Catalyst with Shayle Kann - The early days of transoceanic hydrogen transport

Episode Date: July 13, 2023

Before hydrogen makes it big, we have to overcome a massive, ocean-sized challenge: Transporting the fuel between continents.  The places that will be best suited to produce hydrogen via renewables-powered electrolysis, like Australia and Egypt, will have to ship that hydrogen to demand centers in Japan, Europe, and elsewhere. And it turns out that shipping hydrogen is way harder than shipping oil or natural gas. Hydrogen has a very low volumetric energy density. Compared to one barrel of oil, the equivalent amount of gaseous hydrogen takes up way more space to transport. Fortunately, a range of technologies could solve this problem. Will one become the dominant means of transporting hydrogen across the oceans? In this episode, Shayle talks to Anne-Sophie Corbeau, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s SIPA Center on Global Energy Policy. Anne-Sophie recently wrote about hydrogen transport for Cipher News.  They cover the five leading contenders for transoceanic transport: Liquified hydrogen E-methane, also known as synthetic methane or carbon neutral gas Liquid organic hydrogen carriers(LOHCs) Methanol Ammonia They also discuss topics like: Why good old fashioned pipelines might be a viable option for transport, even between continents The challenges of converting natural gas infrastructure into hydrogen infrastructure Why hydrogen exporters might be better off producing products made with hydrogen, such as steel, rather than the hydrogen itself Recommended Resources: Cipher News: Global hydrogen trade may be just a pipe dream IRENA: Global Hydrogen Trade to Meet the 1.5°C Climate Goal: Technology Review of Hydrogen Carriers IEA: Global Hydrogen Review 2022 Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media. Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you're a startup, investor, enterprise, or innovation ecosystem that's creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more. Catalyst is supported by RE+. RE+ is more than just the largest clean energy event, it’s a catalyst for industry innovation designed to supercharge business growth in the clean energy economy. Learn more: re-plus.com.

from the studios of PostScript Media and Canary Media. I'm Shao Khan, and this is Catalyst. If you want to transport the same energy as in one cubic meter of oil, well, you need more than 3,000 cubic meters of hydrogen at normal temperature and pressure. So you see that the boat is going to be quite large if we're transporting that with a boat. And this is usually what you are going to do if you transport energy from one continent to another. hydrogen. We can make it. We can use it. But how do we transport it? When utilities need flexible capacity they can count on, they turn to Energy Hub. Energy Hub works

with more than 170 utilities, coordinating over 2.5 million devices to manage 3.4 gigawatts of flexibility built for the moments when utilities can't afford uncertainty. Energy Hub builds and operates virtual power plants that utilities actually stake their grid planning on, coordinating EVs, batteries, thermostats, and more through a single platform built for utility scale. Predictive, verifiable, and designed to perform when it counts. Learn more at energy hub.com. Trillions of dollars are flowing into clean and critical infrastructure, but those investments aren't driven by technology alone.

They're shaped by markets, by policy, by capital, and by the institutions that connect them. I'm Alfred Johnson, CEO of Crux, and host of a brand new podcast, Critical Capital. Each episode, I talk with people deploying capital, shaping policy and building the clean economy. Tune in as we unpack how progress is actually made. Listen to critical capital on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Shail Khan. I invest in revolutionary climate technologies at energy impact partners. Welcome. So there are lots and lots of interesting things to talk about around the state and future of clean hydrogen.

but the one that in my mind gets the least attention, or at least the least attention relative to its importance, is the midstream. Let's posit for a moment that we are going to be able to produce cheap, clean hydrogen in volumes sufficient to impact the global energy market and our climate trajectory. Let's just assume that's true. Let's also posit that we will find enough valuable end uses

for that hydrogen all over the world to warrant its production in the first place. Maybe it's for shipping, aviation fuel, maybe steel making, maybe long-duration power storage, maybe just replacement of ammonia production. There are lots of options. Either way, let's just say we've got the hydrogen and we've got the demand. The thing is, at least in some cases, it is unlikely that we will have both of those things in the same place. And therein lies the rub. Because if you ask anyone smart the question, if hydrogen has a fatal flaw, what is it? Their answer will almost invariably be storage and

