Crown research institute GNS Science is about to officially open its new green hydrogen lab in Lower Hutt.
One day it could contribute to making sure that small rural communities cut off by disaster can still power through, with stored green hydrogen used to establish a kind of micro-grid.
Michelle Cook helps lead the work at GNS as an energy materials scientist.
She describes what they’re doing as “agnostic” – the lab is focusing on producing green hydrogen regardless of how it will be used. But it is involved with some end-use projects.
For example, GNS is working with a marae in the eastern Bay of Plenty, at the top of Te Urewera, and about 30 minutes out of Whakatane.
“We are working with marae in the first instance, to see if they can capture their own solar energy for their electricity and then store it in hydrogen so that they’re resilient … they can generate, store and use energy all within their community, so that if they are cut off by say, flooding … with climate change we’re seeing more and more of these really significant weather events … they’ll know that they’re always going to be able to have energy so that they can keep everyone warm and dry until help can come.
“At the moment they rely on a diesel generator as back-up but obviously as we saw after Cyclone Gabrielle sometimes it can be hard to access diesel to fuel those generators in a disaster situation.”
The work is currently at the investigation stage, and modelling should be finished in the next few months.
Today on The Detail, Cook guides us through the basics of green hydrogen production and explains why this most abundant of earth’s elements is a game-changer on the path to zero-carbon fuel.
She also talks about the specific work being done at the new GNS Science lab, including ways to reduce the cost of processing it.
It might be early days, but several organisations are making significant steps to help Aotearoa lead the way in developing green hydrogen.
Last week, Hiringa Energy opened a zero-emission green hydrogen vehicle refuelling network in South Auckland, Hamilton and Palmerston North – there’s one more to open later in Tauranga.
On the edge of the tarmac, Air New Zealand is aiming to lead the way in green hydrogen powered aircraft.
It recently finished a trial at Wellington Airport, where for 10 days it powered its ground service equipment – such as baggage-movers.
“This was an easy way for us to get hydrogen airside,” the company’s senior sustainability manager Jacob Snelgrove tells The Detail.
“Doing that unlocks the next stage for us, which would be how would we do some hydrogen refuelling airside, which is where we need to get to if we are to have hydrogen-powered aircraft operating.”
Air New Zealand is working with manufacturers like Airbus to develop green hydrogen-powered aircraft for its own domestic fleet. It hopes the aircraft will be available in the 2030s.
“Seeing the work Airbus has done and is doing has given us a real motivation to get New Zealand ready for those aircraft and try to lead the world in that respect,” Snelgrove says.
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It’s not obvious why energy-inefficient green hydrogen should be stored as a local emergency power source for a remote community when a battery could do the same job.
Earl – yes exactly. Hydrogen storage could provide days or weeks of electricity if that is the use case/requirement, otherwise it is simply wasting 3x the electricity to achieve what a grid scale battery could do.
It’s a pity that this item is not just a bit more sceptical (or at least even-handed) about green hydrogen, using terms like “game changer”. As I understand it, in order to unlock green hydrogen you have to use a lot of energy to do the job. That energy obviously has to be from a renewable source, otherwise a supposedly renewable power source – green hydrogen in this case – cancels out its supposed contribution to the net provision of renewable energy. But then, what is the point of using up existing renewable energy sources to provide a new one that is supposedly a game changer, unless there is an impressive net extra production of renewable energy over and above that required to produce green hydrogen in the first place? I understand that there are some applications – industrial ones? – where going the extra stage to produce green hydrogen out of renewable sources is still worthwhile. If so, the item should make the specifics on this clearer.
One thing that should have been picked up on was the enthusiastic reference in the interview to “white hydrogen” – a supposedly potentially significant supply of natural hydrogen within certain rock formations. It even got into the NZ First election manifesto. It would actually be better colour-designated as pink hydrogen – as in pink elephants. Private companies can drill for this hopium stuff if they wish, but they shouldn’t get a contribution from the New Zealand taxpayer along the way.
This episode failed to ask important questions like: What fraction of New Zealand’s current renewable energy production would be needed to produce enough green hygroden for the aviation and freight sectors? How would we generate this much more electricity? How energy-efficient is green hydrogen production, and how much more energy efficient can it realistically get? Is it possible to produce sustainable aviation fuels (of all types) in high enough quantities to meaningfully reduce emissions?
Right now, any talk of hydrogen smacks of greenwashing – a distraction from the things we can already do to reduce emissions, such as flying less and investing in inter-regional passenger rail and low-emissions ferries.