Nuclear Beyond Electricity Hydrogen
[Music]
today
in october 2020 most of the energy we
use in the world and most of the
electricity we consume
comes from fossil fuel and with fossil
fuel comes
gigatons of co2 emissions every year
pumped into the atmosphere causing
climate change
so the question is how do we fight
climate change and in the energy sector
this fight
relies on two pillars the first one is
the production of clean electricity we
need to decarbonize our electricity
and the second pillar is we need to find
substitutes
for the fossil fuels we use today every
day
in transport in heating in our
industrial sectors
and today i would like to talk to you
about hydrogen
as that possible substitute fuel for the
future energy
needs so hydrogen is the most abundant
element in the universe
and actually is around us in in many
forms
and in particular in water and in my
talk
i will explain how with clean
electricity you can split
water to produce clean hydrogen so a
little bit about hydrogen
hydrogen was discovered several
centuries ago by an english gentleman
called cavendish in 1766
one of the main components of a
synthetic fuel that was manufactured in
the 19th century
called town gas made from the
distillation of coal
and the wood and that town gas
was used to light our cities our streets
was also used for heating
it was gradually replaced by electricity
which was more convenient
and by natural gas later on for heating
purposes
but hydrogen is still used intensely and
has been used intensely in the last
decades
in the industry in the steel sector in
the
petrochemical industries and also in the
food industries
but it’s its use in the everyday life
in transportation for example has been
very limited
around 2005 2004 there was a
wave of interest in hydrogen um people
thought
this is the advent of the hydrogen
economy cells will be
powered by hydrogen in the future
there was great hope manufacturers car
manufacturers were designing cars
with fuel cells but somehow this
hydrogen revolution did not come and why
in part because progress in battery
technologies made electric vehicles
a more attractive option but this is not
the end of the story for
for a hydrogen actually when you look at
the fossil use today in heavy duty
transport
for example maritime transport or for
energy intensive processes like coal uh
coal steel making
as well as in everyday life heating
applications
we need a lot of fossil fuel so how do
we replace this fossil fuel
and could hydrogen be the substitute
fuel
well the solution and the answer to that
is uh
yes if we make hydrogen in a clean way
and unfortunately this is not the case
today most of the hydrogen produced in
the world comes from fossil fuel
also i explained in my introduction that
one
one aspect one way to make clean
hydrogen would be to split
water with clean electricity and go back
to electricity as the center as the main
the main ingredient to the transition to
future clean energy systems
unfortunately most of our electricity
comes from fossil fuel
of course there are there are clean
energy sources clean
clean electricity sources hydro power
for example
uh produces 18 of the world’s
electricity nuclear power about 10
and then you have wind solar and other
renewable sources
and these low carbon sources will be the
ones that
will need will be needed to decarbonize
our electricity production
and with the transformation of our
electricity system
comes a lot of challenges for example
we will need our future electricity
systems to be flexible
flexible to adapt to uh intermittent
generation like wind and solar we will
need
electricity systems that are stable
today we have a
grid stability that’s provided by large
thermal plants that have inertia and
bring a
bring the stability that we need the 50
hertz
quality of our electricity that we that
we require and that our
electrical equipment require we will
need
a lot of energy storage why we have we
will have intermittent
uh technologies like wind and solar so
we will need energy storage when the
wind doesn’t blow or
the light doesn’t shine and we will need
dispatchable generation what is
dispatchable generation
this is a low carbon generation that you
can
produce on demand like hydro or nuclear
so once we have addressed all those
challenges and have decarbonized our
electricity system
well that’s only one part of the of the
challenge to
to decarbonize energy because actually
the power sector among the all the
energy sectors
is only responsible for forty percent of
our emissions
sixty percent of the co2 emissions come
from the other sectors
transport industry uh building
heating and cooling for example so
having clean electricity can help
decarbonize by electrification of those
sectors
for those sectors that can be
electrified but we know that there are
sectors
applications that cannot be easily
electrified and for that we need
substitute fuels
so the question is hydrogen can it be
that fuel
the question is can we produce hydrogen
cleanly
and today most of the hydrogen produced
in the world
more than 95 comes from a process called
steam methane reforming
produces co2 based on natural gas
i mentioned electrolysis splitting of
water well that’s
that’s okay if your electricity is
decarbonized
but if it’s not we have what what is
called gray hydrogen
grey hydrogen is hydrogen produced by
electricity that’s generated by fossil
fuel
so that has a carbon footprint if you
capture the co2
in the process you have what is called
blue hydrogen
generated from fossil from electricity
produced with fossil fuel and carbon
capture
and sequestration which still has a
carbon footprint
so actually the future is to produce
hydrogen by splitting water
using low carbon electricity like
electricity from renewables
this is called green hydrogen or
electricity produced from
nuclear electricity and that’s called
pink hydrogen and there are actually
other processes that are in development
using other forms of splitting high
temperature steam electrolysis
or thermochemical cycles they all use
the idea of splitting water to produce
hydrogen using either low carbon
electricity or low carbon electricity
and heat
and some advanced reactors high
