Tokyo Olaf Scholz’s limousine rolls through a dense network of pipes, ovens and chimneys. On Friday shortly before his departure from Tokyo, the Chancellor is still visiting one of the oil refineries that line Tokyo Bay. But this is not his real goal. At the edge of the huge facility of the oil company Toa Oil, his driver stops in front of a few tanks and a mini-refinery.
It is a pilot plant of a hydrogen plant of the energy group Chiyoda, the world’s largest developer of liquid gas projects. In front of the tanks, the engineers parked a tanker truck for photos, onto which the project name “Spera Hydrogen” was stuck.
The plant itself has not been active since a demonstration project in 2020. According to Chiyoda’s Vice President Setsuo Iuchi, it is still considered a breakthrough for the hydrogen economy in Japan. His group’s project is the world’s first maritime supply chain for hydrogen.
In the plant, a catalyst was used to separate hydrogen from a solvent that had been enriched with the gas in Brunei, 5,000 kilometers away. The solvent was then shipped back to be recharged with hydrogen, which is extracted from natural gas in Brunei.
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Scholz’s visit to the idle hydrogen plant shows his interest in cooperating with the hydrogen pioneer Japan on the subject of hydrogen. The Chancellor had already said that the day before at his meeting with Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. Hydrogen is an alternative to today’s gas and coal energy sources, he said. “By promoting the development of hydrogen through Japanese-German cooperation, we can create prosperity on a broad scale.”
Japan is investing heavily in building a hydrogen supply chain
Japan is a pioneer in this future technology. The country presented a national hydrogen strategy as early as 2016. The aim was to quickly gain technological leadership, reduce the cost of producing the combustible gas and build a global mass market.
Hydrogen also plays a major role in Japan’s climate strategy of operating carbon dioxide-neutrally by 2050. Together with ammonia, a hydrogen carrier that is also used as a fuel, the gas should then cover ten percent of Japan’s energy supply. Important fields of application are areas in which electricity alone can hardly replace fossil fuels, such as the steel industry and commercial vehicles of all kinds that have previously been powered by diesel engines.
>>Read here: Scholz in Tokyo: Germany and Japan rely on stronger strategic cooperation
An important step on this path is the establishment of cost-effective supply chains to transport the hydrogen from distant production sites to the industrialized nations. The hydrogen plant visited by Scholz is not the only milestone. On the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, a consortium with the local electricity supplier and Nippon Steel Engineering intends to split off low-carbon hydrogen from water from 2024 using electricity from Japan’s largest wind farm. This so-called green hydrogen is then to be delivered by ship.
In the port city of Kobe, a group led by the heavy industry group and shipbuilder Kawasaki has built the country’s first terminal for liquid hydrogen. Hydrogen is landed there, which is separated from coal by heating in Australia, liquefied at minus 253 degrees and pumped onto a tanker. This “grey” and not climate-neutral hydrogen is frowned upon by environmentalists.
The tanker is intended to transport hydrogen from Australia to Japan.
(Photo: via REUTERS)
The project has one thing in common with Chiyoda’s project: For cost reasons, Japan also relies on hydrogen from fossil fuels, the production of which emits carbon dioxide. Japan is promoting so-called blue hydrogen. The greenhouse gases produced by the process of producing the gray hydrogen are stored or used as a raw material for other products. This type of hydrogen production is therefore climate-neutral.
The cost of producing blue hydrogen is significantly lower than that of green hydrogen, which requires sufficient renewable energy sources such as wind power or solar energy, the Japanese said. Thus, their technology could be interesting for developing countries. The transport methods that Japan is developing are now suitable for all types of hydrogen.
However, domestic competition is fierce. Toishi Tatsuya, an engineer of Chiyoda, promotes the technology presented to Chancellor Scholz and himself. In contrast to the transport of liquid hydrogen, the investments are lower because the technology already exists and the bound hydrogen can be transported in standard containers or tankers at normal temperatures and air pressure.
However, this approach is not undisputed. Resources and energy must be used at the production site of the hydrogen as well as in the refinery. In addition, the hydrogen obtained has so far only been suitable as a fuel for power plants and is not pure enough for fuel cells, which generate electricity from the combination of hydrogen and oxygen.
More Handelsblatt articles on the subject of hydrogen
However, further purification would require an additional refinery stage and would therefore hardly be economical. The biggest challenge for Chiyoda, however, is to build a commercially viable global value chain. In 2025, the group hopes to commission a semi-commercial plant. The first large-scale plant that can produce 500,000 cubic meters of hydrogen per hour is then planned for 2030, almost 1,700 times the demonstration project that Scholz visited.
As a global corporation, Chiyoda is also looking for partners abroad. The German chancellor can obviously imagine German companies being interested in a partnership. “Germany and Japan are already technology leaders in many areas when it comes to the energy transition,” he said in a speech to representatives of German and Japanese business. “As part of our energy partnership, we will further intensify this cooperation.”
Hydrogen also plays a crucial role for industrial use, said Scholz. “This technology can serve as a role model when setting up global hydrogen supply chains.” However, neither the Chancellor nor his host Kishida announced any new projects.
More: How hydrogen can help overcome the current energy crisis