transportation. If we make it in one place and we use it in another, what do we do in between? And in particular, what do we do if that in between includes an ocean? In other words, will we build some massive global intercontinental hydrogen transport network? There are, of course, many options for how to transport hydrogen at those scales across oceans. This is not really a technical constraint so much as it is an economic and to some extent a political one. There economies saying that they want to import a lot of hydrogen. There are economies saying that they want to export a lot of hydrogen. And everybody is testing out many different options for how to do the in-between, but it's very early days, and everything faces a different set of challenges. So let's

run through what we know today. I had this conversation with Anne Sophie Corbeau. You've heard her before. She's a global research scholar at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy. she's also the former head of gas analysis for BP. By the way, this topic, how to store and move hydrogen around, is near and dear to my heart specifically. I think it is incredibly important and very difficult. Anne Sophie and I talk through the well-known pathways, five of them, in fact, but I'm interested in entrepreneurs who have a breakthrough solution within or beyond these

pathways. So if that's you, then get in touch. And in the meantime, here's Anne Sophie. And Sophie, welcome back. Thank you for having me. Let's talk about hydrogen and the challenges of transporting it, particularly transporting at long distances. Starting with hydrogen overall, I mean, I think people who pay attention to this market

already understand it's sort of a challenge that needs to be solved if there's going to be these big transcontinental flows of hydrogen. But explain why it's a challenge. Let's just say we produce clean hydrogen at a cost. that would make it effective to move it around and use it in a bunch of different contexts. Why is it a challenge to transport it? I mean, it's a challenge mostly because of the very low volumetric energy density of hydrogen. So we are talking about the energy which is contained in a volume.

It's not about the mass. It's really about the volume. So to explain to you, hydrogen has a very, very low energy density, volumetric energy. density. So if I compare it with natural gas, and we are talking about hydrogen at normal temperature and pressure. So we have not transformed hydrogen. It's, you know, a normal gas. It's about three times lower than natural gas. But just so that it speaks to you, if I were to compare that with oil, so the ratio between oil and natural gas is about 1,000. So between oil, and natural gas is about 1,000. So between hydrogen and oil, we are talking about a factor which is largely over 3,000.

So if you want to transport the same energy as in one cubic meter of oil, well, you need more than 3,000 cubic meters of hydrogen at normal temperature and pressure. So you see that the boat is going to be quite large if we're transporting that with a boat. And this is usually what you are going to do if you transport energy from one continent, to another. Right, and that's a good opportunity for us to be clear about what we're talking about here, which is we're talking about predominantly these long distance major flows of hydrogen. You know, not necessarily, it's a different set of questions, though, the same challenge in a smaller context, if you're talking about transporting hydrogen 50 miles from the point

of production to the point of use, right? This is about, are we going to be putting hydrogen in tanker ships in some form or another and transporting it, from one continent to another, which a lot of people have proposed. Yes, this is exactly what people have proposed. And I think this is important from maybe not only, you know, a technical point of view, but maybe also from a geopolitical point of view

to understand which countries have said, I am intending to import hydrogen. Because the funny thing is that there are not that many countries which have said, yes, I will import hydrogen. So you have, your opinion, as a large, I said, yes, by 2030, I am saying that I want to import 10 million tons of hydrogen. So these are the famous wee power EU targets, but by the way nobody believes in, everybody thinks that they are totally aspirational.

Among these countries in Europe, there is in particular Germany who really wants to import hydrogen and they have already a certain number of projects, etc. But there are also a couple of countries like Japan, like Korea, like Singapore, who have also said, yes, we are going to import hydrogen. For me, a very big question mark. The elephant in the room is China. I mean, some people are saying, yes, China is going to import hydrogen. And other people are saying, well, actually, maybe not.

And, you know, it's going to make a huge difference whether China is going to import hydrogen or not. Because, you know... Why would China import hydrogen? I mean, see, it strikes me that the reason that these other countries, is the reason it makes perfect sense to me that countries like Japan and Singapore, to lesser extent, Germany might import hydrogen, because let's presume that a lot of the hydrogen production that takes place is going to be via electrolysis or potentially via blue hydrogen or whatever. Either way, you need natural gas or you need power, you need land. Those are things that Japan and Singapore and places like that don't have, and Germany may not have enough of. So I get why that would make sense. China has an abundance of land at a minimum and the ability to build stuff like transmission lines. Like what is the argument for why China would import hydrogen?

