Why we need hydrogen and synthetic energy carriers to decarbonise, store energy and safeguard mobility

SATW’s hydrogen forum provided a wide-ranging overview of the status of technological developments, applications and industry strategies for hydrogen and synthetic energy carriers. The forum was the brainchild of SATW experts Prof. Konstantinos Boulouchos and Dr. Bernhard Braunecker, who also hosted the event. Just under 40 representatives of industry, professional associations, government administration and research took advantage of the opportunity to discuss the issue and to network. The information and assessments from the event will also be incorporated into a SATW factsheet on hydrogen.

Dr. Ulrich Claessen, President of SATW’s Industry Advisory Board, used his introductory speech to shed light on the importance of the issue for various sectors.

He was followed by Dr. Michael Krüger of Robert Bosch GmbH, whose keynote speech examined how green fuels will be used in combustion-engined commercial vehicles in the future. Bosch is focussing deliberately on commercial vehicles because efforts in the private cars sector are focusing primarily on the changeover to electric drive systems. If conventional diesel engines are optimised by improving their technology and control systems and adopting coupled exhaust treatment systems (catalytic converters), the airborne pollutant emissions of the commercial vehicles they are installed in comply with demanding exhaust emission standards such as Euro 7 and CARB Low NOx.
To achieve a significant reduction in emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO₂), however, it will be necessary to switch over to renewable fuels such as hydrogen or e-fuels. If the technologies that Bosch is currently testing are adopted, commercial vehicles powered by hydrogen combustion engines will produce very few emissions overall. Whether it makes economic sense to adopt hydrogen would depend heavily on the application in question and how intensively vehicles are used.

Prof. Andreas Züttel (EPFL/SATW) gave an overview of hydrogen’s role in the energy transition, particularly as a storage medium for electricity, production of which will be more substantially subject to fluctuations with the changeover to renewable energies. In particular, it will be impossible to achieve the necessary seasonal storage with batteries alone. The major challenges (and cost drivers) are the significant energy losses incurred in converting electricity into storable hydrogen by electrolysis and then converting it back into usable energy plus the construction of safe transport and storage infrastructure.

The presentation by Dr. German Weisser of WinGD addressed the subject of synthetic fuels for shipping. WinGD is a Swiss company that has its roots in Sulzer Corporation. It is now one of the global leaders in combustion engines for large merchant vessels and is adapting its engines for synthetic fuels. International maritime traffic is currently responsible for over two percent of global anthropogenic CO₂ emissions, and WinGD estimates that it could influence half of these with its products. This would amount to around ten times Switzerland’s domestic emissions! According to Dr. Weisser, hydrogen is unlikely to play a significant role in deep-sea shipping in the foreseeable future; instead a mixture of different liquid synthetic energy carriers is likely to become the norm.

Dr. Philipp Dietrich from H2 Energy Ltd spoke on the use of renewable hydrogen to decarbonise the energy system, presenting a project to construct a large-scale hydrogen production facility in Denmark. He reported that a pilot project involving trucks powered by hydrogen fuel cells had found that energy consumption per payload carried and route was less than ten percent higher than that of a battery-powered electric truck. Consequently, the fuel-cell trucks represent a good alternative. A decision on whether to go ahead with the Danish hydrogen production project will be made soon. The project’s scale is impressive: the electricity it will consume, which will be generated by wind power, is equivalent to the output of the Swiss nuclear power plant at Gösgen.

Finally, Dr. Andrea Ciani of Ansaldo Energia Switzerland Ltd explained how the natural gas-powered turbines currently used in electricity generation can be adapted for operation with hydrogen. Successful tests indicate that the systems will achieve market readiness by 2030.

The examples from industry show that solutions to harness hydrogen in mobility and energy storage are at an advanced stage and could soon be contributing to decarbonisation. Swiss companies are playing a relevant role in this process. The role that hydrogen will play in Switzerland’s overall energy supply in the future and the ways in which Switzerland will cooperate with Europe and the international market also depend on various economic and political factors, which cannot be finally assessed at present.