'Hydrogen plays a leading role in energy transition'

Now that the government has drawn up concrete climate plans and goals, the energy transition in the Netherlands has been accelerated. Hydrogen plays a leading role in the transition to a sustainable energy supply, also in the built environment, says Ad van Wijk, sustainable energy entrepreneur and part-time Professor of Future Energy Systems at TU Delft.

By: Dimitri Reijerman

During the upcoming Bits, Bricks & Behavior conference program on November 5, Ad van Wijk will explain his vision on the role of hydrogen for, among other things, space heating. But the professor is crystal clear about one thing: in his view, hydrogen has a number of advantages over (green) electricity. But you need both. He explains: “Why is hydrogen important in the energy system? The short answer: it is an energy carrier, just like electricity, but it is much cheaper to transport. Pumping hydrogen through a pipeline is cheaper than electricity through a cable. And you can store a much larger volume of energy cheaply. That is very important for seasonal storage.”

It is precisely the possibilities for seasonal storage that makes hydrogen a big plus for the built environment - a sector for which a separate 'climate table' was set up during the preparation of the Dutch climate plans -: “We simply use hydrogen in the built environment for our heating in the winter. much more natural gas than in summer. That is already a challenge: we pump the same amount of natural gas from the earth every hour of the day. That is why we store natural gas in large salt domes, especially in the summer, so that we can use it in the winter.”

And according to Van Wijk, this existing buffering offers excellent opportunities for the energy transition: “If you work exclusively with electric heat pumps, you will need much more power in the winter. How do you solve that? The wind blows a little more in winter, but the yield from solar energy is much less during that period. Batteries are currently only good for day/night storage, or maybe up to a week. Hydrogen storage in salt domes is a much cheaper solution for seasonal storage. You can store about 6,000 tons of hydrogen in a salt dome, which is approximately equal to 17 million home batteries of 14kWh each. An installation at a salt dome costs about 100 million euros, but those batteries cost 24 billion euros. Seasonal storage with hydrogen is therefore much cheaper.”

'Combine electricity and hydrogen'

But according to the hydrogen expert, there are more advantages, especially by combining electricity and hydrogen in a smart way. This can be particularly useful in old city centers: “An average house has a connection to the gas network and a connection to the electricity network. The connection average is 3kW for electricity and 30kW for natural gas. The natural gas network is already in place and can be used for hydrogen almost without any problems. If you are talking about accelerating the energy transition, it is also wise to produce heat during peak demand with a different gas that does not contain CO2. Consider a hybrid heat pump/hydrogen boiler solution. The base load is done on electricity with the heat pump. If it is very cold, use the hydrogen boiler. This means that it will be less necessary to massively upgrade the electricity grid.”

Despite the potential benefits of hydrogen, it is essential for the sustainability goals towards 2030 (49% less CO2 emissions compared to 1990) and 2050 (a CO2 reduction of 95 percent) that hydrogen production itself is made green. Van Wijk: “We already use hydrogen a lot in chemistry and petrochemicals. But that is gray hydrogen, extracted from natural gas. In the future you want to make hydrogen without CO2 emissions. You can capture the CO2 and store it underground in an empty gas field. Then you have blue hydrogen. Ultimately, you want to generate green hydrogen from sustainable sources. The largest contribution will have to be achieved by producing hydrogen from solar and wind electricity.”

However, we should not expect that we will be able to satisfy our current energy hunger with all Dutch sustainability plans, says the professor: “In the Netherlands we cannot meet our entire energy demand by generating it sustainably ourselves. Our country is too small for that. So we have to import a lot of sustainable energy. For example, by building a lot of sun and wind in the Sahara or Australia, making hydrogen production relatively cheap. This energy can be transported by pipeline or transported as liquid hydrogen by ship. This is much cheaper than if you transport it in the form of electricity via cables.”

He continues: “If you want to be completely independent, you have to accept that we will be installing many more solar panels and wind turbines on land and that energy will cost much more. But the mines in Limburg also closed because importing coal from South Africa turned out to be cheaper.”

Climate agreement: positively and negatively charged

Van Wijk says he is certainly not dissatisfied with the government's plans to transform the fossil-oriented Netherlands into a forerunner in green energy in a few decades: “Hydrogen is mentioned in the climate agreement. It has moved up the agenda, but not yet at the level where it needs to be. In the plan for the built environment I read that hydrogen will only be available after 2030, which is too late.” And he mentions another point of criticism: “Politicians are now looking very much within Dutch borders. There is not a single paragraph about what is happening outside our country. That can be called short-sighted.”

He therefore argues for a leap forward, partly due to the good starting position of our country, a plea that FHI was previously able to record from Ruud Koornstra during WoTS 2018. According to the professor, capacity will quickly become available due to the accelerated phasing out of natural gas extraction. the pipeline network, the gas roundabout will provide opportunities for importing and exporting hydrogen and the construction of offshore wind farms will be able to boost the production of green hydrogen.

And, not unimportant, almost all the necessary technology is proven and readily available: “Electrolysers and salt domes for the production and storage of hydrogen have been around for decades. That is nothing new, just like the liquefaction of hydrogen. With that we shoot our rockets into the air. The problem is that it is a systemic change. That only works if the national government has strong control over how we are going to do this.”

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Download here's the handout of Ad van Wijk's presentation