OCEAN ENERGY RESOURCES
2 | 2021
On top of that, the majority of Scandinavian countries do not have such a strong industrial cluster as we do here in the Netherlands or in Germany. Scandinavians have been taught sustainability from an early age. Their sense of social justice is also far more developed than ours. Denmark, for example, has no petrochemicals. They only need energy for housing. Denmark also started producing wind energy and building heat networks as well as generating energy from biomass and the production of biogas at a much earlier stage. Politicians in Denmark are focused on action while The Hague adheres to the celebrated Dutch polder model.”
In other words: as long as the entire electrical system has not been completely greened, the level of CO2 reduction is relatively small. Only when the electrical grid has been completely greened, and there is power left over, will green hydrogen really start to bring about a CO2 reduction. I expect this to be the case by around 2030. That is not to say that green hydrogen should be quickly scaled up to 1 GW. Blue hydrogen is able to bring about an immediate reduction in CO2 for the simple reason that the CO2 in question is stored underground. It is a quicker way to achieve the CO2 reduction targets for 2030. Green hydrogen alone is simply not enough.”
TNO was one of the founders of H-vision. Decarbonising gas creates a clean process without CO2 emissions. Why is it better to capture CO2 in a central hydrogen factory, than in existing factories?
Infrastructure and storage capacity are needed to get the intended hydrogen economy going. That looks to be a very costly venture.
“We are very excited about the possibilities of blue hydrogen, and capturing CO2 in hydrogen factories. At present, it is the cheapest way to produce low-carbon hydrogen, when compared to green hydrogen. Above all, it is the best way to quickly achieve large steps in the volume of hydrogen you can bring to the market, with a low CO2 footprint. Also important are the volumes of CO2 reduction you can achieve. In hydrogen factories, we will soon be reaching almost 2 ½ megatons of CO2 per year. Green hydrogen only starts reducing CO2 when that amount of hydrogen takes the place of other forms of grey hydrogen.
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“Two billion euros have already been reserved for the Porthos project for CO2 capture and storage at sea. It may sound like a lot of money, but assuming that in the future, hydrogen factories will be able to capture almost 2 ½ megatons of CO2 a year, it is important to look at how much we are actually spending per tonne of CO2. These figures make the amount spent per tonne of CO2 considerably lower. Incidentally, the subsidy is only awarded on top of the ETS price (EU Emission Trading Scheme) for CO2. In real figures, if the capture and storage of CO2 costs around 80 euros per tonne of CO2, if the CO2 price within the ETS system is 50 euros per tonne, then the industry
