Europe's Hydrogen Pusher - Ep115: Jorgo Chatzimarkakis
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- Опубликовано: 28 сен 2024
- This week, Michael invites Jorgo Chatzimarkakis, CEO of Hydrogen Europe, to debate the importance of hydrogen in powering Europe and the world towards a decarbonized economy.
Hydrogen Europe is an industry association of more than 400 members that promotes the role of hydrogen in reaching carbon neutrality in Europe. Chatzimarkakis holds hydrogen to be the miracle molecule of the transition, while Michael’s Hydrogen Ladder has a far narrower view of its likely uses on the path to net zero.
What follows is a comprehensive, robust - and at moments, fierce - discussion of hydrogen in the transition, covering electrolyzers, fertilizers, freight, transportation and heating, as well as following the “pots of money” behind hydrogen infrastructure and lobbying in Europe.
Spark more healthy debate around net zero pathways by liking and sharing the episode, and don’t forget to subscribe.
Relevant Guest & Topic Links:
Learn more about Hydrogen Europe: hydrogeneurope...
HE’s Hydrogen Act (2021) lays out a roadmap for a ‘European Hydrogen Economy’: hydrogeneurope...
HE’s Clean Hydrogen Monitor (2022) provides an overview of the European hydrogen market: hydrogeneurope...
Explore Michael’s Hydrogen Ladder here: / clean-hydrogen-ladder-...
President von der Leyen’s speech at the European Parliament Plenary on December 15th 2022: ec.europa.eu/c...
Watch Cleaning Up Episode 111 with Dan Yergin here: www.cleaningup...
Watch Episode 88 with Patrick Graichen here: www.cleaningup...
Guest Bio
Chatzimarkakis was a Member of European Parliament from 2004 until 2014 for Germany’s Free Democratic Party (FDP), serving on the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy among others. From 1999 to 2004, Chatzimarkakis was Managing Partner at Polit Data Concept, a public affair consultancy, and served as a Science Policy Officer at Germany’s Bundestag from 1995 to 1998.
Chatzimarkakis holds an MA from the University of Bonn in Political Science. He has held positions as a lecturer at University Duisberg Essen and Saarland University.
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Great, informative debate. South Africa's fossil fuel industry are strongly pushing the same H2 agenda with very little pushback along these lines. Thanks for your contribution.
Well done on this one Michael- such an important public service to have this debate- all EU policy-makers should have a listen! Hard to win an argument against the laws of physics!😉
Thanks Bernice! It's astonishing the extent to which European policy-makers have been taken in by the "hydrogen economy" mirage.
@@MLiebreich so a rough guess I would have how this could be played the evil way: if you have a quota how much of the hydrogen has to be green, but at the same time increase the market, you could end up to have more instead of less grey hydrogen in absolute numbers...
Enjoyed this episode. A proper debate rather than an interview. More like this please!
Superb! This is the podcast that I have been looking for- demystify the all shiny H2 forecast with a real comprehension of its cons and pros. Greetings from Mexico. FYI, I got selected in 2018 for a BNEF internship at London but couldn’t join due to my visa status 😢
Thanks Karina. And sorry to hear about your visa problem. I have not had an executive role at BNEF since 2014 - in the olden days I am sure I would have found a way around the problem.
Fascinating discussion between articulate & knowledgeable proponents of opposing views - congratulations on securing the interview. 👏🙏😊
Why is the EU spending so much public money on H2, when it’s viable applications are so limited. H2 for things like heating, ground transportation has flopped. Seems like politicians are being fooled, so industry can get taxpayer dollars.
PR interaction with local political porkbarrelling.
Great episode, wish it was longer!
Jorgo, you did a great job. The problem is that the scope and scale of the public investments you are lobbying for are not in the best interests of humanity or the environment. Please apply your efforts to something else.
One of the key comments in this episode was “…publish your accounts.”
Thanks for spotting that one!
@@MLiebreich can you provide a Timestamp please?
@@maxhaschke4966 25:02 to 25:12 Jorgo gives double thumbs up while saying that they can publish their accounts, so an optimist would expect them to publish their accounts very soon.
I believe that one other aspect of this push towards hydrogen - other than the anxiety about losing heavy industry and jobs to more wind and solar friendly locations - is also the way energy assets are currently owned. For example, in Turkey my market, the electricity distribution network has been parceled out and privatized. The private distribution companies are supposed to use some of their profits to upgrade and modernize the grid and prevent losses charging this back to the government in a PPP structure. This means the independent energy producers have no control over the grid which is old and falling apart; and from which 20% of energy is illegally taken by the poorer population. So in the push towards renewables the growth looks as though it will come from the production of green hydrogen. The EU is making a difficult situation even worse by signaling that hydrogen is profitable path forward for emerging markets like Turkey. IMHO. Thank your for this excellent episode.
