Climate tech to save the planet: hype and hydrogen

This is an audio transcript of the Tech Tonic podcast episode: ‘Climate tech to save the planet: Hype and hydrogen’

Andrew Forrest
We actually cannot lose. I’m not saying that it’s not a distinct possibility. I wake up to it every single day. But the world has to move on from polluting fossil fuels. We simply have no choice about it now.

Pilita Clark
That’s Andrew Forrest, one of the richest people in Australia. But these days he’s also one of the world’s more unlikely environmentalists.

Andrew Forrest
Yes, I came across the sites hard and devoted four years of my life to make absolutely sure of it. And I am, as you can tell, completely committed.

Pilita Clark
The reason I call Forrest an unlikely environmentalist is because he made his fortune in the carbon-polluting mining sector. His mining empire is all about extracting iron ore and other heavy metals from the harsh Australian outback. Late last year, though, Forrest had this message for the fossil fuel industry.

Andrew Forrest
The party’s over. I know it, you know it. If unchecked, carbon dioxide climate chaos is going to render humanity extinct.

Pilita Clark
Now, Forrest’s the kind of character who makes headlines. He has a reputation as a knockabout, maverick upstart who took on the mining giants and won. In the past, he’s opposed things like a mining tax in Australia, which environmentalists supported. But then a few years ago, he started betting on a particular type of clean energy — green hydrogen.

Andrew Forrest
Green hydrogen — it’s the fuel of the future. Pure, totally clean.

Pilita Clark
These days, Forrest reckons, there’s a green hydrogen revolution coming and it could make him and Australia even richer.

Andrew Forrest
Well, I’d always like to think that Australia would be the Saudi Arabia of green hydrogen.

Pilita Clark
But perhaps more importantly, for the rest of the world, Forrest believes green hydrogen is going to be a crucial part of decarbonising the global economy. The question is: is he right?

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Pilita Clark
I’m Pilita Clark and this is Tech Tonic from the Financial Times, a podcast series about how technology is changing the world. Scientists say that the next few years are critical if we want to get a grip on global warming. And plenty of people say we can’t do that without a lot more new technology. So in this series, we’re asking: Is that really true, or is focusing on new technologies a dangerous distraction that’s eating up time we can’t afford to waste? In this episode, a technology that almost sounds too good to be true — green hydrogen. It’s derived from water, and when you burn it, it only emits water vapour. Which begs the question: why aren’t we all using it already?

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Pilita Clark
Here’s what makes green hydrogen such a good proposition as a clean energy source. To make it, you just zap water using electricity.

Clip from a TikTok video
Feeling pretty bored today, so I decided to make a hydrogen generator.

Pilita Clark
Now, if you’re someone who hangs out in the chemistry corners of TikTok or other social media, you will have seen people doing something similar.

Clip from a TikTok video
Then I took a mason jar and filled it with water and baking soda.

Pilita Clark
A guy —  and let’s face it, it usually is a guy — stands in his shed or garden or kitchen, and performs a simple experiment running an electrical current through a jug or jar of water.

Clip from a TikTok video
Then I grabbed the 9-volt battery and connected the leads. Oh! And then I watched myself make hydrogen. Oh, what fun!

Pilita Clark
What he’s doing there is a process called electrolysis. Basically using electricity to split water’s two hydrogen atoms from the oxygen one and capturing the hydrogen in the process. If the source of your electricity is renewable, well, congratulations. You’ve just made green hydrogen. Of course, demos like that one on TikTok make the process look easy. But the fact is, less than 1 per cent of all the hydrogen produced today is green. Almost all the hydrogen we use is made with fossil fuels. And that’s because making green hydrogen on an industrial scale and ensuring it gets to where it’s needed is technologically complicated and expensive. Andrew Forrest, who you heard at the top of the show, wants to change that.

Andrew Forrest
Yep, let’s rock and roll.

Pilita Clark
Forrest is sometimes called the “Green Hydrogen King”, and the way he sees it, green hydrogen is the perfect substitute for fossil fuel energy across a huge range of carbon-intensive industries, from heavy transport and shipping to the manufacture of steel and a whole host of other industrial processes.

