Hydrogen future – is this an emerging technology?

Shanghai, June, 2020.

As a mechanical engineer I’ve always been fascinated by technology and looked to be an early adopter of new gadgets and ‘tech’. My career began in the industrial sector with a focus on energy systems and government projects, after nearly 15 years of work in the UK, I moved to China and I’m now responsible for leading TÜV SÜD’s Industry Service Division in the region  – our focus is on protecting people, property and the environment, from technology related risks and inspiring trust for our clients and consumers for all industries. Since my first steps in China over 5 years ago I’ve been impressed with the technological advances in this country, especially the adoption of new technology. Now I’m seeing a move to a new era with the use of Hydrogen in industry, in mobility, and even as a solution for environmental change. I wanted to explore why Hydrogen is becoming more prominent in the industry, and what is needed for it to be adopted by consumers worldwide.

Hydrogen – an old solution to a modern problem?

Hydrogen is by no means a new topic, not only is it the most abundant element in the universe, but since as far back as the 16^th century, experiments were developed which led to the discovery of Hydrogen as an explosive gas. Hydrogen has been used for over a 100 years in the production of ammonia, but other than that, its uses in industry and in the energy sector have been quite minimal. However, in recent years, topics related to Hydrogen have become more and more prominent – whether it is Hydrogen fuel cells, fuel cell vehicles, hydrogen production, hydrogen storage or liquid organic hydrogen carriers – could this be the turning point for use of hydrogen in the modern world?

Whilst I, as much as anyone, would welcome the hydrogen applications, especially as they have the potential to decarbonize industries and decentralize many sectors. Decarbonization and decentralization would help us to meet climate targets, improve air pollution and related issues for millions of people, I still think there is a long way to go before hydrogen applications become the norm in society.

Firstly, let me somewhat contradict myself by saying that Hydrogen is not the answer to decarbonizing industries – Green hydrogen is. It is an important distinction to make, if we really want to realize the benefits of hydrogen it must be green hydrogen. For those who are not familiar with hydrogen production, it can be categorized into many types, practically a whole rainbow. There are four main types of hydrogen to be aware of: black, grey, blue and green.

• Black hydrogen is produced using hydrocarbons (e.g. using coal as a feedstock) it involves releasing CO₂ back into the environment and the associated environment impacts that we’ve all heard about over the years.
• Grey hydrogen is produced using natural gas (e.g. methane steam reforming), but like black hydrogen, this also releases CO₂. Currently Grey hydrogen accounts for 80% of the world’s hydrogen supply.
• Blue hydrogen essentially takes black or grey hydrogen production and adds a step prevent the release of carbon - here the challenge is not related to hydrogen production, but more to do with carbon capture and storage (CCS).
• Green hydrogen is related to Hydrogen predominantly produced by electrolysis (although there are other methods). The electrolysers need to be powered and it is important to note that for hydrogen to be truly considered green then the electrolyser unit must be powered by a renewable source such as solar or wind energy.

Now that we can consider as our basis a good supply of green hydrogen, but unless we plan to use the hydrogen directly at the generation site, it will need to be transported and stored – this is one (of many) technical hurdles to really being able to use hydrogen effectively. It is by no means impossible – trucks can move hydrogen around a country, you can build pipelines, you can even utilise existing natural gas pipelines. The hydrogen can be stored as a gas or as a liquid, and it can be stored under pressure – all are completely possible in realms of modern engineering, but it will take time and investment to really make hydrogen a readily available resource. What will come first, the supply or the demand? Unless there is some sort of government level policy decision, I’m concerned that there may be no appetite to invest too early.

The issues surrounding distribution and storage of hydrogen are not only financial. When considering using hydrogen in an application, such as fuel cells, there is a need to ensure a certain quality of the product you are using. For most fuel cells to operate without the risk of catalyst poisoning you will need a purity of around 99.999% - when transporting hydrogen either in pipes or trucks, or any reusable container, the risk of contamination is high and therefore quality monitoring and testing is required. This leads nicely into the issue of consumer trust – if a consumer is going to purchase hydrogen to power their new Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle (HFCV), they will want to ensure that they are putting good quality hydrogen into their tank.  With established fuel (petrol, diesel) there is an implicit trust that you’re getting what you pay for – but when buying something new, how does the industry build that trust?

This isn’t an issue that is restricted to Hydrogen, but I’ll keep using it as an example as I start to look into the issues on emerging technologies, how consumers adopt them and what is needed to make a new technology an accepted technology. Because I’m looking towards the consumer perspective, I’ll focus more on Hydrogen use in mobility rather than as an energy store or source for other sectors.

