April 27, 2023 • Paul Rodden • Season: 2023 • Episode: 209
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Welcome to The Hydrogen Podcast!
In episode 209, Germany announces their hydrogen version of The Magnificent Seven. Exxon’s ammonia goes to Singapore. And Tata embraces hydrogen for steel. I’ll go over all of this on today’s hydrogen podcast.
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Transcript:
Germany announces their hydrogen version of The Magnificent Seven. Exxon’s ammonia goes to Singapore. And Tata embraces hydrogen for steel. I’ll go over all of this on today’s hydrogen podcast.
So the big questions in the energy industry today are, how is hydrogen the primary driving force behind the evolution of energy? Where is capital being deployed for hydrogen projects globally? And where are the best investment opportunities for early adopters who recognize the importance of hydrogen? I will address the critical issues and give you the information you need to deploy capital. Those are the questions that will unlock the potential of hydrogen and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Paul Rodden, and welcome to the hydrogen podcast.
In an article in reuters.com energy firms in Germany join up for Sea to Inland hydrogen route. Seven companies in Germany’s energy sector said on Tuesday that they had formed an alliance to bring clean hydrogen from the seashore to centers of industrial consumption. Germany wants to build 10 gigawatts of green hydrogen capacity made from solar and wind power by 2030. And important massive volumes from overseas to help industries such as steelmaking or cement replace millions of tons of heavily carbon polluting grey hydrogen made with gas. The Alliance for the North to South hydrogen corridor focuses on the country’s only deep seaport of Wilhelmshaven on the North Sea, where production and imports will be arranged to eventually reach users via repurposed natural gas pipelines or newly built hydrogen pipelines. This According to a news release, a letter of intent had been signed an individual rolls cast.
Again according to the news release, the aim of the alliance is to create a network between Wilhelmshaven as a future location for hydrogen import and production with the industrial consumption centers in North Rhine Westphalia and Lower Saxony. The seven include the German arms of BP and Gasunie and Germany’s own Nowega, NWO, Salzgitter, Thyssengas, Uniper,. Together they cover commodities production storage, shipping and marketing as well as local crude steel production. Uniper and bp expect to hear this year about whether applications for some funding help from the European Commission for ammonia imports as a carrier substance for green hydrogen, and to produce hydrogen from offshore wind to find support. Gasunie and Thyssengas have also applied for some EU funding for a planned 400 Kilometer hydrogen link from Wilhelmshaven to the chemical industry region around cologne by 2028, NWO and Nowega will contribute parts of existing oil and gas pipeline grids. The Salzgitter Group for its part has laid foundations for transforming its main site at the same name, town to hydrogen based steel project under the project name SALCOS, for which it received 1 billion euros of German government funding last week. Okay, well, it’s been a while since we’ve talked about Germany on this show.
And really, because not a lot has been announced project wise in the country. But this is very interesting. So Germany is arguably the biggest user or expected user of hydrogen in the EU, with massive amounts of import deals, either signed or in the works. And so one of the biggest lingering questions has been how are they going to bring all of this hydrogen into the country? Well, this coalition of sorts, including BP, Gasunie, Nowega, NWO, Salzgitter, Thyssengas, and Uniper,, all have very specific strengths in order to bring this gas from the coast inland. And ultimately, what this does is set up Germany as a whole, as really a large hydrogen hub. There really one thing that they don’t have to worry about is where they’re going to get hydrogen, everyone in the world is looking to dump their hydrogen into Germany. But even with that being said, you have Unilper and BP in the group in order to make the green hydrogen that they’re using downstream with Salzgitter in steel production. So now you have your feedstock, your transportation, and your end user, all combined in this coalition to make this large central hub.
And this announcement is really one of the critical factors that’s been missing from Germany this whole time. And so now with these seven companies in unison, they can really start laying the foundation and the groundwork to start developing out that hydrogen economy in Germany. Next in an article and upstream online, Amanda Battersby writes Exxon Mobil and chemical in low carbon hydrogen Amanda writes us super major Exxon Mobil and Singapore’s Keppel teaming up to develop low carbon, hydrogen and ammonia for ailable commercial and industrial applications in the city state. In addition to being a hydrogen carrier and storage medium ammonia can be used directly as a carbon free fuel or broken down into carbon free hydrogen for power generation, as well as feedstock for refinery and petrochemical operations.
The memorandum of understanding between Exxon Mobil Asia Pacific and Keppel infrastructure follows the Singapore government’s launch last October of its national hydrogen strategy, which expects hydrogen to meet up to half of Singapore’s power needs by 2050. As part of this hydrogen strategy, the energy market authority and the maritime and Port Authority of Singapore issued an expression of interest in December for proposals to build own and operate low or zero carbon power generation and bunkering facilities on Singapore’s Jurong Island. Natural gas to date meets the lion’s share of the nation’s power generation demand. The Keppel Exxon Mobil collaboration has been formed to address the call to develop competitive solutions that can support drawn islands sustainability goals and Singapore’s hydrogen strategy. Keppel is also looking to use low carbon hydrogen for Singapore’s first hydrogen ready 600 megawatt combined cycle power plant, the Keppel Sakra Cogen plant is expected to operate with at least 30% hydrogen and will be capable of shifting to run entirely on hydrogen. currently under construction the power plant at Jurong Island is expected to be completed in the first half of 2026 and a quote from Irtiza Sayyed Exxon Mobil Asia Pacific president for low carbon solutions.
