Producing hydrogen using renewable energy in Europe is wrong because the continent doesn’t have enough power capacity, according to Dimitar Enchev, Co-founder and CEO Europe CWP Global. Hydrogen should rather be produced in places where there is no other way of using electricity, said he, at the conference “Regional Approach Sofia”, organized by Energynomics.
„Obviously the world needs to electrify. That’s the number one way to decarbonize. Today the world derives about 19% of its primary energy use from electricity and by 2050 that’s projected to go up to 85% but 20% or so is still going to have to come from molecules. Our vision that has to do with green hydrogen is to make those molecules in places where you’re never going to be able to use the electricity any other way. So we’re not subscribers to the idea that Europe should be making hydrogen”, Enchev explained. “I personally think this should be made illegal”, he half-jokingly added, “because we need all the green electrons to go into the energy grid”.
Because Europe is so short on clean green energy, using it to produce hydrogen and to electrify all the industry and transportation will only add to the problem of pollution. The production of hydrogen is more suitable in places like the Western Australian desert, North Africa, Namibia or Patagonia where there are already big-scale projects for green power generation that can be used to produce hydrogen.
„It’s crazy to be trying to make large amounts of hydrogen gas here when you don’t have enough green electricity anyways. (…) The scale of the challenge is enormous and I personally don’t believe that we’re going to be fully carbon-free by 2050”, he added.
Because hydrogen is difficult to transport, it is possible that in the future there will appear green industrial hubs in remote locations with massive amounts of green electricity that are going to be the most competitive places to produce numerous types of products out of clean energy and hydrogen.
The conference “Regional Approach Sofia” was organized by Energynomics with the support of our partners: Eaton Electric, Finder, Kawasaki Gas Turbine Europe.