Hydrogen as an emerging technology

An Emerging Technology can be characterized by radical novelty (in application even if not origins -certainly hydrogen alone is not novel, but some applications are), an emerging technology should also have fast growth, a significant impact on society [Rotolo, D., Hicks, D., Martin, B. R. (2015) What is an emerging technology?]; furthermore an emerging technology should represent progressive developments within a field for competitive advantage. [International Congress Innovation and Technology XXI: Strategies and Policies Towards the XXI Century, & Soares, O. D. D. (1997). Innovation and technology: Strategies and policies. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.]

The use of Hydrogen as an energy storage medium, or as a fuel for a HFCV, is to me an emerging technology; but not just an emerging technology, the use of Hydrogen in this fashion is also a technological change – it is a process of invention, innovation and diffusion of processes. [The New Palgrave Dictionary of technical change " by S. Metcalfe]

Technological Change

Two major aspects are needed for HFCV to be a technological change – there needs to be availability of vehicles using the technology and there needs to be sufficient infrastructure in place to ensure that the technology can be used. A technological change, such as hydrogen use, is taken to be something that can be influenced (positively or negatively). It’s not something that evolves naturally over time (the difference here is between technology evolution and technology revolution). One of the largest influencers on a technological change would be policies - there are many sectors (Hydrogen definitely included) that can utilise government policies to influence the speed and direction of a change. Policymakers can steer the direction of a technological change by influencing factors such as price – applying subsidies for certain industries, or even introducing climate policies that may penalise other, competitive, sectors. [Ruttan, Vernon W. "Technology, growth, and development: an induced innovation perspective." OUP Catalogue (2000)]

Technology change can also be an effect of societal concerns – unfortunately for modern society many commercial industries are driven by the idea of maximising profits and launching products that can help them achieve their goals; a product that addresses societal needs, but does not meet the goal of profit may never make it to the market. However, we are seeing a change in recent years where consumers are demanding better products, or more environmentally friendly offerings, and are prepared to pay extra for such a product. This has been seen in Canada where researchers have found that citizens would be prepared to pay increased taxes for greener energy or increased prices in the shops for greener products [Tork Green Business Survey] – this can be discussed later when I look at consumer adoption of a new technology.

Technology Acceptance

For any new technology application there are five main factors which influence the acceptance of the technology itself – advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability and observability [Everett M. Rogers;  Diffusion of innovations].

• Advantage – for a HFCV an advantage over a Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV) could be seen in terms of the range of a vehicle, speed of refuelling, vehicle performance or efficiency.
• Compatibility – for the technology to be compatible with a vehicle is the role of the vehicle manufacturer, the consumer will be more focussed on compatibility with their daily lives – here there can be advantages over BEV – no need to charge the vehicle at a residence. Refuelling a vehicle at a Hydrogen Refuelling Station (HRS) is very similar to the ‘norm’ today of refuelling an Internal Combustion Vehicle (ICV).
• Complexity – a HFCV is not more complex from a consumer perspective than a BEV or ICV.
• Trialability – a HFCV will be available for test drives, or in hire vehicles, the same as a BEV or ICV.
• Observability – as HFCVs become more common place, new consumers will see them in cities, as well as the emergence of HRS.

Another important aspect of technology change is the societal aspects – social norms, opinion leaders, change agents and governments all have influence over consumers. Consumers are influenced by key issues facing the world like climate change, air pollution, single use plastics and many more. As we move into the discussions of consumer adoption of technological changes, it can be seen that the pressure on consumers to modify their purchasing behaviour, and to be seen as leaders of change, is very strong and HFCVs have the potential to allow this.

The final aspect of technological change to consider is speed – the acceleration of such changes. Although hydrogen and the use of hydrogen has been around for hundreds of years, why now? Without doubt the availability of low-cost renewable energy will be a factor – there needs to be a means to store surplus wind and solar energy that would otherwise be curtailed, and it is expected that the price of renewable energy will continue to drop and the levels of surplus supply will increase. With these factors in mind, energy storage is needed and a method of storage that can also be used by consumers in new applications is very appealing.

