hydrogen in
Industry that you will not have a large
grid you will not have a National Grid
and you will definitely not have a grid
that goes into residential areas and
into people people's home you will much
more likely have a smaller grid where
you have a hydrogen production facility
maybe close to some renewable energy
production and then maybe it's
transported to a steel plant and maybe
to a chemical plant but there's no need
for for this large grid that we have
today so in all likelihood um um even if
we you if you use hydrogen wisely then a
lot of the natural gas grid Will Will
just become obsolete
yeah um yeah so yeah to summarize um it
looks like there's a hydrogen Boom
coming and I think this is really good
news because we will need it in some
areas but the hydrogen should be used
wisely and likely only in sectors where
we don't have a better
alternative um and also a quick
announcement uh tonight I I will do a
Q&A session in the uh like in
cooporation with heckers against against
climate change uh where we can discuss
this or also other questions around how
can we move the whole industry to
climate neutral Technologies uh a link
to a big blue button is in the deok
wiki um yeah so that was the talk and I
think now we have some time for
questions yeah thank you very much it
was really interesting and uh I think it
showed us in a nutshell that um
everything is once more much more
complicated and complex than uh some
people would like it to
be um yes we do already have some
questions in the P if you go to the
schedule you find the um the questions
pad in on the detail page of this talk
uh you can still enter questions there
um let's start with one pretty
interesting one um is already the claim
of natural gas not some kind of grain
washing um yeah I mean I agree with that
I I'm also struggling what terminology
to use there I mean the natural gas it
always sounds like natural and nice and
but it it's the term that is used right
I mean I sometimes use fossil gas but uh
it's it's a bit difficult when you have
an established terminology that that
already pushes in same direction but I I
think also in more General there it is a
problem that that gas has quite a
positive reputation because it was for a
long time it was pushed as this it's
better than coal it's better than oil uh
where today we can say may okay maybe
that's true but that's not good enough
so yeah but I agree natural gas is a
problematic
term um there's a question uh I think
you you already uh scratched the topic
but probably you have uh one or two more
sentences on the efficacy of hydrogen
powered houses like uh a little hydrogen
power plant for small houses uh
even um so I currently don't have a
number on top of my head it's just um if
you're like you're I I mean you already
have a electricity GD so you already
have electricity in your home
um when when it's about heating you can
use a heat pump which is your basically
using the energy from from either
outside or underground so you have a
more than 100% efficiency with a heat
pump um I cannot put an exact number on
this but but there's a massive
difference and
yeah um there's one long one I think I
would just read it out um
um a lot of political actors try to push
hydrogen for cars as competition to BS
uh uh with a um um uh word
of no techy ofen height yeah sorry uh
some of them even suggest using it uh to
keep the combustion engine alive are
those people just misinformed or is
there a deeper agenda behind this
uh okay that's um yeah I so I mean one
thing is that hydrogen cars are not
combustion engines like they're using
fuel cells they are basically also
electric cars they are just converting
hydrogen into electricity you in theory
you could build a car with a combustion
hydrogen engine but nobody's doing that
like that doesn't exist it's that's Pure
Fantasy uh
the I think yeah I mean I guess I mean
this is a I think this is a discussion
that's a lot happening in Germany uh
because there's this impression that we
have a large car industry and that is
has a lot of knowledge in in combustion
engines and there's also the other
discussion about e fuels all of that is
just it's not plausible from efficiency
and and just the amount of electricity
you would need to to pull that off
and I I mean one one thing to keep in
mind here is that uh uh we will need a
lot of electricity in the future if we
want to go to this Tri neutral
technology and we just cannot afford to
add additional inefficiency in there uh
but I also think this this this
technology often High discussion this
this will go away in a few years
like I I know it like like this seems
right now for me this is also something
where politicians from the conservative
and the so-called Liberal Party try to
set some Counterpoint where they they
have their climate policy that's
different from the other but
yeah um do you think the the whole
discussion would benefit
from um more uh information more um
uh yeah off clearing for for all the
people that um that we get to more used
