Fraunhofer: Green Hydrogen Imports Not as Easy as You Think [Gastransitions]

The German government has the ambition to become the world-leading “green hydrogen” nation, in terms of technology, but its “hydrogen strategy” has one weak link: it is based to a large extent on hydrogen imports. Germany has far too little solar and wind resources to produce the amounts of hydrogen it needs for its decarbonisation targets.

Hence, Germany is pursuing “hydrogen partnerships” in various countries in the world that do have plenty of solar and wind power. To mention just one example, the Germans are eyeing a project with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) which would see the central African country provide hydropower capacity to produce green hydrogen for export to Germany.

The hope of Germany and other EU countries, like the Netherlands, is that a global market in green hydrogen will develop similar to today’s oil and gas markets. However, it is not very clear yet what it will take to make this happen. A similar ambitious German plan to build large-scale solar plants in North Africa that would produce green electricity for export to Europe, Desertec, did not materialise, for various reasons. One important reason: countries like Morocco which did manage to build the solar parks need the power for their own economies.

Complexity

The well-known German Fraunhofer Institute has now produced a “policy brief” exploring the challenges of hydrogen imports for Germany: Opportunities and challenges when importing green hydrogen and synthesis products. It is mostly a theoretical exercise that discusses the multiple factors that will need to be taken into account for a successful international hydrogen market to develop. From this preliminary analysis Fraunhofer concludes that “most studies underestimate the complexity of green hydrogen imports” and that much still needs to be done to make hydrogen market possible.

As the head of the Competence Center Energy Technology and Energy Systems at Fraunhofer ISI, Prof. Martin Wietschel, who coordinates all the research conducted on the topic of hydrogen, notes: “At present, too little is understood about importing green hydrogen in all its complexity, and, as a result, the future challenges and tasks to be solved are partially underestimated. This is why a comprehensive analysis should be made of possible hydrogen imports and their consequences, to which we want to contribute with our policy brief”…