However, we can’t overlook the societal and cultural change that are influencing technology,  and there is also a large development in the increasing acceleration of human knowledge acquisition. In 1938 Buckminster Fuller described the idea of ‘doing more with less’ in industrial developments as the term ‘ephemeralization’ [R. Buckminster Fuller, Nine Chains to the Moon, Southern Illinois University Press [1938]]. More recently, Ray Kurzeil proposed a law of accelerating returns, specifically mentioning that whenever a technology approaches some kind of a barrier (cost of petroleum, environment impact of ICVs), a new technology will be invented to allow us to cross that barrier. He also predicted that the shifts in these technology changes will become more rapid and profound (BEV -> HFCV, but equally you can look at the development of internet services, or mobile telecommunication technology, or touch screen devices) [The Law of Accelerating Returns . Ray Kurzweil, March 7, 2001]. The world has already changed unrecognizably in the last 60 years – if this pattern continues the development of technology will be unimaginable in the next 60 years.

Technology Adoption

As much as I like to look at why technological change has happened, and the acceptance of the change, it’s important not to neglect the people factor – the type of person who would be willing to ‘take a chance’ on a new technology. It will be different in country to country, but there is a sociological model that describes the adoption rates vs the social characteristics of the ‘adopter group’. The model fits nicely into a bell curve with five main groups of adopters [The Diffusion Process, Bohlen Joe M, Bela George M, May 1957]:

• Innovators
• Early adopters
• Early majority
• Late majority
• Laggards

Many of the issues discussed during the section on acceptance of technology will influence the type of person that would choose to take a new technology on first.

Typically, the ‘innovator’ group will be less risk adverse and with any new technology the price is higher at the beginning and consequently these innovators then tend to be from more prosperous backgrounds. Although the innovator group is small, they are important as it paves the way for the ‘early adopters’ to realise that the new technology is a viable alternative – here there is a need to observe a perceived usefulness and a perceived ease of use – this means that the innovator group has to be sufficiently large enough for the early adopters to have that ‘observability’ factor that I discussed earlier. This adoption pattern cascades from one segment to the next as each group grows progressively larger, i.e. the early majority will influence more people and the late majority may be the more risk adverse characters in the society. Finally, the laggard group would only adopt such technological change when there is almost no alternative.

When HFCVs are considered alongside consumer adoption theories there are several aspects that become prominent in a consumer’s decision, many of which have been discussed theoretically above, but now let us look at practical considerations, and questions that the average consumer might ask themselves before adopting such a technology:

• Is Hydrogen safe for me to use in a family vehicle?
• Are there enough Hydrogen Refuelling Stations around to make owning a HFCV practical?
• Is a Hydrogen fuel cell reliable?
• How easy is it to repair a HFCV if it breaks down?
• How quickly can I refuel my vehicle?
• How far can you go on a single tank of H₂ gas?
• How expensive is Hydrogen?
• How do I know that the Hydrogen comes from a reliable source (quality and environmentally speaking)?
• Is there enough choice in the market that I can buy a vehicle that suits my needs and/or my tastes?

There are many other concerns for the industry, some of which may not be the first consideration of the consumer.  For instance, the flow measurement of Hydrogen gas is much more challenging than the flow measurement of liquid fuel for an ICV, or electrical flow for a BEV,  and this can have a significant impact on consumer confidence and trust, especially if they are paying for more than they get.

It’s my view that most of the consumer concerns can be alleviated with implementation of a good system of Regulations, Codes and Standards (RCS); however, the RCS need to be implemented in such a way that the trust in technology is demonstrated to the user; furthermore, when looking at HFCVs the RCS landscape cannot be limited to a single country, state or region – here we are dealing with a technology that can cross borders and there has to be a system for refuelling (technology, specification of fuel etc.) that is universal.

Implementation of an RCS landscape should cover three aspects:

• Testing
• Inspection
• Certification

Testing is key to ensuring products and services meet quality, safety, sustainability and performance standards. Inspection is more related to meeting specifications and certification is the formal confirmation that the products and services have met the required standards – and it is here through the certification process that companies can inspire trust from the consumers.

What’s next?

Already we can see pilot projects for hydrogen in commercial vehicles and larger passenger vehicles (buses etc.). There are drones flying around powered by fuel cells, Japan has launched a miniature fuel cell powered scooter. Everyday in the media you can read stories about companies partnering with hydrogen companies to promote new technologies and I truly believe this is the beginning of a new technological change. However, this change will only happen with the backing of governments and investment into the required infrastructure – right now, I see that there will be a competitive field between vehicle manufacturers to be the first to market with a practical product, but this won’t be adopted unless there is a perceived ease of use and usefulness. The industrial applications for hydrogen will likely come first, stationary fuel cells eliminate many of the consumer concerns, and this can drive the demand for green hydrogen and create a volume of supply.

Before any of this becomes truly ‘mainstream’ we will need a set of internationally harmonized standards. Once this happens, I don’t think there will be any stopping this technological change.

Simon Lemin

Director

TÜV SÜD Industry Services Division

Greater China