Well, you would have to ask the people who have done their studies because they are not particularly explicit about that. I think they are probably comparing the fact that the demand in China is particularly large right now. China is the largest producer and consumer of hydrogen. The numbers vary a little bit, but roughly around a third of total. hydrogen demand is consumed in China. And if you want to decarbonize that, then you know,

you would need a lot of low-carbon hydrogen or clean hydrogen. So I think this is, you know, why some people are seeing China as a potential big market for clean hydrogen. But I think this is actually one of the number one questions that everybody needs to ask himself. Is China going to import hydrogen? And that's probably also what people need to pay attention to. We have not really seen, you know, the Chinese being particularly active in all this geopolitics of hydrogen, you know, the energy or the hydrogen diplomacy. There have been a lot of deals being signed by a certain number of European countries, Japan, Korea, with potential exporters of hydrogen. But China has been relatively absent of all those deals. So I think, you know, that is an very important

question. People are focusing too much on, you know, the usual suspects and probably not in the elephant in the room. Okay, yeah, I mean, a priori, I, it doesn't make sense to me that China would become a massive hydrogen importer. It feels like exactly the kind of thing hydrogen would self-produce

if they need a lot of clean hydrogen, but who knows, maybe I'm wrong. Anyway, back to the core point here, which is, as you said, the challenge with hydrogen transport, particularly large volume, long distance transcontinental hydrogen transport, is this volumetric energy density problem,

which, just to repeat it, it's not a weight problem. It's a space problem. You just need a lot of space if you're transporting hydrogen gas in its natural form. So no one's proposing doing that, right? No one is saying, let's just take hydrogen gas in its natural form, put it in a tanker and chip it around. Everybody recognizes that's a crazy idea. What people are proposing is doing something to that hydrogen and then moving it around. And so I think what we want to spend most of our time talking about are the various options that people have proposed for the form in which to move hydrogen around and think a little bit through the kind of trade-offs with each one. So briefly, the five that we're going to talk about, which are, I think, not the only five

possible ways to move hydrogen around, but are certainly the ones that have gotten the most attention are liquefying it, turning it back into, or turning it into methane, into e-methane, turning it into ammonia, which we've talked about on this podcast before, turning it in and methanol or using what's called a liquid organic hydrogen carrier. So let's run through each of those, and I think for each one, we'll talk about what the transformation actually would be to get it into that form and then kind of the trade-offs. So let's just start with liquefying hydrogen. This is what we're doing to natural gas.

This is why we have all these LNG terminals getting built up everywhere. We are doing transcontinental trade of natural gas. And as you said, natural gas also not nearly as energy dense from a volume methamphetamine perspective as oil. So we've sort of solved that, at least to some extent, in natural gas with liquefification. Why is that not just the solution for hydrogen? Because of the temperature, mostly. I mean, with LNG liquefied natural gas, the temperature is minus 160 degrees. With hydrogen, it's minus 253 degrees. I don't know whether you have done chemistry or physics in the past, but you know, the absolute zero is minus 273 degrees. So we are just 20 degrees,

about that. So that's really, really, really super cold, right? So that's why, you know, in order to liquefy at this kind of temperatures, I mean, first of all, you need a lot of energy. So just in order to do the process. I mean, typically right now, it's about, you know, 30% of the energy, which is in hydrogen, would be, you know, used in order to basically liquefy the hydrogen. Typically, for natural gas, it's between 5 to 10%. I mean, now the liquefaction plants are becoming more and more, you know, efficient. So that's already a pretty complicated thing. And then, well, you need also, you know, to have a completely different choice of material

which are still being tested. I mean, the liquefaction process, you know, in itself is known as mature. I mean, we are liquefying hydrogen in order to basically, you know, send that to the space. I mean, this is very much used in the space industry. So the NASA knows very well how to liquefy hydrogen. The problem is to do that at scale, you know, a lot of volumes, etc. and also to reduce the energy consumption, which is currently being dedicated to the leafy coer faction.

But for me, you know, one of the complicated things is also to transport this hydrogen. It has been done only once between Australia and Japan, so you can already see, you know, the kind of trips that we are envisaging. And it was done at the very beginning of last year. So it was a boat called the Suizo Frontier. and the Suizo Frontier transported about 75 tons of hydrogen.

So just to give you an idea, I mean, the global market for hydrogen right now is 94 million tons of hydrogen. So that tinny boat transported 75 tons of hydrogen. So we would need to multiply the volumes that, you know, these boat transports by a factor of about 1,000, actually a little bit more. So the volume of that boat is about 1,250 cubic meter. And right now, what people are envisaging is increasing that to 160,000 cubic meter.

