Shiva Sharma: “So, what is Green Hydrogen and why are we talking about it?

The column has been published in Vaasa Insider 22.10.2021

The writer Shiva Sharma works as a project leader and lecturer at Novia UAS. He specializes in environmental engineering and is a co-leader of the H2 Ecosystem Roadmap for Ostrobothnia project in cooperation with VAMK and Hanken.

Hydrogen (vety, väte) is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, and non-toxic gas. Hydrogen as a fuel is expected to play a big role in future economy and development, especially to reach carbon neutrality.

Hydrogen is one of the simplest and abundant elements found in earth, but it is always combined with other elements, which makes it difficult to find it in pure gas form.

Conventionally hydrogen is produced from gasification of coal, steam reforming of natural gas or by electrolysis using nonrenewable electricity. Even though hydrogen is a colorless gas, it has been given many color codes such as green, blue, grey, and turquoise etc., depending on greenhouse gas emissions produced during its production processes.

This color code naming scheme is not universal and may vary in different countries. But almost in all cases green hydrogen means hydrogen that is produced from renewable sources. The most established way of producing green hydrogen is by electrolysis of water through renewable electricity. This is the near-zero carbon production route to produce hydrogen.

Fuel of the future

Hydrogen as a fuel has its own pros and cons. There are a few reasons why I think green hydrogen is a fuel of future. Most importantly we in Finland are determined to be carbon neutral by year 2050.

To achieve this goal, we must and we will invest heavily in renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. The wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining when we want them to. Thus, there will be an excess of renewable electricity at some period and deficit at other. This could be solved if we used this excess of renewable electricity to produce hydrogen.

It will also be difficult to electrify everything, and some industrial processes and heavy transport will have to run on gas, and green hydrogen is the best option.

In the past, there had been peaks of interest in hydrogen, which did not take off, but today rapid cost decline of renewable energy, technological advancement, and the urgency to reduce greenhouse gases emissions are opening new possibilities.

In The EU alone, 70 to 100 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually are released into the atmosphere while producing hydrogen from fossil fuels, notably natural gas and coal. If only this hydrogen could be replaced by production of green hydrogen it would already be a remarkable success.

H2 Ecosystem Roadmap for Ostrobothnia

In Ostrobothnia we are active in making this dream come true. Our team from VAMK, Novia and Hanken are collaborating on an H2 Ecosystem Roadmap project funded by the European Regional Development Fund through the Regional Council of Ostrobothnia and the City of Vaasa through the Vaasa Consortium of Higher Education (Vaasan korkeakoulukonsortio, Vasa högskolekonsortium).

The project investigates the conditions for green hydrogen in the Ostrobothnia area through study of technical information, market study and future forecasts. To follow us and learn more about the project, go to www.h2ecosystem.org.