Hydrogen Demand
The European Clean Hydrogen Alliance believes that the role of hydrogen energy in the energy transition process mainly includes: realizing large-scale and efficient consumption of renewable energy, redistributing energy between different industries and regions, and acting as an energy buffer carrier to improve the energy system, reducing carbon emissions in the process of transportation, reducing carbon emissions in industrial energy use, replacing coke for metallurgical industry, and reducing carbon emissions in building heating.
From the perspective of efficiency, the first choice for hydrogen utilization is fuel cells, and the breakthrough of hydrogen fuel cell technology has driven the market demand for hydrogen. PEM fuel cell technology which use hydrogen as fuel is gradually mature and is developing towards industrialization.Toyota Motor Corporation of Japan started to sell hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (Mirai) in 2014, and the cumulative sales exceeded 10,000; Hyundai Motor Corporation of South Korea also sold a similar number of fuel cell vehicles. Driven by the Asian automobile market, the world fuel cell vehicle market has begun to flourish. In 2019, the world's fuel cell vehicle ownership was about 25,200, and the annual sales volume was about 12,400. In view of the difficulties of hydrogenation in the early stage of commercialization of fuel cell vehicles, China plan to firstly apply fuel cells to commercial vehicles. This development path has been widely recognized by the industry. Currently, more than 6,000 fuel cell commercial vehicles have been put into operation.
The application of hydrogen energy in non-road transportation is being promoted. In 2018, the fuel cell train produced by the French Alstom Group was put into operation in Germany, and the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and other countries are also actively developing hydrogen-powered trains. CRRC started to operate fuel cell trams in Foshan, Guangdong in 2019, and at the same time carried out exploration and research on hydrogen fuel train solutions.
Home cogeneration and industrial applications also increase the demand for low-carbon hydrogen. Low-carbon industries have the greatest demand for hydrogen, especially in oil refining, chemical industry, steel manufacturing and other industries. The use of low-carbon hydrogen to replace high-carbon hydrogen will be an opportunity to expand demand and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the short term. Trials of low-carbon hydrogen for oil refining, methanol and ammonia production are underway internationally. The application scale of electrolytic hydrogen production in the steel industry is expanding rapidly. Hydrogen can replace 35% of natural gas without major modification of the existing direct reduction steelmaking furnace.
A transitional strategy for the mixed application of hydrogen and natural gas is also proposed to accelerate the progress of direct reduction ironmaking using pure hydrogen, which will have an important impact on the storage and transportation of hydrogen.