Well, that was about what I expected. On the one side (Liebreich), rational and sensible information. On the other side (fossil and chemistry industry funded lobbyist), quite terrible data, bad math, arm waving (literally) and attempts at Gish Galloping.
Hydrogenman don't understand or don't want to. Taxpayers money will be wasted to waste energy and rise electricity prices in the end.
Michael how do we debunk the pipe versus line fallacy? This is now being pushed as the main argument against electrification. Are there real examples of long H2 pipe lines with capacity?
We don't have enough green electricity to power truck chargers. My proposal is to use hydrogen to fuel them in a process that means we need 3x as much green electricity because I am smart.
The forever cost of fuelling these vehicles will be 3x as much as direct electrification but because a one off capital investment is lower I am going to claim this is cheaper, because I am smart. 🙄
Pretty much spot on.
@@MLiebreich I guess a more collegiate way of putting this might be to ask how the levelised costs might look over a relevant ownership period.
I should try to do better to debate in a more civilized way.
As an amateur I'd be very surprised if over an investment period, it would be more sensible to commit to 3-6x running costs in perpetuity 🤷
@@Lewis_Standing as a finance/strategy guy I can promise you that the option with 3-6x higher running costs will be stranded, quickly. Even more so as the cost of making green H2 falls with cheaper renewables/electrolysers.
Great debate! I wouldn't quote NG though on the EV figures. I know very well that kind of message, having contributed to scripting that playbook years ago while working in Brussels for the utilities' association. What matters here is not the overall demand, but the fact that demand might - note the conditional tense - add stress to the grid at peak times. It is easy to say: the grid can handle the volumes, while what really matters is whether it can do so instantaneously. I live in Milan - the economic capital of Italy - and we are getting used of having black-outs in summer in certain areas when A/C is on a blast.
Hi Michael, can you get a (just you) discuss of the paper he quotes as video / Podcast into RUclips?
Send me a link, I'll ask Auke Hoekstra to take a look.
@@MLiebreich I thought your guest provided it himself? Otherwise I could try to Google it
@ We've not received anything yet :-)
Flippin ‘ell. At least if the hydrogen thing doesn’t take off for him, at least there’s always double glazing or second hand (hydrogen) cars!
Can you share the study that you referred to on twitter? I would like to reproduce your cost model for Ammonia. Most of the arguments and doubts that you raised can be solved by Ammonia, it will be nice to invite Dr. Douglas MacFarlane from Monash University, Australia and co-founder of Jupiter Ionics to talk about the Ammonia economy and how it can lower the investment needed for Ammonia/Hydrogen sector.
Ammonia can reuse the current pipeline network and can be transported as a liquid with far less pressure than Hydrogen. Liquid ammonia logistics network is widespread in the US where it is currently used in agriculture in the corn belt and the soybean belt.
A team from Korea just published a study (closed source) their econometric model shows that Ammonia reduces the storage and transport cost for H2 by a significant margin. Study: "Materializing International Trade of Decarbonized Hydrogen Through Optimization in Both Economic and Environmental Aspects". Supplementary data has many useful figures but it's behind paywall.
NH3 is toxic, and has a low energy density - it only looks good in comparison to H2. Dimethyl ether - CH3-O-CH3 - is much safer, has nearly double the energy per litre of ammonia, can be produced more simply than Fischer-Tropsch synthetic hydrocarbons, does not produce soot (there are no carbon-carbon bonds), and has very low emissions of nitrogen dioxide - the oxygen binding the molecule aids in complete combustion. NH3 is only burnt as an additive to coal, and the nitrogen content encourages NO2 formation. DME liquefies at a similar pressure to LPG (propane/butane) which is widely used as a fuel, has a lower vapour pressure than ammonia, is less corrosive, and has an excellent cetane value for use in diesel engines.
@@2x6x250ml NH3 is essential in agriculture and the base of most fertilizers. NH3 is currently produced through the haber-bosch process, green NH3 thru electrolysis is cleaner. NH3 has a huge market (no need to wait for H2 cars or trucks), trucks running on NH3 are available In the US heartland farmers know how to handle it. NH3 has a distribution and storage network. NH3 can become eligible for the Hydrogen tax credit anything with carbon won't, that covers more than half the cost. NH3 -> H2 can be done through a photo-reactor. The EU is enacting a similar plan to the US's IRA.
