NOTE: Last call to Sign Up Here for our 2nd Berlin Energy Forum, on “Germany’s Quest for Green Hydrogen: from Ukraine to Mauritania & back,” 4:00 – 5:30 PM (CET), Berlin Capital Club, followed by networking and drinks. The Capital Club is atop the Hilton Hotel, adjacent to Gendarme Market in Berlin’s Mitte district. Looks like we’ll have a full house again. There is also a delayed-video sign-up option. -o-o-o-o-o- Speakers: I’ll be joined by Dr. Dawud Ansari of SWP think tank where he leads H2 research, and Ms. Olena Pavlenko, President Kyiv’s Dixie Group via video link. Moderation: Ben Aris, Editor-in-chief & founder of bneIntelliNews, & our forum co-organizer.
Second: While writing my talk, I began rethinking a 2023 post on Germany’s green-hydrogen import scheme for Mauritania. Below is my update. — Tom O’D.
German Green Hydrogen Import Strategy is Unworkable & Ignores Mauritania’s needs
Referring to the green hydrogen MOU signed with Mauritania in 2023, Conjuncta CEO Stefan Liebing said, “(This project) will have a strong link to Germany both as a technology provider and a potential offtaker of green energy.” (“Consortium signs $34 billion MoU for hydrogen project in Mauritania,” Reuters, 8 Mar 23.)
German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle seemed quite impressed: “It has a planned capacity of 10 gigawatts – the output of roughly five to six standard nuclear power plants. The first phase of the project is set to be completed by 2028” (“Mauritania set to export green hydrogen to Germany,” DW Business, 09Mar23 archived at YouTube.)
Indeed, the MOU aims for “10 gigawatts” of electrolyzers outputting “8 million tonnes/year” (Mt/y) of green hydrogen (H2) and other products, such as ammonia. However, according to the press announcement, in 2028 the facility will have a 400 MW capacity, or one-twenty-fifth of 10 gigawatts envisioned .
The German coalition government faces a formidable energy dilemma.
On one hand, it must urgently develop enough natural gas generation capacity at a reasonable cost to halt deindustrialization, and shut coal plants it brought back online when it closed the last nuclear plants To this end, Minister Habeck (Greens) urgently won approval for installation of 25 GW capacity of new natural gas turbine generation by 2030. In addition, this new natural gas capacity is needed to back up Germany’s growing, renewable-electricity dependence, as it simply has no feasible grid storage tech to offset its weather-variability.
So too, in response to Russia cutting off gas deliveries to Germany, as part of its full scale invasion of Ukraine, Germany urgently moved to install up to seven offshore LNG floating regasification ships (FRSOs). These aimed for a new natural gas import capacity of 25 bcm/year as LNG in 2023,
In January 2024, the Bundesnetzagentur (BNetzA) reported that, “According to preliminary figures, the total volume of natural gas imported into Germany in 2023 was 968 T”Wh (2022: 1,437 TWh).” of which 7% or almost 70 TWh was LNG. The reduction from 2022 largely reflects the fall in industrial production it is now suffering.
On the other hand, Germany urgently seeks enough future “green energy” import projects to eventually replace all this natural gas if it is to meet its decarbonization targets. The government published its “National Hydrogen Strategy” in summer 2023. (Also, “Gremany’s National Hydrogen Strategy,” Factsheet, 26 Jul 2023, by Sören Amelang and Julian Wettengela, Clean Energy Wire, is very useful.)
The (IMHO) dogmatic insistence on refusing to re-open several still-operable nuclear plants and to develop new German nuclear capacity means that the only low-carbon way the government coalition and many other political and business actors can imagine to replace all this natural gas is with green hydrogen produced from renewables in distant African, Mideast, Latin American and other states, or from developing new renewable-generated electricity it can import from nearby European countries.
This self-induced straitjacketing of the German energy system is, as I have described it, a sort of “renewable fundamentalism” — a maximalist insistence to fuel everything with 100% renewables and absolutely no nuclear.
How much of Germany’s new LNG-supplied energy could the Mauritania project replace in 2028?
If we assume its 0.4 GW capacity ran all year at, say, a 40% capacity factor, this would yield 1.4 TWh of green hydrogen.
Aside:
- This is a choice of capacity factor between that of a RE-supplied electrolyzer system running on solely solar and one running solely on wind inputs, motivted by the peer-reviewed paper: “DOE Hydrogen Program Record” Record #2,4005 Date: May 20, 2024 Title: “Clean Hydrogen Production Cost Scenarios with PEM Electrolyzer Technology” … and calculate (0.4 GW x 24 x 365 x 0.4) = 1401 GWh or 1.4 TWh.
- For further clarity, if one looks solely at the electrolyzer, whether one uses PEM (proton exchange membrane) or alkyline electrolyzers to produce the hydrogen with renewable electricity inputs, both are only about 65-70% efficient. That is, 30-35% of the renewable energy from the variable RE wind and/or solar generators is lost right off. (Ref.: According to the Energy Storage Association, in the USA, “Alkaline electrolysis is a mature technology for large systems, whereas PEM (Proton Exchange Membrane) electrolyzers are more flexible and can be used for small, decentralized solutions. The conversion efficiency for both technologies is about 65%~70% (lower heating value).” Energy Storage Association (American), website, accessed 01 March 23
In any case, unfortunately, 1.4 TWh of H2 per year in 2028, available to export from Mauritania amounts to only 2% of Germany’s 70 TWh of LNG imports in 2023.