So you can see that, you know, there is a lot to be done. Yeah, to me, the scale-up challenge of building a bunch of terminals and then a bunch of ships to move liquefied hydrogen around, that's a challenge. It's a ton of CAP-X. I'm sure there's engineering challenges there too. That, to me, is the lesser issue where the primary issue is what you first mentioned, which is the cost, which is basically a function of the energy cost to get it liquefied in the first place.

That adds up to a pretty significant cost and makes it really difficult to sort of make, imagine the numbers penciling for delivered hydrogen to one of these importers in liquefied form, which is I think why everybody is interested in some of these alternatives, which are less similar to what we have already proven are doing in natural gas. Yeah. But, I mean, what you have to understand is, you know, the kind of costs which are given now are, in fact, costs for 2030, you know, so themselves are already assuming a certain number of improvements

to the technology that we have now. and viscose by 2030 are still quite significant. Okay, so that's a fundamental challenge with liquefication. Let's talk about some of the more novel ideas. Let's start with the other one that looks most like natural gas, I think, next, because it is literally natural gas. So the other thing you can do, and the benefit of this version is that you then do take advantage

of all this infrastructure that already has been built for natural gas. basically you take hydrogen, you combine it with CO2 through a process called methanation, you produce CH4, which is natural gas, and then you just use the existing natural gas infrastructure. There's something in some ways very elegant about it. There's something also that I think anyone who's thinking through the thermodynamics of it sort of hates. But what are your thoughts on what people call e-methane? E-methane, yeah, for electromagnet, or some people are calling it also a synthetic methane. the Japanese, I think, are using carbon neutral gas or LNG

because they are going to import LNG. I mean, this is a concept which is particularly popular in Japan because they are thinking that, you know, they don't have to change indeed their LNG import infrastructure. This is also a concept which is quite interesting for some companies in Europe. And indeed, I mean, one of the key problems is the cost of that. I mean, you know, the cost of producing the emithel. would be, I mean, the estimates from the IA right now is something around $80 per Mmb2,

which is about 10 times, you know, the normal price of natural gas. So that is quite expensive. And you have also to think about the source of CO2 because eventually you are going to burn that methane. So there are different concepts. Either you are using CO2, which is coming from direct air capture, or this is biogenic CO2. So it might have a cost. I mean, that direct capture is not particularly something which exists at scale right now.

Or you are doing something which has been proposed by the three energy solution project in Germany from Marco Alvera. You are doing a little circle with your CO2. So you're taking the CO2, you are indeed mixing that with hydrogen, transforming that into methane, etc. But at the end, when you're arriving in the importing country, then you are getting the CO2 back and you are sending it, back to the exporter of hydrochain and you have a cycle, an eternal cycle of CO2, except that, of course, you are going to have some losses there and there, so you need to

compensate that. So I think you made one key point, which is, you know, the source of CO2 matters here. For this to be actually a climate benefit, it needs to be biogenic CO2 or it needs to be CO2 from direct air capture. That obviously has a higher cost than the CO2 you would have gotten off of a flu stack or something like that. So really it comes down to here. I mean, the benefit is using the existing.

infrastructure, and that should not be, that should not be discounted, particularly for countries like Japan, right? That is a big deal. That infrastructure is very expensive, and it would be very expensive to build entirely new infrastructure for something, for, for example, liquefied hydrogen terminals. So it's not nothing, but if the cost is going to be $80 per MBTU, it's really hard to get excited about that. This is the current cost. I mean, you know, the whole question is about where you would go. And this is the whole thing about, you know, all these different ways of transporting hydrogen. There are many of them. It's not like natural gas. With natural gas, it was easy. It's either pipeline or you liquefy. Very easy. Here we have so many solutions. And if we embark in each of them,

then we are not going to get the cost improvements that are required. But people are still arguing which one is the best. And, you know, it might also depend from the exporter strategy. It might also depend from the importer strategy. I've spent the last year asking people in Europe. But what exactly is a hydrogen-ready LNG import terminal? Because people in Europe think that, you know, they can just use their LNG import terminal and transform it in order to import something else,

