The Ministry of Energy intends to develop a project for using renewable energy to produce hydrogen and for storing it in existing gas deposits, Minister Anton Anton suggested Tuesday during the hearings for approving the budget of the Ministry of Energy, in the Parliament committees.
“We want to access a European program for introducing into Romania an idea that has not been introduced in this world (sic) – or maybe it has been done, and it is me who doesn’t know it – namely to accumulate electricity in gas storage. I mean, we are refurbishing the power plant in Craiova. Near the plant, 3 km away, there is the deposit in Gherceşti, and in the respective deposit we will introduce gas when we have excess wind electricity […] We in Romania have no system for power storage. There are 345 hydro accumulation systems in Europe, and we have none in Romania”, the Energy Minister said, according to Agerpres.
We might suspect that Anton Anton referred to the “Hydrogen Initiative” launched by Austria in September 2018, signed by Romania, by which the EU Member States are invited to contribute to the development of technologies to ensure a more good integration of renewable energy into electricity grids and the use of renewable hydrogen in transport, power storage and generation, industry and heating.
On February 6, a FCH JU, with the support of the European Commission, launched Hydrogen Roadmap Europe – a sustainable pathway for the European energy transition towards decarbonization. The study sets specific milestones between now and 2050 and assesses anticipate potential impact. A key idea is that hydrogen could account for 24% of final energy demand and 5.4 million jobs by 2050 in Europe.
However, such an approach seems to be inconsistent with Mr. Anton Anton’s support, at Tuesday’s hearings, too, for coal-fired power generators. Referring to the financial contribution of 2% on turnover, introduced by GEO 114/2018, the Minister said that the percentage “should be seen differently for coal-based generators as compared to other companies producing gas-based energy. At coal-based companies, the 40% of the electricity cost is the result of the CO2 certificates”, the Energy Minister explained.
Water-electrolysis, using energy from renewable sources, is the most promising technological solution for production of hydrogen, mainly because it does not need carbon capture and storage – CSS equipment, as is the case with hydrogen produced from natural gas (methane processes reformer – SMR or autothermal reformer – ATR).