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2 weeks ago
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Source: AFP
Japan wants to go a hydrogen substance person to conscionable its net-zero goals, but 1 blockbuster task is hanging successful the equilibrium implicit questions astir its clime credentials.
The Hydrogen Energy Supply Chain (HESC) is billed arsenic a billion-dollar effort to vessel liquid hydrogen from Australia to Japan.
However, acold feet astir the task successful Australia means HESC volition root hydrogen from Japan to conscionable a 2030 deadline for its objection phase.
Hydrogen sounds promising connected paper: portion fossil fuels emit planet-warming greenhouse gases, burning hydrogen creates lone h2o vapour.
But it has not yet lived up to its promise, with respective much-hyped projects globally struggling to flooded precocious costs and engineering challenges.
Hydrogen's clime credentials besides beryllium connected however it is produced.
"Green hydrogen" uses renewable energy, portion "blue hydrogen" relies connected fossil fuels specified arsenic ember and gas, with carbon-capture technology to trim emissions.
"Brown hydrogen" is produced by fossil fuels without immoderate c capture.
The HESC task aims to nutrient bluish hydrogen successful the Australian authorities of Victoria, harnessing abundant section supplies of lignite coal.
With the world's archetypal liquid hydrogen tanker and an imposing retention tract adjacent Kobe successful Japan, HESC had been touted arsenic a flagship experimentation showcasing Japan's ambitions for the fuel.
HESC says it aims to yet nutrient capable hydrogen to "reduce astir 1.8 cardinal tonnes per annum of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere".
Japan's vigor assemblage emitted 974 cardinal tonnes of CO2 from substance combustion successful 2022, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
'Strong opposition'
Japan's authorities pledged 220 cardinal yen (now $1.4 billion) to HESC's existent "commercial demonstration" phase, which has a completion deadline of 2030.
But to conscionable this deadline, the task volition present root hydrogen successful Japan.
That has been blamed connected acold feet among Australian officials acrophobic astir the project's biology payoff.
A spokesperson for Japan's Kawasaki Heavy Industries, 1 of the companies down HESC, said the determination to displacement accumulation to Japan was taken "chiefly due to the fact that of hold successful procedures connected the Australian side".
The Victoria authorities did not respond to repeated requests for comment, though Australian officials person told section media that the determination was a Japanese "commercial decision".
Source: AFP
Australia's cooling involvement successful the task is owed to "strong opposition" from biology activists and vigor experts opposed to c seizure and storage, said Daisuke Akimoto of Tokyo University of Information Sciences.
"The main occupation the task faces is the deficiency of support of the bluish hydrogen task by the Victorian government," Akimoto said.
Kawasaki said it has not yet decided what benignant of hydrogen it volition procure successful Japan and downplayed the project's challenges.
"We are precise positive" astir HESC and "there is nary change" to the extremity of gathering a caller proviso chain, the spokesperson said, declining to beryllium named.
'Evidence gap'
However, sourcing the hydrogen locally leaves "a captious grounds spread astatine the mediate of the project" -- proving c seizure and retention enactment -- explained David Cebon, an engineering prof astatine the University of Cambridge.
That is "difficult and challenging and not being done successfully anywhere", Cebon said.
Kawasaki has said it volition proceed "feasibility studies" for the HESC project, but Cebon believes it volition "quietly die", partially due to the fact that of the outgo of shipping hydrogen to Japan.
To beryllium transported by oversea arsenic a liquid, hydrogen needs to beryllium cooled to -253 degrees Celsius (-423.4 Fahrenheit) -- an expensive, energy-intensive process.
"I deliberation wiser heads successful the authorities conscionable realised however brainsick it is," said Mark Ogge from the Australia Institute think-tank.
Japanese vigor institution Kansai Electric has separately withdrawn from a antithetic task to nutrient "green" hydrogen successful Australia.
A institution spokesperson declined to remark connected reports that the determination was owed to ballooning costs.
'It volition instrumentality decades'
Resource-poor Japan is the world's 5th largest single-country emitter of c dioxide.
It already produces immoderate hydrogen domestically, mostly utilizing earthy state and lipid oregon atomic power, though this is constricted and expensive.
Some experts are sanguine astir HESC's challenges.
Noe van Hulst, a hydrogen advisor to the IEA, said it was important to instrumentality the agelong view.
"Pilot projects are undertaken to trial innovations successful practice: learning-by-doing," helium told AFP.
"Yes, it is hard to make a low-carbon hydrogen marketplace and it volition instrumentality decades," arsenic with upwind and star energy, van Hulst said.
Solar successful peculiar has seen costs plummet and uptake soar acold beyond archetypal expectations and astatine greater speed.
And for now, "there isn't truly an alternate (to) decarbonise these hard-to-electrify sectors similar steel, cement, ships and planes", van Hulst added.
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Source: AFP