I couldn't keep listening. This Hydrogen guy is obviously on a mission to push Hydrogeb adoption no matter what. He clearly doesn't understand the substance at all. The only thing he can do is quote studies or make dumb comparisons. For instance, he claims piping Hydrogen around would be cheaper than building up the grid by quoting the costs of existing pipes. The absolutely moronic thing about that is that existing pipe materials cannot be used with Hydrogen. It would quickly destroy the pipes. He acts like it's a given they could pipe Hydrogen around and yet nobody today does this because the technology doesn't exist. Every place, pretty much, that consumes Hydrogen, whether it's fertilizer plants or Petroleum plants, produces their Hydrogen very near to where they use it. That is because it doesn't travel or store well. It is highly reactive and leaks a lot.
Hydrogen is greenwashing by the oil and gas industry. Their flunkies push all sorts of tech to try and green it up, but the reality is that we can't even produce today's Hydrogen in a green way. The oil and gas industry are pushing hard for countries and regions to invest in infrastructure so they can't put their resources anywhere else. Once locked in, they will be stuck being reliant on it whether it's coming from green or gray sources.
The number one clue this guy is a flunky is that he is a politician and not a Hydrogen expert. Instead of bringing numbers to the table, he talks in circles until you forget he hasn't produced any real numbers that can be verified and checked.
Plus he got his PhD removed for plagiarism… says it all.
Using hydrogen for home heating or FCEVs is clearly nuts but Jorgo does make some good points.
Electrification makes little sense if its not firmed properly during a Dunkelflaute which is where molecules offer the cheapest solution.
As a chem eng I just wouldn't use awkward low density hydrogen for it.
Jorgo's point that renewables are cheap in Doha and others is important.
Who cares much about efficiency when something is dirt cheap like PV at 1 cent/kwh in hot places, something Europe can never compete with.
I'm paying £0.35/kwh for my domestic electricity today, a bit of inefficiency for a few days wont hurt .
Shipping renewables molecules is dirt cheap per kwh if we choose the right molecule.
Those HVDC cables appear super expensive in comparison and would put any country at the mercy of their supplier and as we saw with Germany's dependence on Russian gas, diversity of supply is important to give security and cost competition.
One offensive religious comment or argument with Morocco and XLINKS is gone
Dispatchable power on demand for a few days/weeks is a valuable enabler to allow straight run renewable electricity to run those heat pumps and EVs the rest of the year.
The Dunkelflaute and need for firming is not a good point, it's entirely obvious. His mistake is that he thinks it means you need to distribute hydrogen to homes and fueling infrastructure. You don't - it's always going to be cheaper (and safer, and less prone to leak and drive climate change) to store hydrogen centrally, generate it centrally and get the resulting energy to users via a somewhat enhanced power grid. He then does this whole thing about the last 20%, and how two distribution architectures will be cheaper than one, which I hope is clear has no merit whatsoever
@@MLiebreich you twist my words as always. I see no point in distributing hydrogen to homes nor FCEVs as I said. The point is we will need to firm electrification and whilst hydrogen is not the answer it will need to be done in some form at TWh scale in winter. We import massive TWh of energy currently in winter.
Wind has days/weeks on holiday. What else solves the UK heat balance in winter other than unfounded optimism ?
@@stevegreen2839 it's just Michael puts the very same argument as you're saying now in the video. Use hydrogen for storage and centrally make electricity again with it. So you're agreeing with eachother
Even in Germany solar production cost is 4-5 ct before tax and transport. Portugal is at 1-2. This is the number you have to compare to doha, not the 30ct which contains grid, tax ,...
And then losses in efficiency will totally eat up your price benefits even before you payed for all the additional transport and conversation infrastructure
@ not really, the whole point of wrapping energy up into chemicals is its then gives dispatchable electricity when occasionally needed to prop up domestic renewables. A grid only based only wind or solar which produces nothing sometimes in winter is no use to anyone. Just like LNG, processing and shipping costs are tiny at a big scale if a feed stream is cheap and those resources will be cheapest in renewable rich countries, not the EU/UK.
Jorgo and his H2 lobby produce alternative facts. As Engineer for HV grids I'm amused!
This is by far the best episode so far. Five times all of the world's currently installed renewable energy is needed only to produce H2 for the hard to abate sectors. And yet, Jorgo has his own views in how this could become viable. Perfect debate to have in the European Parliament before making investment decisions.
Thanks Flow, glad you liked it. TBH I wish I had been able to rebut more of his claims in real time.
