GE charting the future with 100% hydrogen-fuelled power plants by 2030.
Thursday, April 22, marks the 51st Earth Day, and governments, companies, as well as ordinary people concerned about the planet’s climate are taking part in events celebrating the birth of the modern environmental movement. The White House, for example, is hosting a Leaders Summit on Climate this week that will bring together representatives of 17 countries responsible for some 80% of global carbon emissions and also global gross domestic product (GDP), as well a business and civil society leaders, including Danielle Merfeld, vice president and chief technology officer at GE Renewable Energy. They will discuss ways to cut carbon emissions, new technologies that can help with decarbonization, helping vulnerable countries exposed to climate change, and other topics.
The way forward includes renewable energy and wind and solar energy are already an important part of the massive infrastructure plan currently being debated in Washington, D.C. Proposals include extending tax credits and building enough offshore wind turbines to capture 30 gigawatts of wind energy by 2030.
That would be enough to power the equivalent of more than 10 million American homes and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 78 million metric tons. Meanwhile, countries around the world are mandating reductions in carbon emissions from power generation, and more than two dozen large U.S. utilities have pledged to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
Curbing coal use, which produces one-third of all carbon emissions worldwide, is another key priority. “There’s no doubt that the electricity sector is the lead horse in decarbonization,” said former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz recently at a Washington Post Live “The Future of Energy” event sponsored by GE. “The investor-owned utilities are heading toward 50% reductions in emissions in this decade and are prepared to pick up the pace even more in response to the president’s challenges.”
READ the latest news shaping the hydrogen market at Hydrogen Central
GE, whose technology supplies more than one-third of the world’s electricity, is taking on climate change by making sustainable energy generation a priority of its business and research. GE Renewable Energy, for instance, is working on huge wind power projects in Oklahoma and New Mexico that will each generate more than a gigawatt of power. Its offshore wind turbines and power transmission technology has been selected for projects in the North Sea and off the East Coast of the U.S.
In Europe, Australia and other countries, it’s developing hydropower as another low-carbon alternative in a future powered by renewables. In Asia, GE is working toward replacing coal-powered generators with its latest turbines that use natural gas, which can produce as much as 60% less carbon than coal-fired power stations. And because the sun isn’t always shining nor the wind blowing, the company also is working to combine storage with renewables and help make wind and solar energy available on demand. One such project is proposed to go up in upstate New York.
Retooling the future of energy is going to be a group effort and GE’s got hundreds of engineers on the case. Here is a selection of the most recent projects involving GE that seek to help lower the world’s carbon emissions.
GE charting the future with 100% hydrogen-fuelled power plants by 2030
GE released a report in December detailing how natural gas can help power a lower-carbon future: With the output of renewables like wind and solar linked to the weather, gas turbines can step in quickly to keep the electric grid in balance. But natural gas isn’t the only fuel those turbines can process.
They can also run on hydrogen, the universe’s most abundant element, which can yield zero CO2 emissions. And they can also run on a mixture of gas and hydrogen. Now a proof of that concept is rising on the banks of the Ohio River. GE is working on the first purpose-built power plant in the U.S. where a turbine from the company’s most advanced turbine fleet — the HA — will start burning a blend of natural gas and hydrogen and aims to transition to 100% hydrogen by 2030.
Elementally powerful: Scheduled to come online this fall, the 485-megawatt plant in Hannibal, Ohio — operated by Long Ridge Energy Terminal — should have enough capacity to light the equivalent of 400,000 U.S. homes. The technology is something GE has experience with: More than 75 GE gas turbines have already racked up over 6 million operating hours running on hydrogen or hydrogen-like fuels. “It’s something we can do today,” said GE Gas Power’s Brian Gutknecht. At first, hydrogen will constitute between 15-20% by volume in the gas stream going into the turbine in the Hannibal plant, which aims to increase that proportion over time until the machine runs solely on hydrogen in a decade or so — which would eliminate approximately up to 1.6 million tons of CO2 emissions annually.
Hydrogen may be plentiful, but it has some hurdles to overcome before it can be widely adopted. Learn more here about the technologies that will enable the hydrogen revolution.
Check out the rest of the article that touches upon other clean technologies here
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