Andrew Forrest
And then when you burn that pure hydrogen, it goes back to what it came from, which is water. I think that’s the best spell which has ever come out of Hogwarts. So I think Harry would be proud of that one. But it’s in fact pure science. It’s been around for a long time and you’ve got all the energy the world could ever need, plus a great deal. And all you’ll ever do with the waste is make pure drinking water.

Pilita Clark
Forrest is putting his money where his mouth is. He plans to use green hydrogen to decarbonise mining operations at his company, which is called Fortescue, so it can meet its net zero targets. Basically he thinks he’s trailblazing and once he shows there’s money in it, the rest of the industry will be compelled to follow his lead.

Andrew Forrest
Companies like ours that are committing really big balance sheets and capital, and I’m asking every chief executive and every chairman around the world to take the step of imagining their company without any fossil fuel and then just walk back the steps they need to get there to where we are listening to this podcast today.

Pilita Clark
But just let me put the brakes on here, because the way Forrest speaks, you might think the adoption of green hydrogen across a wide range of industries is a straightforward affair, a no brainer. But experts will tell you it’s complicated. Here’s one really obvious question: if you’re using renewable electricity to make green hydrogen, why not just use that electricity in the first place?

Nigel Brandon
We should always try and use renewable or low-carbon electricity first, and that should always be our opening approach.

Pilita Clark
That’s Professor Nigel Brandon. He’s the Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and holds the Chair in Sustainable Development and Energy at Imperial College London. And he’s spent years studying hydrogen’s role in future energy systems.

Nigel Brandon
I think the key with hydrogen is to think about how it acts as a supporting act to renewable electricity.

Pilita Clark
In other words, where renewable electricity will do the job. There’s just no point using green hydrogen. But there are cases where it’s hard to make renewable electricity work. Take steel.

News clip
Turning low-grade ore into the most used metal in the world starts in a 200ft tall furnace. This is where the iron ore is hit with heat generated by a type of fuel called coke.

Pilita Clark
There’s a magic ingredient in turning iron ore into steel: coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel. It’s not just a fuel that heats up furnaces. It’s also a vital ingredient in the process. So if you want to make green steel, you have to find a replacement for the coal. And that’s where green hydrogen comes in.

Nigel Brandon
Indeed, I think that decarbonising some sectors of the economy that are really hard to decarbonise with low-carbon electricity is an important thing to focus on. And certainly steel and cement are an important part of that.

Pilita Clark
But I suppose, you know, we’ve also got people saying that, hang on, we can just and make electrified alternatives. I can come up with electrified equipment that can help make, for example, green steel.

Nigel Brandon
And I think there are competing options. One is the green hydrogen route. Electrification of steel is a more radical shift and requires quite a lot more process development. But we can’t continue to produce steel in the way in which we currently do. And certainly the analysis I’ve seen suggests that if you’re trying to hit a 1.5C climate target, steel production alone would utilise the entire carbon budget of the world.

Pilita Clark
That point — steelmaking’s massive carbon footprint — underlines just what a game-changer green hydrogen could be. But there are other applications where it might work too.

Nigel Brandon
In terms of the hierarchy of use after industrial decarbonisation, I would probably start to think about long-distance transport.

Pilita Clark
Big heavy trucks that are not going to work well on batteries then.

Nigel Brandon
That’s right. So transport applications where battery electric are going to struggle. Some types of trains, particularly where it’s not economic to electrify the train line, could well work really well. And there are trials already taking place in the UK as well as in Austria and Germany.

Pilita Clark
Which is big news for railway enthusiasts.

News clip
Environmentally-friendly travel is picking up speed. And it’s Germany that’s leading the charge with the first-ever rail line to be entirely powered by hydrogen.

Nigel Brandon
And then if we look again at things like marine applications where decarbonisation of shipping — be that inland waterways or sort of cross-ocean — then hydrogen or hydrogen carriers like ammonia are looking a really attractive option. You can’t do it with electricity.

