Decarbonisation Technology - November 2021

First principles of energy transition - Part 2 Part 2 focuses on the application of hydrogen as a potential solution, then reviews Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions

Jean-Gaël Le Floc’h, Mel Larson, Darren York and Robert Ohmes Becht

Energy transition: where do we go from here? In part one of this two-part series, we examined the sheer magnitude of the energy transition change and how it will impact every part of our lives and economies. From there, we outlined some of the unintended consequences as well as the growth and expansion requirements within metals extraction, battery production, and overall electrical infrastructure to meet the shift away from traditional fossil fuels for transportation and power usage. In part two, we will focus on the application of hydrogen as a potential solution, along with the associated challenges, and review Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions to understand what these mean for the energy industry and front-line consumer. Finally, we will close this series with some focal areas that the energy providers should consider as they develop their strategic, tactical, and operational plans to achieve their defined strategy. Hydrogen: the gas that solves all our problems? In these early days of energy transition, hydrogen has emerged as a lead option for addressing decarbonisation, as it is a key building block and has many diverse applications within the energy sector. Currently, most hydrogen is produced by steam methane reforming or partial oxidation of natural gas, refinery off-gases, LPG, and light naphtha (C 5 s and C 6 s). Both processes produce carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide that is sent to the atmosphere, resulting in these types of hydrogen being labelled as grey hydrogen. These production methods are being replaced by multiple alternatives that meet GHG emission reduction targets. Presently, the bulk of hydrogen produced is used in the industrial sector, with a key consumer being refiners who utilise hydrogen to remove

Blue H 2

Turquoise H 2 Green H 2

Pink H 2

Hydrogen by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen via electrolysis, and powering electrolysis by renewable electricity sources, such as wind or solar

Use of traditional hydrogen production

Hydrogen produced through methane pyrolysis to produce hydrogen gas and solid carbon

Hydrogen produced by electrolysis, but powered

technologies, but installing carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology to capture and store the GHGs

by nuclear generated electricity

sulphur and nitrogen and increase the qualities of transportation fuels while also converting heavy hydrocarbons to more valuable products. The future vision is to utilise hydrogen in alternate ways – as a direct transportation fuel, as a source for heating and cooking, as a way to produce ‘green’ transportation fuels, and as a way to store energy as well as generate electricity. While hydrogen does have a key advantage that, when it is combusted, it does not produce carbon- based emissions (only water), hydrogen itself does have several challenges. For the sake of brevity, the use of hydrogen for fuel cells is reserved for a future discussion. Instead, we will focus on simple replacement of natural gas as a source of energy via combustion for electricity generation, cooking, and home heating uses. One challenge is that the energy density of hydrogen on a mass basis is quite high but is one-third of natural gas heat value on a volume basis (~975 BTU/scf for typical natural gas and 273 BTU/scf for hydrogen). To demonstrate, let us take a typical natural gas pipeline that supplies