In addition, this H2 will have to be chilled and liquified, transported across the sea via ship and re-gasified in Germany (or transformed and shipped in some other form, such as green ammonia, NH3). Here too, there is an efficiency to consider. The process requires a certain energy input, measured in GWh, for every 1 GWh delivered to Germany.
As the graph below from a recent peer-reviewed paper shows, it is estimated that to transport liquified H2 such distances by sea has an efficiency of about 75%. This means that in 2028, this Mauritanian green-H2 project might replace only (1.4 GW x .75) or 1.1 GWh, or 1.6% of Germany’s 2023 LNG imports, or a miniscule 0.1% of the year’s total natural gas imports. (Did I make some mistake here?!?)
Obviously this is miniscule, and will do little towards ending German natural-gas dependence.
However, this only speaks to the amounts of energy stored as green H2 that this Mauritanian project, or similar projects, can supply to Germany. However, this says nothing about the costs, which are considerably more than importing natural gas by pipeline or as LNG by ship. I’ll look at relative costs of imported green H2 vs. imported LNG or piped gas in future posts.
Science & Tech complications of H2 from Mauritania for export to Germany
Then there are formidable technological problems in all this. Gaseous H2 has the lowest energy density by volume (KWh/cubic meter) of any gaseous fuel possible. To be liquified for transport, hydrogen gas has to be cooled much more than does natural gas, rather close to absolute zero, about 20 K (-252.8 C), and kept under significant pressure. In contrast, natural gas requires no pressurization to form LNG at -160 C, 140 higher than H2. The amount of insulation needed then, to transport H2 via ship is far greater, and costlier than for a LNG carrier. In addition, the small H2 molecule is notorious for its capacity to lead at valves and fittings, and even enters the metal crystal matrix of steel and many other metals, causing embrittlement and early failures. It cannot be simply substituted in most natural gas infrastructure such as turbines, pipelines, burners, valves and pressure gages, etc. This is one reason Minister Habeck has proposed eventual construction of about 9,500 km of new, H2 adopted pipelines, which is simply an unbelievable goal in my view.
Increasingly the German ministries recognize at least the tech problems for H2 transport as pressurized gas or LH2 (liquified H2) by sea, and now frequently advocate that green hydrogen produced overseas should be converted into “green ammonia” by chemically bonding hydrogen to nitrogen (NH3). Of course, this additional process consumes still more renewable energy, though transport is more efficient. and also has its costs. In addition, any leaks of concentrated NH3 is very hazardous to humans (causing easily deadly damage to lungs, as well as burning skin and eyes), and cannot be used as a common fuel in the way petrol or hydrocarbons are handled.
Of course, projects such as that in Mauritania are technically possible. Germany is an industrially developed and rich country. The real question is, even if significantly larger volumes of green hydrogen could somehow be produced within a decade in a sunny and windy distant country such as Mauritania and shipped to Germany — or in Namibia, Tunisia, So. Africa, Oman, Australia, Chile or any of the many other countries the present German government (and the EU) are fond of signing MOUs with, this strategy would undoubtedly remain far too costly to relieve the energy factor in Germany’s industrial competitiveness crisis. Many see this as a deindustrialization trend, especially in energy-intensive industries.
The only logical solution is to reopen the remaining several shuttered-but-still-operational nuclear reactors, and to embrace building new nuclear reactors to provide steady base-load electricity, while limiting domestic renewables to a level that does not require massive rebuilds of grids and “grid-scale storage.” Given today’s growing over-dependence in Germany on variable renewables, some non-fossil-fuel reliable and affordable “grid scale” storage backup will certainly not be attained either by relying on green-gas imports.
Appendix: Bibliography / Further Reading:
Mauritania set to export green hydrogen to Germany | DW Business – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1l115RZ680
Consortium signs $34 billion MoU for hydrogen project in Mauritania | Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/german-uae-egypt-consortium-sign-34-bln-deal-hydrogen-project-mauritania-faz-2023-03-08/
German, UAE, Egypt consortium sign $34bn deal for hydrogen project in Mauritania – World – Business Recorder
https://www.brecorder.com/news/40230241
(173) Green hydrogen: Is the Global South paying for Germany’s energy transition? | DW News – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75dXFyQ5m9Y
Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions and energy transition targets | Clean Energy Wire
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-greenhouse-gas-emissions-and-climate-targets#:~:text=Germany’s%20national%20climate%20targets,and%2088%20percent%20by%202040.
Green pioneer Germany struggles to make climate protection a reality | Clean Energy Wire
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/dossiers/energy-transition-and-climate-change
Factbox: Germany fires up extra coal power capacity to plug winter supplies | Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germany-fires-up-extra-coal-power-capacity-plug-winter-supplies-2022-11-02/
‘Intensive use’ of German coal power plants releases additional 15 million tonnes of CO2 in 2022 – report | Clean Energy Wire
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/intensive-use-german-coal-power-plants-releases-additional-15-mio-t-co2-2022-report
Germany expects to import 25 billion cubic meters of LNG in 2023
https://www.brusselstimes.com/299433/germany-expects-to-import-25-billion-cubic-metres-of-lng-in-2023
The Global Barrel 