Several energy experts warn that a deal to sell Canadian hydrogen to Germany will be only a small, distant and costly part of the solution to Europe’s energy crisis.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are expected to sign a hydrogen accord next week in Stephenville, Newfoundland and Labrador, according to a government official who requested anonymity. of Mr. Scholz’s official visit to Canada. The municipality of Baie Saint-Georges is to house a zero-emission power plant where wind energy will be used to produce hydrogen and ammonia for export.
The agreement with Germany should make it the first major customer for a unique project in Canada.
The country was already considering hydrogen as an energy solution in its climate plan before Russia invaded Ukraine last February. Since then, Moscow has repeatedly threatened the energy supply of Germany, which typically gets around half of its natural gas from Russia.
Proponents of the hydrogen deal say it comes at a pivotal time for Canada’s green hydrogen industry, which is still in its infancy.
Some experts, however, counter that the nascent product has a high price and that Canadian production will not be able to help Germany in the short term.
“You need to build a lot of associated infrastructure before you can export hydrogen to other countries on a large scale,” says Amit Kumar, chair of industrial research at the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of China. Canada (NSERC).
To be shipped, hydrogen would likely need to be cooled in liquid form, loaded into a specially adapted pipeline or tank truck, and then reheated at its destination. Expensive processes and infrastructure, just like production.
Most of the world’s hydrogen production comes from the conversion of natural gas into hydrogen and carbon dioxide. If the latter is emitted into the atmosphere, the hydrogen is called “grey”. In Canada, the goal is to capture these emissions and store the carbon, which would turn the hydrogen “blue”.
To date, Canada has mooted plans to help Germany with new natural gas projects in Atlantic Canada that could one day be converted into blue hydrogen facilities. But Germany is mainly looking for “green hydrogen”, which is made by splitting water molecules using renewable energy, such as wind or solar power. It comes at a much higher price.
“You’re looking at a three- to four-fold cost increase,” says Professor Kumar, who works in the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Engineering; it was consulted when the Alberta Hydrogen Strategy was written. The technology needs to be improved and more investment needs to be made before the cost is even relatively comparable to the natural gas-derived solution, he says.
The company behind the Newfoundland project, World Energy GH2, says the first phase is expected to see up to 164 onshore wind turbines built to power a hydrogen production facility. Long-term plans call for tripling the size of the project.
The construction of the first wind farm should start next year. That means hydrogen production is still a long way off, according to declared chemical engineer Paul Martin, who adds that “it will take years and years” to materialize. “And then you have the infrastructure problem. »
The infrastructure costs for the production and transport of green hydrogen do not add up, notes the engineer.
“Blue” hydrogen, “green” hydrogen
Canada’s hydrogen strategy is to go ‘blue’ first, then ‘green’, according to Professor Kumar.
Germany’s strategy, however, clearly favors green hydrogen while the role of blue hydrogen is uncertain, according to an analysis by Isabelle Huber, a researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Prime Minister Trudeau and Olaf Scholz, who became Chancellor of Germany in December, first discussed Canadian hydrogen during Trudeau’s visit to Berlin last March.
At the G7 leaders’ summit in the Bavarian Alps in June, Justin Trudeau spoke at length with several of his colleagues about how Canada could offer alternatives to countries dependent on Russian oil and gas.
He had suggested that the infrastructure used by Canada to transport liquefied natural gas could be adapted for hydrogen. “We are also looking in the medium term to expand some infrastructure,” Trudeau said at the time, “but in a way that achieves that goal of accelerating the transition not just out of Russian oil and gas, but out of our own.” own dependence on fossil fuels.
Canadian hydrogen could be just one part of Germany’s plan to ditch gas in a very difficult situation, said Sara Hastings-Simon, who leads the master’s degree in sustainable energy development at the University of Calgary. “It’s not the end of everything, it’s not going to completely solve the problem or be the only answer. »