Pilita Clark
So in some cases, many important cases in fact, hydrogen would be a big improvement. But this new enthusiasm for hydrogen is worth a closer look.

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Pilita Clark
With so many potential applications, it’s no wonder a lot of governments around the world have become big hydrogen cheerleaders. The UK . . .

News clip
We’ve got the geology, infrastructure and technical knowhow to be a global leader in hydrogen production.

Pilita Clark
The European Union . . .

Frans Timmermans speaking to the press
Clean hydrogen is one of the top priorities in our energy transition, and we will be . . .

Pilita Clark
And in the US, Congress has passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which aims to supercharge the energy transition, and it gives hydrogen a starring role.

News clip
By marshalling American innovation to drive down the cost of clean hydrogen to just $1 per kilogramme by 2030. We can make clean hydrogen an affordable alternative . . .

Pilita Clark
But listen carefully to what they’re saying. They’re talking about clean hydrogen. And clean hydrogen doesn’t necessarily mean green hydrogen made with renewable electricity. The governments we heard there are also cheering another type of hydrogen: blue hydrogen. It’s made from fossil fuels in a process that produces carbon emissions. But those emissions are captured and stored, which makes it less carbon polluting, but not nearly as clean as green hydrogen. The fact that governments are promoting blue hydrogen rather than focusing on green gets right up Andrew Forrest’s nose. He says the idea that blue hydrogen is clean . . .

Andrew Forrest
. . . is kind of being swallowed by the average politician who can pass off in a quick speech, provided people don’t listen too hard at all. This is OK. Yeah. We put in fossil fuels. But don’t worry. Don’t worry. We’ve got this covered. We put all the carbon dioxide back in the ground. It’s not reliable and it’s not a snowflake’s chance in hell we should bet our planet on.

Pilita Clark
Forrest says the reason politicians are buying the line about blue hydrogen being clean is down to the fossil fuel industry. He says they’re desperate to stay alive in a decarbonising world.

Andrew Forrest
The oil and gas sector is extremely profitable. It’s been around for 200-plus years, and that capital — an enormous amount of capital — has been lobbying governments all around the world. And politicians, sadly, are listening to that.

Pilita Clark
For oil and gas companies, this idea of blue hydrogen being good for the climate is also attractive because it allows them to use their existing infrastructure where they currently pipe in natural gas. They could eventually pipe in hydrogen.

Clip from a commercial advertisement
The hydrogen home is a project where we can showcase that appliances can run on 100 per cent hydrogen in a safe and efficient way in a real-life setting.

Pilita Clark
In the UK, for example, some gas companies have been showcasing prototype hydrogen houses.

Clip from a commercial advertisement
It’s the first time that members of the public are gonna have a chance to interact with and experience hydrogen appliances. Not only our hydrogen boiler, but hydrogen hobs, cookers and fires as well.

Pilita Clark
But what they’re experimenting with at the moment is not green hydrogen. It’s the kind of hydrogen made with fossil fuels. Perhaps one day those gas pipes going into your home could be carrying only green hydrogen. But the example of using green hydrogen to heat our homes comes back to the same point raised by Nigel Brandon from Imperial College London: why not just use renewable electricity? After all, we have the green technology to do that with devices like electric heat pumps.

Nigel Brandon
Look, it’s a really good question. I’ll give you my engineer’s answer and then my homeowner’s answer. And I think from an engineering answer, the most efficient way to provide low to zero carbon heat is with electricity. And I keep coming back to this point: if you can use electricity, you should. It’s the best thing because we’re producing it directly from the renewables. From a homeowner’s perspective, the challenge with putting in heat pumps is that they need a different radiator system. They produce a lower grade of heat. So you need to think about replacing radiators within the home. It’s quite a disruption.