Exxon Mobil is pleased to work with Keppel to evaluate low carbon solutions as part of our goal to reduce our emissions and help others reduce theirs. This is an example of how we can provide critical scalable solutions to reduce co2 emissions in support of our companies and Singapore’s netzero ambitions. Meanwhile, given the strong demand for low carbon electricity and Singapore Keppel is performing a feasibility study into developing a power plant that could use ammonia directly as fuel. Exxon Mobil is advancing its world scale low carbon hydrogen facility at its integrated complex in Baytown, Texas in the US where ammonia will be produced.
This project that integrates carbon capture is expected to produce 1 billion cubic feet of low carbon hydrogen per day and is targeting a startup of 2027 or 2028. More than 98% of the associated carbon dioxide produced by the facility, or about 7 million tons per year is expected to be captured and permanently stored. And a quote from Cindy Lim Keppel infrastructure chief executive, deep decarbonisation of power generation and major industries is a key impetus for countries seeking pathways to net zero emissions. Globally, clean hydrogen is one of the most effective decarbonisation strategies, especially for hard to abate sectors like maritime and petrochemical. Okay, so a great collaboration between the city state of Singapore and Exxon Mobil, and a prime example of where green hydrogen really wouldn’t work. With Singapore being a city state, there’s no real acreage to build out any renewable infrastructure.
And this is also a great example of embracing that energy transition. In other words, looking at solutions, new solutions to help begin decarbonisation of your infrastructure. Now, as time passes, and economies of scale catch up to green hydrogen, and Singapore is able to continue to modify their gas turbines from natural gas to maybe an ammonia based setup to hydrogen, they can start to bring in electrolyzed hydrogen at a better price point than they could right now. And lastly, in an article in oil price.com Tsvetana Paraskova writes Tata Steel launches hydrogen trial for steel production. Tata Steel, the giant Indian steel maker on Monday said it started injecting hydrogen gas at a major plant and the world’s first test of such a large quantity of hydrogen gas continuously injected in a blast furnace. The trial part of Tata Steel’s plan to reduce coke consumption and carbon dioxide emissions is injecting record high volumes of hydrogen gas and is expected to continue for a few days. The trial involves the injection of hydrogen gas using 40% of the injection systems of the blast furnace at Jamshedpur Works. If successful, the use of hydrogen gas has the potential to reduce the coke rate by 10%, which would mean around seven to 10% reduction in co2 emissions per tonne of crude steel produced, and a quote from the company.
This endeavor aligned with Tata Steel’s vision of becoming net zero by 2045 is part of the larger pursuit of becoming industry leader in sustainability. steelmaking is one of the industries where emissions and the use of hydrocarbons are hard to abate as production cannot come from readily available renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power generation, industry players have vowed to reduce their emissions and are working to find alternatives. For example, Sweden based company h2 Green steel was founded in 2020 with the ambition to accelerate the decarbonisation of the steel industry using green hydrogen. The founder and largest shareholder of h2 Green steel is Vargas, which is also a co founder of Swedish battery maker Northvolt. h2 Green steel has its first green steel plant under development in Boden, northern Sweden, the plant is expected to produce 5 million tons of green steel manufactured with clean energy. By 2030. The green steel production in Boden will be powered by one of the world’s largest green hydrogen plants running on renewable electricity instead of emitting large amounts of co2 as in traditional steelmaking processes, the primary emission will be water. Okay, so another extremely large steel company is going to hydrogen. Now I covered the h2 green steel announcement a few weeks ago, and now Tata is coming on board with a 40% injection of hydrogen on their own.
Now, if you don’t know about Tata, and I bet a lot of people don’t. The company was founded in 1868. And one of its subsidiaries Tata Steel is the 10th largest steel producer in the world. And so what that means is that with this company embracing hydrogen also, it will filter out and the all of the other subsidiaries including Tata Motors, which owns Jaguar and Land Rover. And so if this test run is successful, and other subsidiaries of Tata really embrace hydrogen also, you can see a massive increase in hydrogen consumption in India.
All right, that’s it for me, everyone. If you have a second, I would really appreciate it. If you could leave a good review on whatever platform it is that you listen to Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google, YouTube, whatever it is, that would be a tremendous help to the show. And as always, if you ever have any feedback, you know, email me directly at info@thehydrogenpodcast.com. And as always, take care. Stay safe. I’ll talk to you later.
Hey, this is Paul. I hope you liked this podcast. If you did and want to hear more. I’d appreciate it if you would either subscribe to this channel on YouTube, or connect with your favorite platform through my website at www.thehydrogenpodcast.com. Thanks for listening. I very much appreciate it. Have a great day.
