By Lars Metkemeyer
Technical Business Development – Center for Solar Energy Technologies
Fraunhofer Chile
In Chile, it’s not a secret that green hydrogen offers a great chance to decarbonise the country and add industrial value, due to the low cost of power supply generation by photovoltaic solar energy – reaching <US$20/MWh – which represents most of the cost of hydrogen production. That’s why Chile is called a ‘hidden champion’.
Until this moment, energy in mining industry was outsourced mostly through third-party services and not as an integral factor in processes. But now, the game and the role of energy have changed for industries because, in order to meet carbon neutrality goals by 2050, we must replace the large volumes of different fossil fuels in all processes, and that will only be possible through hydrogen as integral vector, because replacing chemical energy through other types of carriers in short and medium terms, could be impossible in terms of costs, technological restrictions and infrastructure considerations.
In Germany, the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (Fraunhofer ISE) demonstrated in practice, through different value chains such as: Power-to-Gas (P2G), Power-to-X (P2X) and Power-to-Liquid (PtL), that power can be supplied through hydrogen molecules, electricity and clean fuels in a steady way to different industrial applications. Technologies exist and, in the future, we can expect new cost reductions for materials and components, green power supply, and effects in economies of scale, making hydrogen projects become more competitive.
The potential exists but, how to push and make projects right now? To achieve this goal, I think it’s essential to consider a transition stage and analyse the general conditions of the location, existing infrastructure and, also, analyse the cost of the service and product found in every segment and final application in the market. In the ‘heavy vehicle segment’, for example, by reducing the cost of fuel cells to US$95/kW, we need the cost of hydrogen production at just US$5 per kilograme to be competitive (all this by taking a truck with a diesel engine as reference), highlights a study by the International Energy Agency (IEA). In Chile, this condition can already be achieved.
In the transition stage, synthetic fuels produced by renewable energies and hydrogen, like methane, methanol, ammonia, etc., as part of the P2X strategy, can assume a key role to reduce CO₂ emissions in the short and medium terms, becuase it’s able to use available infrastructure like pipes, service stations, heaters and internal combustion engines, to reduce costs. As chemical energy carriers, they will have a key role to store large volumes of energy in the long term and transport it through long distances in the future.
The main challenges, in terms of technological development, are transfer and adaptation of these technologies to Chilean conditions, their dissemination and search of cooperation, all this hopefully accompained by a larger governmental investment in research and development projects. At the Center for Solar Energy Technologies of Fraunhofer Chile, we want to contribute to solving these challenges.