For a long time, hydrogen blending has been widely favored by the industry as an effective way to reduce carbon in the natural gas field. However, there are still multiple challenges in the field of hydrogen blending of natural gas, such as technology, cost, and limited carbon reduction effect. Large-scale promotion still takes time.
Recently, Nortegas, Spain's second largest natural gas distributor, announced the opening of the country's first natural gas hydrogen blending pilot project. It plans to gradually increase the proportion of hydrogen in natural gas infrastructure and equipment, and try to use a mixture of natural gas and hydrogen to generate electricity.
Nortegas plans to gradually test the effect of hydrogen mixing in the gas injection system, gas compression system and other links. At the same time, it will test the intelligent hydrogen mixing device to gradually increase the hydrogen mixing ratio in the natural gas system and realize the conversion and transformation of natural gas pipelines. In addition, the company said that it will also develop new materials and components suitable for 100% hydrogen systems, and ultimately achieve pure hydrogen energy supply.
In fact, with the exception of Spain, the "trend" of natural gas hydrogenation has swept across many countries. As of May this year, the United Kingdom, the United States, Belgium, Germany and other countries have launched natural gas hydrogenation plans.
The first half of last year saw positive results from the UK's first natural gas hydrogen blending pilot project. In January of this year, the British power grid agency ENA announced that it would achieve the goal of adding 20% hydrogen in natural gas pipelines by 2023. To this end, the British government has asked five local natural gas pipeline network operators to prepare. Last year, the European Commission also publicly stated that the EU is formulating the latest standards for domestic heating boilers, among which the requirement of “at least 20% hydrogen content” is eye-catching.
The industry generally believes that there are many benefits to experimenting with the emerging technology of natural gas hydrogenation, the most important of which is to reduce the consumption of natural gas, a fossil fuel.
At the same time, the industry has also widely reached a consensus that when the proportion of hydrogen mixed in natural gas pipelines is controlled below 20%, large-scale transformation of energy infrastructure can be avoided.
However, it is worth noting that many agencies such as the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) have repeatedly reminded that there are still certain technical challenges in natural gas hydrogenation. IRENA pointed out at the end of April that the proportion of hydrogen that can be accommodated in each natural gas pipeline network and each natural gas pipeline varies globally, and without large-scale infrastructure renovations, the final feasible hydrogen blending ratio may be low. than expected.
A number of industry organizations further stated that the current production cost of hydrogen is still much higher than that of natural gas. If the hydrogen blending of natural gas is to be promoted on a large scale, the government and enterprises need to calculate the "economic account".
According to IRENA's calculations, mixing 20% of hydrogen can only reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 7% compared with the use of natural gas alone, and the cost of natural gas energy supply after mixing with hydrogen is much higher than that of natural gas alone.
The data shows that according to the current average cost of hydrogen production from renewable energy sources in the world, when the price of carbon dioxide should be above US$500/ton, natural gas hydrogenation will have certain economic benefits.
IRENA also pointed out that due to the high cost, hydrogen blending of natural gas also faces competition from other carbon reduction methods, such as the use of carbon capture and storage (CCS) devices to reduce carbon emissions. According to the speed of its market development, the cost will soon drop to 200 Below US$/ton, this will put a lot of pressure on the decarbonization of natural gas with hydrogen. In this regard, IRENA suggested that governments should provide corresponding subsidies for natural gas hydrogenation pipelines as soon as possible.
