THEME Aspirational actions
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he year 2023 started off well in the small Finnish town of Inkoo, near Helsinki: Norwegian-based Blastr Green Steel published its plan to invest four billion euros to build a plant in the municipality. Should all go well, the integrated hydrogen production facility will be up and running before the end of this decade, and the plant will produce fossil-free steel and employ 1,200 people. This would mark one of the largest investments in Finland’s industrial history. This isn’t the only hydrogen-related project in Finland’s future. Major projects are ongoing or being planned in municipalities such as Raahe, Harjavalta, Pori, Lahti and Kokkola. More broadly, the scope of investments in the EU Hydrogen Strategy amounts to hundreds of billions of euros. Why the sudden fuss about hydrogen? It all boils down to the energy crisis, the wind power boom and the climate emergency, says Antti Arasto, Vice President of Industrial Energy and Hydrogen at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. ‘The carbon neutrality target means that it’s not enough to reduce emissions – we need to get rid of them completely. Green hydrogen alone will not solve the problem, but it will play a major role in the shift.’ Grey, pink or green? From the climate perspective, hydrogen is an ideal fuel: when it’s burned for energy, the only byproduct is water vapour. Hydrogen has been known to be an energy carrier for two centuries, but it’s had a bumpy ride in powering transport. The crash and burn of the Hindenburg airship in 1937 ended the era of zeppelins, and the 1990s hydrogen car boom quickly cooled down when no mass production or fuelling infrastructure materialised. But there’s been a lot of interest in industrial uses of hydrogen. The oil industry uses hydrogen to break crude oil into petrol and kerosene, and the chemicals industry uses it to produce ammonia, a key raw material for fertilisers. Fossil-fuel free steel could be produced by using hydrogen to replace coke, a coal-based carbon used for reducing iron ore. Unfortunately, hydrogen cannot simply be collected. It must be produced. Though there’s no shortage of hydrogen – it’s the most common element in the universe – it does not like solitude. Hydrogen readily binds to other elements in most substances: fossil fuels, water and plant biomass. Natural gas is by far the most common source material for traditional hydrogen production. In 2020, approximately 90 million tonnes of hydrogen were produced around the world, causing over 800 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions – about 14 / AALTO UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE 31
equivalent to the annual emissions of Great Britain and Indonesia combined. The carbon footprint of hydrogen depends on how it’s produced. A colour coding system distinguishes the hydrogen based on its source. Hydrogen derived from coal and oil has the highest emissions and is labelled black; hydrogen extracted from natural gas is called grey. If the carbon dioxide created in the production process is recovered, the hydrogen is labelled blue. Hydrogen can also be produced by using electricity to break water into hydrogen and oxygen. This method, electrolysis, is simple and emission-free, but it requires energy from electricity. If the electricity is produced with nuclear power, then the emission-free hydrogen is called pink. To be labelled green, hydrogen has to be made using electricity produced from renewable sources, such as wind, solar or hydropower. A lot of power is needed for electrolysis, so elec tricity has to be cheap for green hydrogen production and the industries dependent on it profitable. The Inkoo steel plant alone would eat up roughly six terawatt-hours of electricity per year, which is about 7% of Finland’s current total electricity production. Arasto stresses that green hydrogen production goes hand in hand with increased wind power potential. The price of wind electricity has plummeted in Finland in the 2000s, and onshore wind power has now become the cheapest electricity production method. Finland currently hosts about 1,400 wind power plants, producing around a tenth of the country’s electricity. This share is expected to increase to over a half by 2050. At the end of this decade, wind power could cover the nation’s entire electricity consumption on a windy day. But what will happen on windless days? Or when the volume of wind power exceeds demand?
Hydrogen cannot simply be collected. It must be produced.