THE MAGAZINE FOR THE FUTURE BY TÜV SÜD

INSIDE VIEW: HOW GREEN IS HYDROGEN, MR. LAPP?

—— Business Unit Manager Green Energy Sustainability Thore Lapp explains the role of green hydrogen in the European Green Deal.

TEXT THORE LAPP
PHOTO JAN SCHOELZEL (PORTRAIT); SALZGITTER AG (WIND TURBINE)

That depends on the process used to manufacture it. At present, a distinction is made between gray, blue and green hydrogen. What is known as red hydrogen, produced with the assistance of nuclear energy, is also gaining in importance around the world.

Hydrogen has been needed for dec­ades in industrial applications, for instance for fertilizer production, and is manufactured in large quantities using fossil sources. This is designated as gray hydrogen because it’s produced from fossil fuels, for example when natural gas is heated and split into hydrogen molecules and carbon dioxide. The resulting carbon dioxide escapes, unused, into the atmosphere, and adds to the greenhouse effect. With blue hydrogen, the resulting carbon dioxide is filtered out and permanently stored, for instance using a carbon capture storage process in subsoils geologically suited to such procedures. Green hydrogen, on the other hand, is created via water electrolysis. This process uses renewable energy, which is why green hydrogen is more-or-less emissions neutral. Red hydrogen uses nuclear instead of renewable energy, so it’s also largely free of emissions.
 

Worldwide, however, green hydrogen makes up only a very small percentage of the hydrogen being used: 99 percent of hydrogen used for industrial processes is gray. Despite this, it’s important that we start creating the necessary infrastructure for distributing and using hydrogen right now, no matter what color it is. And that’s something that won’t happen overnight because it’s a process with a time horizon of many years. The goal of the EU Green Deal is to be fully decarbonized by 2050.

Green hydrogen plays an important role in this since it can, as it were, store electricity from renewable resources to buffer seasonal fluctuations in power generation. Hydrogen also enables the decarbonization of important industrial sectors including steel manufacturing and metal processing. At its main site, for example, Salzgitter AG has laid the foundations for carbon-dioxide-­reduced steel production with the construction of wind turbines and electrolyzers for the production of green hydrogen. Finally, hydrogen also creates great potential for ­zero-emissions mobility.”

MORE ARTICLES