@@MLiebreich cam you do it in non Realtime, maybe even a debunk of the papers he quotes. I'm often discussing with german politicians, and I would love to point to the errors instead of starting an alternative explanation (in there view)
Unbelievable green hydrogen price mentioned of 2.2 Euro per kg ?, How it is possible on commercial scale? Chemistry laws cannot be changed 60kWh /kg is usually required to produce 1 kg of hydrogen through water electrolysis process which means energy price is 3.6 cents per kw in the Europe. I should try to find out where is this Europe.
3.6 cents per kWh isn't that crazy. It's more than what old, existing nuclear plants cost (they're old and have repaid debt). The cost of grid electricity is the marginal cost; so if there's too much demand you're paying to rev up some diesel generator that runs 2 times per year and needs $1/kWh to make sense.
I wouldn't underestimate the cost of the electrolysers; especially if you intend to run them 20% of the time when the wind blows and similar inanity.
Another problem with hydrogen is that UCG and similar will be such a big win that it's just a trojan horse for fossil fuels.
What a fantastic debate! Something that seems to come across is that you're not comparing like for like? Michael is rightly focused on efficiency and what will be an OPEX cost whereas Jorgo is also rightly focused on the upfront CAPEX costs. Surely our clean energy solutions need to balance both of these to be successful?
No, no, no. I simply don't focus much on capital costs because if absurd OPEX makes it clear that a solution doesn't work, you don't even need to talk about CAPEX. Jorgo is focused on CAPEX because he is operating on behalf of a bunch of members sitting on what are otherwise stranded assets. So he constantly needs to insinuate that these assets can somehow be re-used and pave the way to a cheaper low-carbon system. In most cases they can't. At best most of the stuff Jorgo is talking about will waste time and taxpayer money and then fail; at worst it will succeed for his members, but at the cost of high costs, fugitive emissions, safety and air quality problems forever for the rest of us.
Great interview. I thought both arguments were right; or at least not contradictory or mutually exclusive, by and large. For example, both arguments seem to broadly support Michael's hydrogen ladder hierarchy and priority sequence.
If one were to split hairs, it might seem Michael's suggesting the 'second rung' of the hydrogen ladder ought not be considered before the first rung; whereas Jorgo seems to posit that's not necessarily the case. For example, Michael seems to acknowledge hydrogen has a reasonable prospect of providing long-term grid storage, and to that end, Jorgo simply seems to be arguing it makes sense to consider that use case alongside 'first rung' hydrogen use cases, especially considering mutual benefits of economies of scale and experience-curve efficiencies.
You've missed the big, irreconcilable difference. I don't think hydrogen has any place being distributed into the community, to households and high streets. That is an existential issue for many of Jorgo's members and it is a hill he is prepared to die on. Physics and economics will ultimately fall my way, but not before billions of € are wasted.
@Michael Liebreich Fair enough, too. Would seem a bit of a daft idea. In Jorgo's defence, he didn't seem to push that point particularly hard, other than to 'not rule it out'. Heat pumps are unquestionably more efficient; though are there any barriers to widespread adoption (eg cost, dwelling unsuitability etc)?
@@jarrodf_ You've been punked! What does not ruling out hydrogen heating look like? You have a natural gas distribution network with thousands of metering points attached to it.
You "haven't ruled out hydrogen", so it sits there. The only way to get hydrogen to a single home is to switch the whole thing to hydrogen, but you're not doing that, you're just "not ruling hydrogen out".
Meanwhile, of course, you're 1) pretending the only reason there is no hydrogen heating is some cabal of heat-pump fanatics; 2) spreading FUD to slow down electrification; 3) lobbying for blending 20% hydrogen, which is an expensive folly and a dead end - it does nothing to prepare for the jump to 100% hydrogen; 4) lobbying gullible lawmakers for schemes to switch entire neighbourhoods to hydrogen at a stroke - depriving them of the choice they really do have, which is to decide the timing of their switch to a real zero-carbon heating option.
"Not ruling hydrogen out" is a predatory delay tactic.
@Michael Liebreich Don't get me wrong, I think 'keep the boiler, change the gas (to hydrogen)' is patently ludicrous, certainly for domestic customers. And you're right to push back on that vigorously. Suppose I was thinking about the context of retrofitting pipelines and phasing out and replacing gas with hydrogen for at best likely a relatively small cohort of industrial/commercial customers - and to that extent perhaps that context couldn't be categorically ruled out? Though again, per your discussion with Dr. Silvia Madeddu, even those hydrogen use cases may well be usurped by electrification and/or heat pumps for a large chunk of those customers.
From my research, which includes the mining and refining of minerals, we are reinventing the wheel and making it square, whilst at the same time expecting it to be more productive.