DOE to integrate hydrogen, ammonia in energy planning
The Department of Energy (DOE) will be integrating hydrogen and ammonia as technological innovations in the propounded energy plan that shall be extended to year 2050.
DOE Director Michael O. Sinocruz of the Energy Policy and Planning Bureau in a recent Powertrends forum shared that the department is now preparing changes and additions for the targeted updating of the 2020-2040 Philippine Energy Plan (PEP).
The PEP guides investors what areas or segments in the industry they shall be injecting fresh capital as that will eventually shape the future of the country’s energy sector.
Currently, there are already companies in the Philippines sounding off plans to eventually opt for hydrogen as fuel shift in their gas plants or to utilize ammonia as co-firing to bring down emissions in coal plants.
In particular, First Gen Corporation of the Lopez group indicated that the integration of hydrogen into the gas-fired power plants is seen as one future solution that will further improve their operating efficiencies as well as reduce their carbon footprints to a greater degree.
It was noted that fusing hydrogen with gas-fired power fleet can both address the need for reliable energy supply and global climate change debacle.
In countries or energy markets that are already trailblazing hydrogen developments, they have also been lining up this technology as scalable solution to various gas-fired power fleet all over the world in the future.
In the Asian market, hydrogen venture is currently being pursued across different stages of project developments in key markets like Australia, Japan, South Korea and China; while parallel experiments are similarly being advanced in the energy markets of Southeast Asia.
The whole concept of hydrogen integrated into power generation systems shall be done through the use of proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzer or what is referred to as “water electrolysis technology” and such solution will not just be ideal for gas-fired plants, but also for renewable energy (RE) resources primarily on the storage domain.
For RE, it has been emphasized that the power generated from such resources can be turned into hydrogen and they can be re-used as electricity needed in a power system.
The need for energy storage - including those leaning on hydrogen - as a coupling to the on-and-off generation of RE sources on a massive scale has been under experiment for several years, but the “cost piece of the puzzle” or the commerciality aspect and the completeness of solution of proposed technologies have yet to concretize their way into markets.
As projected, the global demand for hydrogen will increase ten-fold by year 2050 reaching 6.0 trillion cubic meters three decades from now.
Several hydrogen “green storage” demonstration projects are now underway in Europe and the United States and the technology is also seen tugging its way next into Asian energy markets.
On the cost aspect for hydrogen, it was opined that it will likely trail around with the same pathway as how the prices of wind and solar technologies had nosedived over the years.