The Norwegian government announced last week that an additional NOK 100 million will be allocated for hydrogen in infrastructure and market development, as well as a research centre in the state budget for 2021. This is a doubling from the previous budgeting of hydrogen. The government announces that infrastructure development will "establish hubs and supply chains that facilitate the commercial use of hydrogen," according to an article from PV Magazine.
Our neighbouring country is just one of many countries that have rediscovered hydrogen. America's third largest port, The Port of Corpus Christi, has recently agreed with an investment company on a solar cell plant with a capacity of 210 MW of solar energy and an up to 840 MWh battery storage facility. It will be able to operate an electrolysis plant to produce about 9,000 MT of green hydrogen each year.
Recently, Chile approved a project to produce hydrogen through wind power with the aim of converting the hydrogen into synthetic gasoline, among other things, and the Spanish Government has announced in a report that they will primarily use hydrogen in the railway infrastructure in the future.
Same price development as solar cells and lithium-ion batteries
The figures suggest a clear upswing in the area of the future. According to a report from the Aurora Research Center, a typical hydrogen plant will have production capacity of 100 to 500 MW already by 2025. The growing interest is that technology has come a long way in the media-acclaimed hydrogen fuel cells in the aerospace and automotive industries. But hydrogen has many other uses and is also used for heating buildings and industrial production of glass, steel and aluminium. In addition, it is becoming increasingly easier to produce hydrogen through solar cells and wind power.
For a long time, electrolysers, which produce hydrogen from water and oxygen, have been expensive. However, as investments and larger productions increase, prices are now falling drastically in the same way that both solar cells and lithium-ion batteries have done in recent years. The EU has already made strategic efforts to create a so-called "hydrogen economy" and thus expand the supply of sustainable energy.
