How do you get green hydrogen to Germany?

Berlin The “Suiso Frontier” made history in January. The Kawasaki Heavy Industries ship transported liquefied hydrogen from Australia to the Japanese port city of Kobe – a world first.

It was a technically significant achievement. The ship can hold 1,250 cubic meters of hydrogen in a vacuum-insulated tank, which is then cooled to minus 253 degrees Celsius. At this temperature, the gas liquefies and thus shrinks to eight hundredths of its original volume.

It’s still an attempt. It was also so-called gray hydrogen, which is obtained from coal. But the transport of climate-neutral green hydrogen works on the same principle. The world needs the CO2-free energy source, and in gigantic quantities. There is no other way to achieve the planned decarbonization of industry or air and shipping traffic.

Green hydrogen is produced by electricity from renewable sources via electrolysis. Gray hydrogen is mostly produced on the basis of natural gas by means of steam reforming and is not climate-neutral.