which would be related to hydrogen, whether this is liquid hydrogen, whether this is ammonia, or whether this is e-methane, then it depends on whom you are talking to. Virtual power plants are becoming a reliable way for utilities to manage capacity, but enrolling devices is just the start. What really matters is confidence, knowing those resources will perform when dispatched, and being able to prove it from the control room to the living room. Energy Hub's platform handles the full picture, from near real-time forecasting, locational dispatch,

and the kind of rigorous verification that holds up when regulators, grid operators, or leadership asked, did it deliver? Easy enrollment creates momentum. Proven performance builds trust. That's why more than 170 utilities rely on Energy Hub to manage over 2.5 million devices delivering 3.4 gigawatts of flexible capacity. See what that looks like at energy hub.com. We're living through a profound economic shift, and energy sits at the center of all of it. Trillions of dollars are flowing into power plants, transmission lines, battery factories, data centers, but the future of energy isn't shaped by technology alone. It's shaped by markets, by policy, by capital, and by the institutions that connect them. I'm Alfred Johnson, CEO of Crux, the capital platform for the clean economy. Join me for my

brand new show, Critical Capital, as I talk with people deploying capital, shaping policy, and building projects. Together, we unpack how risk is priced, how incentives are structured, and how progress is actually made. Listen to critical capital on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. So the nice thing about e-methane or synthetic methane is that it doesn't, you don't have to deal with a lot of that stuff really just comes down to cost to me, right? And $80 Spem and BTU is not going to cut it. $20 sperm and BTU might. And so it's just a function of can you make, And really the cost of the synthetic methane is predominantly the cost of the hydrogen. Just that's a relatively speaking, it's a much bigger chunk.

So if you get cheap enough hydrogen, it starts to become interesting, but it requires really cheap hydrogen. And then you have to deal with methanation. And then you have to deal with the source of CO2. And the source of CO2. That's right. Okay. So continuing along our list, so we've talked about just liquefying it.

We've talked about turning it back into, or turning it into natural gas, turning it into CH4. Before we move on and talk about transforming hydrogen into entirely different molecule, let's talk about these ideas of these hydrogen carriers, which can be used to make hydrogen more energy dense, basically, and then re-extract hydrogen in its gaseous form or whatever for use on the other side. The one that I think it has gotten the most attention is liquid organic hydrogen carriers or LOHCs. Talk about what these are and how this might work. So it's basically a molecule, an organic molecule. I mean, there are several of them being thought about,

and they basically can absorb hydrogen. And then so you have a process which is called hydrogenation, and then you have a process which is called de-hydrogenation. So you have to think of it as a transporter of hydrogen. So you are just putting the molecule of hydrogen onto this bigger molecule. There are several problems. One of the biggest problems is when you are arriving to your import terminal,

then the process is particularly energy intensive. So this is one of the biggest problem indeed. However, the beauty of these products, which are not far away from oil products, is that they are relatively easy to transport. Some of them might have some toxicity issues, but usually they're easier to deal with in terms of pressure, in terms of temperature, compared to liquid hydrochene, for example.

But funny thing is that not that many people are looking at them. You know, one of the few examples that I know of an actual trial is, for example, exports from Brunei to Japan. So again, Japan, I mean, Japan is basically testing every single solution because they know so well that they have to import that they are testing liquid hydrogen, they are testing liquid organic hydrogen carriers, they're testing ammonia, etc. Okay, so let's just dig in a little bit more then. How do these liquid organic hydrogen carriers compare, I think to liquefied hydrogen is probably the most relevant, direct comparison.

How do they compare against each other, I guess predominantly in terms of cost, which is probably the most important metric, but anything else that we think of as being important in this context? Well, as I mentioned, I mean, you know, the beauty of this product is that, you know, this is not something which is completely foreign, so people would know how to deal with them. However, the cost is still high,

but much lower than the expected cost of liquid hydrogen. So, you know, when I was talking about, you know, the high range of liquid hydrogen by 2030, which is above $7 per kilogram, you know, the high range for liquid organic hydrogen carriers would be around $4 per kilogram. So this is much lower already. much affordable, possibly down to 2.5, but yeah.

Right. So basically the trade-off here is, it seems like on paper liquid organic hydrogen carrier is probably a better solution than liquefied hydrogen. Maybe the catch is just that they're early and sort of unproven. Yes, and that, you know, funny enough,

it doesn't seem to attract a lot of attention. I have not found a lot of people who were really, I mean, I know that, you know, Japan and a few European players are looking into that, But compared to another solution that I am sure you are going to mention after that one, you know, it doesn't seem to be the favorite. Right. I've found that sort of surprising as well because on paper they do seem pretty interesting.