Pilita Clark
But the potential disruption to homeowners is just the beginning. The idea of pumping hydrogen through existing gas networks, the idea which gas companies are so keen on, may also have problems. Old pipes are often not suitable for hydrogen. And then there’s the issue of hydrogen leakage. Hydrogen is a very small molecule, and if it leaks, it can react with greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and actually make global warming worse. Add to that the logistical headache of transporting hydrogen. Right now, we shipped gas around the world in the form of LNG — liquefied natural gas — a fossil fuel. And there’s a rush to get more LNG into Europe as countries scramble to wean themselves of piped Russian gas. Governments are assuring environmentalists that this is temporary and new LNG terminals will be able to take transported green hydrogen. But experts like Nigel Brandon are very sceptical about the practicalities of doing this.

Nigel Brandon
For me personally, I don’t see the world moving vast, vast amounts of liquid hydrogen around. I also don’t see the world moving necessarily large amounts of gaseous hydrogen around.

Pilita Clark
Right. But why? Why don’t you see the world moving vast amounts of green hydrogen around? Because certainly Andrew Forrest does.

Nigel Brandon
A liquid hydrogen has lots of challenges just on the engineering and technological aspects. So if you’re carrying it in a vessel, you have to use really very high pressures before you can start to move that hydrogen and move a sensible amount of hydrogen at a time. And even with those high pressures, I’m not convinced it’s going to be the necessarily the best way to do so.

Pilita Clark
So it’s basically going to be just too expensive?

Nigel Brandon
It becomes expensive to move it as a gas and to move it as a liquid. It’s the case with any renewable, of course, that if you can use it locally, that’s the best thing to do with it.

Pilita Clark
Before we get to green hydrogen nirvana, the costs need to come down to make it competitive. And that takes us right back to how you make the stuff in the first place. You need a machine. You’ve probably never heard of: an electrolyser. Remember the TikTok videos: you can’t make green hydrogen without zapping water with an electric current. It’s one thing doing that as a simple experiment in your kitchen or backyard, but to do it on an industrial scale, you need purpose-built electrolysers. Really big, expensive ones. And that’s part of the reason why green hydrogen today is much more expensive than fossil fuel alternatives . . .

Pilita Clark speaking from ITM Power factory
So I’m standing here on the floor of the ITM Power electrolyser factory and electrolysers, of course, are really critical piece of equipment for making green hydrogen.

Pilita Clark
Handily one of the biggest manufacturers of electrolysers happens to be a few hours north on the train from the FT’s office in London.

Simon Bourne
So we need to pop our safety specs on going here.

Pilita Clark
Simon Bourne, chief technology officer at ITM, showed me how the electrolysers are put together and what an enormous bit of equipment they are. Each one fills the inside of a modified shipping container.

Simon Bourne
What you have is a very modest electrical current being passed through a single cell. And as that current passes through the cell, it splits the water, the H2O, into its constituent parts. This is the core piece. This is the engine of the electrolyser.

Graham Cooley
So Pilita, delighted you’ve come to ITM Power at Bessemer Park in Sheffield. So what you have in front of you is the world’s largest operational electrolyser factory.

Pilita Clark
The second voice you heard there is Graham Cooley, ITM’s chief executive. When he started with the company 13 years ago, there were about 30 people on its payroll. Today, there are more than 400.

Pilita Clark speaking from ITM Power factory
And just in this big area here that we’re looking at here, which is approximately I would say, a little bit bigger than Emirates Stadium in size. Right?

Graham Cooley
Thank you very much. It’s about three football pitches.

Pilita Clark speaking from ITM Power factory
Just while we’re here, just looking at everything. I mean, number one, it’s really interesting to me that it’s the world’s largest, because normally when you’re talking about new-ish green technologies, everything that’s the world’s largest is in China. But you’re saying that China’s got nothing like this.

Graham Cooley
I’m saying that this is the world’s largest operational electrolyser factory today. Will other nations have and other companies have larger factories in the future? Yes, they will. Do you know, the IEA says that the world needs 3,500 gigawatts of electrolysis to get to net zero by 2050. 2050, by the way, is 28 years away. 3,500 gigawatts is a huge amount of electrolysis.