to all those Technologies um early on in
our
lives yeah I mean it's what I'm trying
right I mean I right about these things
I give to talk uh yeah of course like
more informed I I hope more informed
discussion is good I mean I I feel like
very often this but this car discussion
is is
having a very limited perspective where
people start to get uh enraged about
lithium mining but then they never talk
about oil Mining and yeah
um yeah yeah yeah oh we got some more
questions in the p and people are
already typing so
yeah um uh what would be something that
you would if you had a wish what would
that be for the sector I I think we
should start to build these
electrolyzers like that is the next step
that needs to happen and in in at large
scales like there was a few days ago a
company from Denmark announced that they
want to build one gwatt of electrolyzer
capacity in the Netherlands and this is
the kind of project I would like to see
right
now uh I'm not sure if I understand the
question correctly but probably we can
work this together here um when to use
uh battery versus hydrogen on offgrid
mbls or why use hydrogen for
longdistance
flights um okay so it's kind of medium
distance flights the problem is a
battery is just too heavy for a long for
a flight that goes more than maybe 100
kilometers so so there are some efforts
to to start battery power flights uh but
they will likely be small and short
distance so you have more density with
hydrogen than a battery but it's still
less density than than normal
fuel so we just have a problem in weight
for this particular means of movement
yeah so you just cannot transport the
battery on a longdistance flight because
it's too heavy
then which could possibly uh change when
Battery Technology evolves and um yeah
but there are limits like it even if you
add even if you think about tenfold
increase in efficiency that still
wouldn't get you across the
Atlantic so
okay yeah I but but even the hydrogen
plane wouldn't get you across the
Atlantic so um so this is really a
challenging sector I I wrote a very long
article about it last year it
yeah so um I I think this this point in
there are limits is the thing that
should probably uh reach um people uh in
politics and wherever there are um um
that are currently um moving the the
discussion um in in particular
particular um uh directions
yeah so thank you very much for your
work there yeah if you look at the
aviation thing you
you may almost must come to the
conclusion that there's no technology
where you can just replace the current
planes and then go on like before
because you can use e fuels but the the
scale is just enormous like there's a
projection that we would use more
electricity than all the electricity
that's produced today just to power
planes and I just don't think that this
is plausible so we need to talk about
that in this very difficult sectors we
also need to talk about
reduction there's one last question
coming in um I would just uh wait for
whoever is writing to to finish the
sentence um maybe the reminder for the
self-organized session uh in the evening
um have a look there uh hop in and talk
to Hano uh I think this is a really
really a great topic to to keep on uh
our
Focus
um
yeah yeah probably typing on typing
[Laughter]
on stopping mid
sentence uh Hannah how did you uh how
did you choose this topic for you why
did you
you get there um so one thing is that I
just noticed that whenever I I write
about hydrogen right now it it there's a
lot of interest so it seems It's
currently just a topic people want to
talk about so yeah and nobody else um uh
hit the topic in in that
detail um yeah the question is if still
steam so water vapor um emissions and
large Heights uh are those um are they
also um climate efficient uh yeah so so
if you use hydrogen in aviation that's a
problem um I mean we're talking about
technology that doesn't exist yet maybe
it's possible to somehow capture that
and like to just transport the water
with the plane but uh a big there is
also that there's a lot of uncertainty
like there's a report from some research
EU research project where they say these
the emissions from Aviation are between
three and
7% like so we have a 4% like we have
more than 100% uh uncertainty and that
is because we really don't know how big
these water vapor emissions are they are
very hard to model so one thing there is
yeah they exist they are a problem but
we don't know how big the problem is
H okay so in short we flooded
too uh okay thank you very much Hano um
we're unfortunately uh out of time um
yes uh the reminder for the self
organized session in the evening to go a
bit more in depth on this topic and uh
to all your articles you're writing uh
about it uh yeah go to my web page and
they are linked from there all most of
them are German so yeah but I can we
have the L and can put the here's the
link yeah yes okay so um thank you again
and um have a a wonderful de yeah
thanks
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