I mean, it's still expensive. You know, like you said, the high end of $4 per kilogram, so that's the high end. Let's assume it could be cheaper. But, you know, we want the hydrogen itself to be sub $3 a kilogram. Ideally, you know, to compete in North America with existing SMR-based. not clean hydrogen, you know, you're down in the $1.50 per kilogram range. So just to contextualize it, you know, you could double, the delivered cost could be double or more the produced cost of hydrogen if you end up spending three or four dollars a kilogram

on transportation. Now, that might still be worth it, depending on who your customer is and what they can pay, but it is a hefty premium. So I think there's a lot of work to be done on the technology side there, but I find them pretty interesting nonetheless, and I agree with you that. I'm surprised that they get less attention than the next two things that we're about to talk about. Yeah, I mean, just to say, I mean, you know, if the transport cost is indeed remaining at $3,4 per kilogram, I mean, you know, this is kind of game over because that would come on top of the production cost of hydrogen. So that would make hydrogen outrageously expensive.

And then we have a problem in terms of the penetration of hydrogen in the economy. I mean, there is nobody who is going to use hydrogen at such a high cost. I mean, $1 per kilogram of hydrogen is roughly equivalent to a bit more than about $9 per MMBT. You know, roughly, you are talking about $50 per barrel for $1 per kilogram of hydrogen. So if you're talking about, oh, yeah, $3.4. Okay, so that's $150 to $200 per barrel for just the transport of hydrogen. So that's just expensive from an energy point of view. Okay, so let's talk about the last two categories.

And these, I'm grouping together because both of these are existing markets that we already transform hydrogen into as part of the existing hydrogen economy, such as it is, but are now getting additional attention as hydrogen carriers beyond their direct use. And that's ammonia and methanol. So, and particularly, I think where this battle is raging the most is in shipping because both of these, you know, you can transport, you can use ammonia or methanol as a hydrogen carrier, meaning put it inside a boat and ship it from one country to another and then offload it and use it for something. But they can also be the fuel that powers ships.

And there's sort of a, there's a battle raging between the future of shipping fuel between ammonia and methanol that is sort of interesting in and of itself. But maybe just do a quick comparison of specifically in the context, of being a hydrogen carrier, how we should think about ammonia and methanol relative to everything else we've talked about so far? So I think, I mean, actually it's interesting because, you know, again, we are talking so much more about ammonia than methanol.

I think methanol is in the corner, but not so much talked about. And I think, you know, it should be more talked about. But ammonia by 20, 30 should be roughly, in the same range as the LOHC. And sometimes actually people consider a methanol itself as an LOHC because it's also

an organic compound. So, you know, I personally don't put it together with the LOHC because as you mentioned, it can be used as such as an hydrogen derivative and I think this is particularly important. Also a big difference between ammonia and methanol is that methanol is mostly considered for shipping.

There are some people who are quite considering that for other applications. But ammonia has also potential applications, at least according to the Japanese, in the power generation sector. So when you are looking at, you know, the Japanese hydrogen strategy, they do envisage to use that combined with coal. So right now, they are looking at cofiring with 20% of ammonia. And this is why it could be potentially a bigger market for ammonia. And that's why when you are looking at a certain number of forecast, there is a tendency currently to see a relatively bright future for ammonia as a way to transport hydrogen.

But it has a big problem, in my opinion, that's the toxicity. And this is a major one that you really have to deal with besides the cost and everything else. So how do you think about the toxicity of ammonia? You know, you hear people say both directions here. One direction is ammonia is toxic and corrosive and very dangerous, requires specialty handling and occasionally causes explosions, wouldn't we be crazy to, you know, proliferate an ammonia transport ecosystem with all the dangers that that poses?