temperature reactors currently under
development will be able to produce that
hydrogen
massively and in a more efficient way
than today’s methods
but electrolysis is still the basis of
that transformation
so how does electricity and hydrogen
work to decarbonize our energy systems
so let me explain using this this graph
imagine we have a power system a low
carbon
power system with wind power solar power
and for those countries they use nuclear
energy nuclear energy
so this system produces low carbon
electricity and that low carbon
electricity can be used to electrify
transport heating and cooling in
buildings providing heating also to some
industrial processes
so this is direct use of electricity but
we know
and that there are some of those
processes that cannot be electrified
so we need a fuel electrolysis based on
low carbon electrolysis produces
hydrogen and that hydrogen is a clean
fuel
that can provide energy to this these
different sectors
including transport with fuel cells and
hydrogen can also be stored
this is important because it can be used
later or it can be transformed back into
electricity using fuel cells
so this is really the basis of the
coupling
between the power sector and the other
the other
energy sectors and and how the
transformation from today’s world
to a low carbon uh future energy system
and industries and utilities in
particular are looking at that and
looking at the role of hydrogen
so why are they looking at hydrogen well
first of all
i mentioned that the electricity systems
electricity markets right now
are not uh are not designed in the the
most
robust appropriate way we have we know
we have pairs where we have excess
electricity
and when you have excess electricity the
the prices go down they may even go
negative
and so utilities that produce
electricity have to pay to dispatch
electricity into the grid
that’s doesn’t make sense is and it’s
not sustainable in the long term
so really the idea is to make use of
that excess electricity when there is
excess electricity
and transform it into something that has
value for example hydrogen
and the idea is it’s very simple sell
hydro
sell electricity when electricity is
needed and has value
and sells something else like hydrogen
when
electricity doesn’t have as much value
as as hydrogen produced at that time
there’s also an important driver for
for industries and utilities to look at
hydrogen and that’s
the contribution to the energy
transition into climate change
this is not just a matter for
governments to make pledges and so on
the private sector is taking also an
important role
in in moving towards these low-carbon
systems
and i want to give you two examples the
first is a
company in the u.s arizona public
service company
this uh company operates um
the largest nuclear power plant in in
the us the palo verde
nuclear generating station which sits in
the middle of the arizona desert
they also have wind they also have solar
power and they have gas
and as a company aps has made
the the pledge to become carbon neutral
by 2050.
so they have assets that are carbon
carbon free like nuclear and solar and
wind but they also have gas why do they
have gas
well it’s very simple in the evening
when the sun sets
solar generation disappears yet the
utility has to provide electricity to
its customers
so that’s when it starts its gas turbine
to produce electricity
and to lower the emissions of the gas
turbine the idea is to produce hydrogen
blend it with the natural gas and then
use the the gas turbine to produce
electricity
with a lower level of emissions
and in the future those gas turbines
could be
designed to run on 100 hydrogen so then
you would have a completely carbon free
electricity
generation system the other example i
want to give you is the
the example of edf energy in the uk uh
edf energy
is contributing to the to the goal of
the the uk the uk has set
uh a target of being net zero by um
by 2050 as a country it’s in the law
and the company is investing in low low
carbon assets
and in particular has plans to build a
nuclear power plant in a site
called size well and size world is an
interesting location because
not far from that you have a large wind
farms
generating wind electricity and also you
have a large
gas network uh system that runs past the
site
so the idea is for the the site to
become a clean energy hub
with low carbon electricity produced
from nuclear and wind
and using nuclear power to produce
hydrogen
either use hydrogen as a fuel or inject
hydrogen into the gas
network and this is a feature of these
um
of this changes of our energy system the
fact that
the power and the gas systems are going
to be more integrated
more interconnected as hydrogen produced
from low carbon electricity
from electrolysis is pumped into the
into the gas network
so it’s the future of our energy needs
all about electricity and hydrogen and i
believe it is
and when i was preparing this talk i was
reminded of some
books and novels that i read as a kid
from a visionary science fiction writer
from the nineteenth century gorgeous
vein
now juventus wrote a lot about
electricity and in one of his books
twenty thousand leagues under the sea he
even imagined
a submarine powered by electricity by
batteries
but more more relevant to today’s talk
is the sequel to twenty thousand leagues
under the sea
and that book is called the mysterious
island and in that novel
a character identifies hydrogen
coming from the splitting of water as a
fuel that’s able that will be able in
the future to displace
uh the the fossil fuel that was used at
the time coal
so of course at that time there was no
consideration for climate change
but i find it amazing that 150 years ago
there was already a vision that the
future of our energy needs will be met
by electricity and by hydrogen
so to sum up my talk yes there is a
future
for clean energy systems it relies
simply on two
to two pillars two actions one is to
decarbonize our electricity system with
whatever
low carbon technologies countries want
to use
whether it’s wind solar or nuclear or a
combination of all of them
and the second is to produce hydrogen in
a clean way
splitting water and using that clean
electricity
thank you
you