Why hydrogen has the potential to unlock the solar resources from the Sahara Desert – Dr. Julio C. Garcia-Navarro.
Within the future hydrogen economy there is a lot of uncertainty around the transport and distribution of hydrogen, especially when the (potentially) largest producers of hydrogen will be halfway across the world (cf. my previous article about Chile; Lessons from Chile, the spearhead in the hydrogen revolution) with respect to the largest off-takers. Bringing the challenge closer to home, one of the main questions is how the future hydrogen transport system will look like.
The future of hydrogen is interlinked with the future of natural gas, not only because most of the current production of hydrogen in Europe is done via SMR (steam methane reforming), but also because it is possible (in principle) to solve the hydrogen transport challenge by repurposing the existing natural gas infrastructure in Europe.
A Pan-European coalition of gas TSOs (transport system operators) and DSOs (distribution system operators) has recently published a study where they foresee that almost 40.000 km of (repurposed) pipeline infrastructure will be ready to transport hydrogen as soon as 2030 and that the cost of transporting hydrogen will be between € 0.11 and € 0.22 per kg-H2. The consortium does not have a name (that I know of), but the study is titled European Hydrogen Backbone. Below is a comparison of pipeline transport vs transport of hydrogen carriers per ship according to the European Hydrogen Backbone:
Why hydrogen has the potential to unlock the solar resources from the Sahara Desert
It appears that pipeline transport is a more economically accessible solution than shipping hydrogen over distances between 1.000 and 3.000 km. This implies that pipeline transport could help us realize the European dream of harvesting the renewable potential of the Sahara Desert to electrify Europe.
The question of monetizing the Sahara Desert is by no means new: there has been a plethora of discussions and desk studies about possible options to utilize the Sahara Desert’s high solar irradiation to produce energy for Europe. Numbers vary but everyone agrees that covering a relatively small fraction of the Sahara Desert (e.g., 10.000 sq.km or 0.1% of its total surface) can be enough to provide all the world’s energy demand.
There have been talks of installing/developing HVDC (high-voltage DC lines) to carry electricity with minimal losses between North Africa and South Europe, while other discussions focus on extending the European electricity grid to North Africa. Apparently, it is technically and economically feasible to extend the electricity grid more than 1.000 km over without major energy losses: Boston, for example, gets electricity from Quebec, and it is reported that 1.000 miles only cause an energy loss of 2%.
The issue does not seem to be only related to techno-economics, unfortunately; it is also a political issue. It seems to be relatively easy to get the proper permissions to install a long-distance power grid when you are within the same country or with your neighbor with whom you have a strongly interlinked economy. I can imagine that the issue becomes more complex when the grid must be installed across several countries in two continents.
Fortunately, hydrogen is here to save the day. With hydrogen, you no longer need to worry about installing a massive power grid to connect Morocco or Algeria to Spain, France, or Italy; you can easily transport hydrogen across the Mediterranean Sea using the existing natural gas pipeline infrastructure. All you would need are the interconnections, which could be significantly cheaper than installing or extending the electricity grid. The image below (also part of the European Hydrogen Backbone study) shows a cost comparison between pipeline transport of hydrogen and grid transport of electricity:
Hydrogen has the potential to finally unlock the vast untapped solar resources of the Sahara Desert to provide cheap green hydrogen to Europe; repurposing the existing natural gas infrastructure will be crucial to ensure that hydrogen transport costs are low.
Dr. Julio C. Garcia-Navarro
Pipeline transport of hydrogen appears to be significantly cheaper than long-distance transport of electricity at distances at least up to 2.500 km; only high-capacity transport of electricity (8 GW) could compete with low-capacity transport of hydrogen (4.7 GW) at longer distances i.e., if we extrapolate the respective lines from the figure above to beyond 3.000 km. This finding is logical if we think about the fact that, while an electricity grid is basically a bunch of copper cables, a pipeline grid is comprised of hollow cylinders with a metallic (or polymeric) wall; vacuum is cheaper than copper.
The innate advantage of hydrogen as an energy carrier over electricity, putting the costs aside, is that hydrogen has the potential to
- monetize the large solar irradiation in tropical countries and areas with a low population density (i.e., where the land is cheap) and
- democratize the worldwide energy market, making the countries with PV potential finally be able to tap into that resource and sell it overseas for a profit.
I am excited about finally seeing the light in the Sahara Desert dilemma and I hope that discussions get accelerated between European and North African countries so everyone can benefit from the advantages of green hydrogen towards decarbonizing our planet.
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About the author
Dr. Julio C. Garcia-Navarro is a Hydrogen Project Coordinator at New Energy Coalition. He has worked in the hydrogen industry for nearly a decade, on topics such as hydrogen electrolysis, compression, and transportation. Besides hydrogen, he is passionate about Renewable Energy Systems and the Internet of Things.
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