On the other hand, you have people say, well, we already do it, right? We produce a lot of ammonia. All of that ammonia production is centralized. It results in then a, you know, fairly large intercontinental transport, existing intercontinental transport of ammonia today for the purpose of fertilizer. So what's so crazy about just expanding what we're already doing? Well, I mean, when you are transporting that, you know, you are transporting that in a relatively smaller quantities than it would be transported

if indeed it becomes a primary carrier of hydrogen. So the quantities would be completely different. You will also be talking about not only, you know, delivering that to ports, but potentially transporting that, you know, forward weaving countries. I mean, there are a lot of countries' legislations, which are not. even ready for that. I know that in some countries we have ammonia pipelines which exist. ammonia is also transported by different ways like back trucks, etc. But there are also a certain number of countries for which it is a dangerous product. And indeed people are a little bit

skeptical about using that, well, in different things, in particular in power generation. Okay, so we have these five options that we've talked about. Liquehifying hydrogen, turning it into CH4, using a liquid organic hydrogen carrier and then getting the hydrogen back out, turning it into ammonia, turning it into methanol. Now, again, ammonia and methanol sit in a slightly different category because you could then turn it into ammonia or methanol and then use ammonia or use methanol directly and then never try to get the hydrogen back out. And that's one of the reasons people are excited about those two options. But that aside, if we just assume hydrogen to hydrogen transported a long

distance in between. Do we have any sense of amongst these five what looks to be the cheapest, or is it totally dependent on, for example, the future cost of LOHCs or how cheap it's going to be to get the hydrogen back in the gaseous form from a liquefied form? Like what are the big factors that determine, you know, what wins just on a cost basis? Well, I think given that, you know, you need for each of this process to basically scale up or do some improvement on the efficiency. I think one of the critical factors is probably moving towards the one direction

and not the five at the same time. Because it's the same thing as with the electrolyzers. I mean, you really want to focus and you really want to be able to capture as much as possible. And this is mostly my preoccupation when I'm seeing so many different options to transport hydrogen. And we have not even talked about actually the best one, which is transporting hydrogen by pipeline,

which can also be an option between, you know, different continents and will be definitely an option and the cheapest option for Europe. I think right now it's a battle between LHC and ammonia in terms of course for the kind of next 10 years. But there are people who are saying, yeah, by 2050, you know, they can all converge to roughly one dollar per kilogram, eventually or even maybe by 2040. I mean, the question is whether we can actually achieve this kind of cost reduction because you need to scale up this process. You need to improve these processes if we are moving forward with all of them.

That's such a great point that we haven't talked about hydrogen pipelines, which is crazy. Right. We should obviously talk about that. That is, it's clearly the right answer, in my opinion. Well, for Europe, definitely. For the others, for Singapore, for Japan, definitely. for Japan and Korea, this is a little bit problematic

because if you remember what happened with natural gas, they import LNG and not a single drop of pipeline gas. Even though in theory, Russia is not that far away, but no, it has not happened at all. So, I mean, for Europe, it makes total sense to import

hydrogen by pipeline from Norway. And there is actually a project which is moving forward between Germany and Norway, which is sponsored by RWE and Equino. So that's project. There is a lot of interest also from import hydrogen from North Africa. So there are a certain number of countries which are interested in exporting hydrogen. Whether it's going to be by pipeline or not, that also depends on the development of the infrastructure within Europe.

Because if you are looking at countries like Morocco, like Mauritania, where do they land? Well, they land into Spain. And then where do they go? Well, they need to go to, you know, again, the market of interest, which is Germany, which means that they have to go through France, they have to go through the whole country, etc. So, you know, it will depend on ultimately on how the European infrastructure is also developed. I mean, on the paper, makes total sense.

And I think Norway here has an advantage because, well, they can potentially reuse their own pipelines, or at least, you know, they know exactly how to transport the hydrogen from wherever they are going to produce it. I think first it's going to be based on natural gas and CCS, and eventually, of wind plants in the North Sea and then towards Germany. Yeah, right.

That's a good point. So intra-Europe, intra-North America, ultimately, if we are building a hydrogen economy, we're going to probably build a bunch of pipelines. When is a challenge, and there's a chicken or an egg problem there, there's lots of challenges doing it, but it just seems like the obvious thing to do. But it's a good point that that probably isn't the solution for some of these countries that are thinking about importing hydrogen anyway because they can't build a pipeline.

It's part of the reason they need to import stuff by boat already. Yeah, but even that question about transporting the hydrogen internally is not that easy. There are a lot of people who are scratching their heads, first of all, on can we repurpose the natural gas pipeline into hydrogen? Because it has a much lower cost. I mean, you are gaining something like, you know, 50 to 80 percent of the cost if you are reusing your pipeline. So, you know, in terms of system costs, this is much better. The question is you need to assess each of your pipelines in order to know whether, these pipelines can be repurposed and handle 100% of hydrogen.

