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The following article is provided by Javier Cavada, President and CEO at Mitsubishi Power EMEA.
As the climate crisis intensifies, the need to accelerate global decarbonisation strengthens. In Europe, huge strides have been made to prioritise the transition to renewable energy, to reduce reliance on gas and to chart a future that has energy security and sustainability at its centre. It’s no secret that major barriers exist, not least financing, implementation, cost and geopolitics.
The power sector contributes over 75% of Europe’s greenhouse gas emissions, making it a target for reducing emissions to achieve the EU’s 90% carbon emissions reduction goal by 2040. Supporting more renewables, as the cleanest and most abundant form of power on to our grid systems, is the most effective route.
Simultaneously, the world faces exponential growth in electricity demand, driven by energy-intensive data centres, AI and cryptocurrencies. The International Energy Agency projects that global electricity demand will double by 2050 with electrification identified by the World Economic Forum as not only economically viable and efficient, but a major contributor to reduce carbon emissions.
While there is no single silver bullet when it comes to mitigating emissions, there are some front runners that are leading the transition. Tools like CCUS can capture emissions at the source, for example, but fuels like hydrogen actually avoid emissions at the source, with hydrogen being the only molecule proven today that can replace carbon molecules in existing gas infrastructure.
In this context, hydrogen is set to be pivotal in EMEA’s energy transition, both as a fuel for hard-to-electrify industries and as a storage medium for renewable energy. Gas turbines, adaptable for hydrogen, enable efficient combustion with significant emissions reductions and provide low-carbon dispatchable power to meet demand.
Hydrogen blended gas turbines
As a technology company, Mitsubishi Power, the energy division of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, has a rich history in the development of clean energy, from pioneering solar technology to launching offshore wind projects and manufacturing battery cells. Our success is defined not just through our technology innovations, but by working together with other manufacturers, financial partners, governments, and our customers. It’s a collaborative ecosystem.
For example, one of our 700 MW combined cycle gas turbines (CCGT) using a 30% hydrogen blend can cut emissions equivalent to removing 40,000 diesel cars from the road. At 100% hydrogen, that figure jumps to 500,000 cars—all without requiring major grid upgrades for a 30% H2 blend.
The cost and availability of hydrogen today, however, is a challenge, though not insurmountable. There are some clear parallels with the development of both solar and wind technologies, which 15 to 20 years ago faced steep barriers to entry. Solar was subsidised from an early stage because of the costs involved in developing the technology, but today its use is widespread, delivering one of the lowest costs of electrons. Hydrogen should be seen through the same lens. It is clean, plentiful and versatile and can be immediately integrated into existing power systems.
Mitsubishi Power’s projects are testament to how hydrogen is working in practice. In the UK, for example, gas turbines are being retrofitted for hydrogen blending in projects such as Net Zero Teesside Power (NZT Power) formerly known as Saltend, a first-of-a-kind fully integrated gas-fired power and carbon capture project and a major component of the UK’s first decarbonised industrial cluster. Once operational, Net Zero Teesside Power’s combined cycle gas turbine electricity generating station could produce up to 742 megawatts of flexible, dispatchable low-carbon power – equivalent to the average annual electricity requirements of more than 1 million UK homes.
We are also a partner in the world’s largest advanced clean energy hydrogen storage project, ACES Delta in Utah, which produces, stores, and delivers green hydrogen. Using our gas turbines, the plant provides a combined hydrogen cycle that will deliver a renewable hydrogen storage capacity of 1.6 GW to Los Angeles. The plant will run on a blend of 30% hydrogen and 70% natural gas starting this year, incrementally expanding to 100% by 2045. The project renews a major coal-fired power plant - a unique example of bringing clean hydrogen at scale to replace fossil fuels.
Bringing hydrogen to scale
If hydrogen is to meet its full potential in the energy value chain, change does need to happen, and it must be embraced not just by manufacturers, but governments, policy makers, investors and off-takers. A regulatory framework is needed, and it should have three key elements: investment certainty, affordability, and scalability.
Hydrogen projects require capital and long-term confidence. Regulatory mechanisms should reward the services hydrogen provides, such as capacity reliability in the electricity market, which gives operators a predictable revenue stream. The UK’s capacity market offers a good example of how this could work. As I said earlier, the cost of hydrogen is a consideration and, in the UK and Europe financial incentives are needed to lower CapEx and OpEx costs and close the gap between hydrogen and conventional energy sources. When it comes to scalability, it is important to remember that hydrogen can decarbonise some of the hardest-to-abate sectors such as steel, cement and aluminum production, but to achieve this we must act with assurance.
In Europe and the UK, we should be proud of the advancements we’ve made in clean energy, which deliver a fifth of all cleantech innovation across the globe – but we must also provide the right environment for our entrepreneurs and technology developers to thrive. Instead, there is an exodus of startups relocating to the US because they are unable to access finance and incentives at home.
Enabling the hydrogen value chain
Hydrogen has such an important part to play in decarbonisation. With a hydrogen value chain in place, we will be well placed not only to utilise existing gas infrastructure to reduce emissions but also take advantage of hydrogen’s ability to provide grid services such as inertia, reactive power, frequency response and voltage management in a carbon neutral way. We have the hydrogen technology in place, now we just need the right regulatory framework to unleash its potential and help the world to become electrified, at pace.
