Green hydrogen should become part of the energy transition. But it is still expensive and difficult to produce.
(Photo: dpa)
Berlin It is undisputed that Germany will have to rely on the import of hydrogen on its way to becoming climate neutral. Does this create new dependencies? If Germany seriously goes on the path to climate neutrality, the need for energy imports will drop sharply, but it will continue to be dependent on energy imports, says Raffaele Piria from the Adelphi think tank.
“The risks related to energy imports will change. We have to prepare for that. ”Piria is the main author of the analysis“ Hydrogen import safety for Germany ”, which is available to the Handelsblatt. It will be published on Wednesday.
The analysis is the work of the Ariadne Consortium funded by the Federal Ministry of Research. They were created by authors from Adelphi, Fraunhofer and the Potsdam Institute (PIK).
Climate-neutral hydrogen is considered to be indispensable on the way to climate neutrality. It enables the decarbonization of the steel or chemical industry as well as heavy goods and air traffic. The focus of political efforts to enter the hydrogen economy is green hydrogen, which is produced using electricity from renewable sources through electrolysis. In view of the limited potential for generating electricity from renewable sources, Germany will have to import climate-neutral hydrogen.
The National Hydrogen Strategy adopted in 2020 also takes this idea into account. Experts estimate that Germany will be able to cover a maximum of 30 percent of its hydrogen requirements from domestic production. The establishment of reliable import structures is therefore an important part of the National Hydrogen Strategy. The coalition agreement between the SPD, the Greens and the FDP continues this idea. The aim is to “build up a high-performance hydrogen economy and promote the necessary import and transport infrastructure as quickly as possible,” it says.
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Germany’s energy imports will decrease over the years
According to Pirias, the establishment of supply relationships takes place in different stages: “At the beginning there will probably be bilateral contracts with suppliers from individual supplier countries. If the supply relationship is linked to the construction of a certain infrastructure, such as a pipeline, there will be long-term contractual ties behind it, ”says the Adelphi expert. “The exporters who build up production capacities are dependent on security of demand, especially at the beginning. A global market will develop over the years. ”
According to the Ariadne analysis, “Germany’s energy import requirements will decrease sharply, both in absolute terms and proportionally, on the way to climate neutrality”. Instead of the previous very large amounts of fossil fuels and uranium, Germany will “have to import significantly smaller amounts of climate-neutral energy, predominantly hydrogen, in the future,” the study says.
The authors describe this development as an “important side effect of a consistent climate policy”. The demand for climate-neutral energy imports, which will grow rapidly in the future, is offset by an even faster decrease in the demand for fossil energy imports. However, hydrogen import security could be jeopardized by a number of risks: “In addition to the overriding areas of availability, affordability and sustainability of hydrogen imports, further risks arise along the import chain.
With regard to the exporting countries, there are risks of an insufficient number of hydrogen exporting countries and companies, political instability in the exporting country and the irreplaceability of an exporter due to an insufficiently diversified transport infrastructure or an inflexible hydrogen market. “
“Germany is well on the way to taking others with it”
The vulnerability decreases if there are alternative options, namely “the availability of stocks, possibilities for short-term energy carrier changes and the short-term scalability of domestic hydrogen production,” write the authors of the analysis.
Piria is convinced that Germany’s involvement in entering the hydrogen economy is a role model: “Germany is well on the way to taking others with it and making a significant contribution to building a global hydrogen value chain,” he said.
“It could repeat what we were able to observe with photovoltaics: Germany has made advance payments and has thus made a significant contribution to the degression of costs and thus to the success of photovoltaics. The increasing involvement of other countries also suggests that this time Germany will bear a much smaller share of the development costs, ”said Piria.
More: RWE and Russian Novatek Group enter into hydrogen cooperation.