I have to say that in Europe, they are already well ahead. There are a lot of groups, and we are actually quite lucky that in Europe, we have groups like NSOG and GIE. They are regrouping all the transmission system operators together. I have to say, I don't think the US can actually benefit from that kind of coordination. But this is absolutely essential. You need to have a mapping. you need to have a census of all the different natural gas pipelines,

and you need to understand to what extent they can or not transport hydrogen, and in particular, 100% hydrogen. So that is absolutely necessary. And then it's going to depend whether you have a system where you have, for example, two pipelines which are running in parallel, and then you can disconnect one, replace it by hydrogen, and you can continue to run with the others, because the thing is that we need to connect supply-on-demand.

But that's not easy, and you need at the same time to continue to run a natural gas economy. So, you know, it's not so easy as you think or as you try to describe it. No, I mean, it's definitely not easy. There's all sorts of challenges. I'm just saying it's the right answer. I'm not saying it's the answer that's going to be easy or that we're going to do, again, for within regions where pipelines are feasible. You've a couple of times mentioned, I think, one of the big challenges is just stepping way back at the highest level, which I guess is maybe how I'll wrap up with you, which is because there are these various options and all are being considered simultaneously, we're not really yet at the point where we are sort of driving up the maturity and down the cost curve rapidly on any one of them because nothing has won over all the other options. Do you see us getting past that? Are there going to be winners for this transcontinental high?

hydrogen trade and like what would have to happen for for winners to emerge or are we just going to end up with a bunch of different options all being proposed but none of them really taking flight fast enough because they have to compete with all the others so I'm going to give you two step answers I think right now what we are seeing is that a certain number of projects based on ammonia seem to be moving forward one very big example of that is a neon project in Saudi Arabia, which is going to export about a quarter of million tons of hydrogen based on ammonia has basically decided to move ahead and is being built right now. But more broadly, because I mentioned several times that, you know, if you want to use hydrogen as hydrogen, and we are

not talking about using ammonia or using methanol as a final product, which I think, you know, in that condition, this is okay to transport them as such. But if you want to transport hydrogen or to use hydrogen as a final product, then there is a key question about whether it makes sense for industries. So I'm talking about, you know, steel, et cetera, to import the hydrogen or whether it's actually better for countries which have low-cost hydrogen to produce steel, to produce hot-bricot iron, and to export these products towards developed economies. And this is a major issue from an industrial point of view. But this is an issue which has to be discussed, because this is also a question of, you know, the value of hydrogen for the developing countries which

are going to be blessed with a lot of renewable potential. I mean, you know, are they just going to get the money from these hydrogen projects and you have a bunch of people from Europe or from Japan who are going to come and say, hey, I'm taking the renewable energy, I'm transforming hydrogen and I'm taking everything with me. And then I'm importing super expensive hydrogen, which is actually not going to be competitive for my industry, or is it better to actually produce such products in developing countries at a lower cost? And they are going to be much easier to transport.

And that's, you know, already part of the answer with ammonia and ethanol, but you can think about other products. You can think about, you know, e-carosine, you can think about steel, et cetera. And I think this is absolutely essential to look at that. And if I take a step back from all the technical considerations, from an economic point of view, many developing countries want to benefit the maximum from hydrogen. And hydrogen is not a rent business. It's not like oil or gas.

It's a conversion industry. So you are never going to get as much revenues and benefits as you were with oil and gas. But if you are fostering industrial developments with low-carbon hydrogen, then there is an opportunity for developing countries which have a high potential in hydrogen to actually get better benefits than just revenues from pure export of hydrogen. Well, Anne Sophie, this is going to be an open, active area of lots of announcements and activity, maybe fewer final investment decisions, but something going on for some long period of time. time, I suspect. So there will be more to talk about in the future, but in the meantime, thank you so much for joining me again. Thank you very much for the invitation. Anne Sophie Corbeau is a senior research scholar at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy. This show is a co-production of PostCrup Media and Canary Media. You can head over to canarymedia.com

for links to today's topics. PostCrip is supported by Prelude Ventures, a venture capital firm that partners with entrepreneurs to address climate change across a range of sectors, including advanced energy, food and ag, transportation and logistics, advanced materials and manufacturing and advanced computing. This episode was produced by Daniel Waldorf, mixing by Roy Campanella and Sean Marquand, theme song by Sean Marquand. I'm Shail Khan, and this is Catalyst.