Pilita Clark speaking from ITM Power factory
At the moment in the world today, that’s how much?

Graham Cooley
Electrolysis, oh you can measure it in hundreds of megawatts.

Pilita Clark speaking from ITM Power factory
Yes, it’s not even 1 gigawatt.

Graham Cooley
It’s not even 1 gigawatt.

Pilita Clark speaking from ITM Power factory
Yeah.

Pilita Clark
As with so much else in the world of climate tech, there’s a Herculean job of scaling up to do. Getting to 3,500 gigawatts, that’s a lot of electrolysers. But without them, there can’t be a significant green hydrogen economy. But Graham Cooley says that as demand has risen, costs have already plunged.

Graham Cooley
Over the last three or four years, we’ve halve the cost of our electrolysis equipment. And over the next few years, three to four years, we’re looking at at least a 40 per cent reduction from where we are today. So that’s about scaling and the scaling effect.

Pilita Clark
Still, ITM is facing growing pains. It suffered widening losses this year and its share price has tumbled because of concerns about expected delays to its production plans. Cooley is stepping down so someone with more global manufacturing experience can take over. But he says the industry as a whole would do better if governments got their act together on green hydrogen policy.

Graham Cooley
We’re not the only people in the industry saying that the industry is being held up by slow policymaking turning into tangible, long-term investable propositions.

Pilita Clark speaking from ITM Power factory
Are you talking about slow policymaking in the UK, the EU, other countries? Or are you just specifically talking about one region?

Graham Cooley
Well, generally worldwide actually. If you look at the US, for instance, in the Inflation Reduction Act, this is a good thing to do. It’s tangible. You can fill in all of your question marks in your spreadsheet. You can come up with that rate of return. The UK government — there is no long-term policy. You bid by on a project-by-project basis. The EU still does not have the proper incentive in place. So we have major projects that are stuck waiting for a final investment decision.

Pilita Clark
There’s a running joke about hydrogen. It goes like this: hydrogen is the fuel of the future, and it always will be. But that is now changing as concerns about climate change grow. And with the war in Ukraine and soaring gas prices, Europe is desperate to end its reliance on Russian oil and gas. Which is why, for all the caveats mentioned in this episode, Andrew Forrest reckons we’re in the middle of a hydrogen boom.

Andrew Forrest
I’m part of that boom. I can speak from personal experience, but halfway hundreds of others have decided to come and compete with my company and that’s a wonderful thing.

Pilita Clark
I put a similar question to ITM’s Graham Cooley. Can green hydrogen really be a game changer in addressing climate change?

Graham Cooley
You have to have green hydrogen. We need to start now. We need to start investing. I have absolutely no doubt it’s essential. And frankly, the question is an existential one. If we can’t do it, what’s your solution?

Pilita Clark
That’s a good question. And it’s one you hear a lot when you speak to people working on climate tech. I can see that green hydrogen will have a role in a decarbonised global economy. It should be replacing the fossil fuel made hydrogen used today as quickly as possible. And it makes sense to see if it can decarbonise a lot of heavy industries and big transport. But it’s also clear that transporting green hydrogen itself is not as straightforward as some of its champions claim. And it’s probably going to play second fiddle to green electricity when it comes to heating homes and driving cars. Still, at least it exists, which is more than you can say for the technology will be looking at in our next episode: Harnessing the power of the stars.

Clip from upcoming Tech Tonic episode
It’s a big dream. Basically, to really become the power source of the future, right? it’s carbon free. It’s very, very low-resource intensity.

Pilita Clark
You’ve been listening to Tech Tonic from the Financial Times. I’m Pilita Clark. Our senior producer is Edwin Lane. The producer is Josh Gabert-Doyon, and the executive producer is Manuela Saragosa, with production assistance from Persis Love and Leo Schick. Our sound engineers are Samantha Giovinco and Breen Turner, with original scoring by Metaphor Music. Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s head of audio. This is the third episode of a special Tech Tonic series on climate tech. We have two more to go and you can find them all on your usual podcast platform. Do leave us a review. It really helps support our show.

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