Hydrogen the Groningen way Nr. 4

💦⚡️💚 Green hydrogen is ‘booming’. As the missing link in the energy transition and in the transition to sustainable industry. But how do we make hydrogen ‘big’ and make sure that everyone benefits? Read my voyage of discovery here👇 💚🌍

⚡️💦☀️ Hydrogen and welfare 👌

In my previous blogs I wrote that if we want to achieve serious progress in CO2 reduction, we will need to move to a new energy system. A system where we can store sustainably generated energy so that it is always available, even when there is a lack of sunshine or wind. There will also need to be an alternative to oil and gas as raw materials. Green hydrogen is the 'missing link 'in that new energy system - in the Netherlands, in Europe and around the world. 

Global scale

The energy transition started in developed countries, and at the moment they are the ones that generate the most sustainable energy. With international agreements, such as the Paris Climate Agreement, and with technology that is becoming better and cheaper, more parties are extending their sphere of operations to other countries. That is a positive development, because it is really interesting to consider a new energy system at a global scale. There are places in the world with many hours of sunshine or with strong consistent wind currents. That makes large-scale production of sustainable energy, which is required to produce green hydrogen, cheaper in those places and therefore quickly cost-effective and profitable. 

Export

Which areas in the world are we talking about? The American state of Texas, for example. Texas used to be famous for its oil extraction and now it looks like a golden area for generating sustainable energy by means of wind. Large solar and wind parks are already under construction in North Africa. A country like Morocco is pursuing an energy transition with a production of 53% sustainable energy in 2030, particularly for the country’s own needs. For some time now, there have also been initiatives in Africa that are focused on sustainable production for export. In 2011, Siemens and E.on were part of the Desertec Industrial Initiative project, a plan to generate energy with hundreds of square kilometres of solar panels and to transport this to Europe via cables. At the time, this project failed due to the costs and because it was focused too much on export when sustainable energy was also required locally (source: Volkskrant 24 July 2017). 

Desertec https://www.desertec.org/

Tipping point

Kenya is another example, where a Dutch company was one of the investors in a wind park with 365 wind turbines: the Lake Turkana Wind Power Project. Wonderful as such, but the construction of the wind park was not without its issues and did produce local instability. Libya and Egypt, which are known for their oil extraction, are also countries that offer opportunities for the production of sustainable energy. According to the trade magazine Renewable Energy, in a country like Libya solar power could produce five times as much revenue as oil under normal circumstances. This will be similar for other countries in the region. Now oil hardly produces any revenue due to the oil and Coronavirus crisis, this could be the tipping point where those countries switch to sustainable energy. 

Impact

In addition, solar panels and wind turbines have improved enormously over the past few years. It is becoming increasingly interesting to set up solar and wind parks in countries and regions with plenty of sun and wind. Developing countries in particular, or countries that earned their revenues with oil until now, could reap significant benefits from the transition to sustainable energy. Developers of and investors in wind and solar parks will opt for large-scale projects. Those large wind and solar parks will certainly have an impact on their environment from a spatial, ecological, economical and social point of view. Land contracts, transport, waste, pipe construction, bird migration routes that are crossed: these are all issues that need to be dealt with meticulously. At the same time education, employment, and profit sharing can have a positive impact on the environment, provided they are organised properly. 

‘Fair’ production 

But: governments will have to be able to reach agreements on the preconditions for ‘fair energy’. Sadly they are often lacking. Our years of using fossil fuels, such as oil and natural gas, have demonstrated that too. It was bad for the climate, but also for the stability in many countries. The extraction was often nothing short of an ecological disaster. And what is more ... the rich became richer and the poor poorer. Now we are on the eve of a transition to a sustainable global energy system, we have the opportunity to reach good agreements about a 'fair’ production of sustainable energy and green hydrogen. However, Europe, if it wants to use the hydrogen generated with sustainable energy from developing countries, will need to take the responsibility to make sure that the areas around the solar parks, wind parks and hydrogen factories benefit from this energy transition.

Welfare

In the province of Groningen, where I live and work as a member of the Provincial Executive, natural gas was discovered 60 years ago. It brought welfare to the Netherlands, but disaster to many people in Groningen because of the earthquakes that were produced by that gas extraction. As we are taking the lead in developing an international green hydrogen economy from Groningen, with production of sustainable energy in countries outside the Netherlands and Europe, I would like to see that it produces welfare for the people in those countries too. 

Which agreements and which parties are needed to achieve that? Stay with my voyage of discovery and read my next blog. 👩‍💻