Season 2, Episode 10: Klemens Ilse, Fraunhofer IMWS
In the final episode of Season 2 of The Solar Journey, Torsten tackles one of the most debated areas of energy transition technology: green hydrogen production and usage. Putting the hydrogen-hype under a microscope, this episode taps the knowledge of a global expert in the field who, somewhat surprisingly, has some inconvenient truths to share.
Joining Torsten is Dr. Klemens Ilse, a physicist and materials diagnostics expert at the Fraunhofer Institute, where he leads research on materials for green hydrogen production. As Deputy Director of the Fraunhofer Innovation Platform for Hydrogen Energy at Kentech in South Korea, Klemens offers a truly global perspective on the future of green hydrogen production and storage.
With a background in photovoltaics, including award-winning research on PV soiling in desert climates, Klemens now applies his skills to the cutting edge of hydrogen technology. In this episode, he unpacks the colorful world of hydrogen—blue, green, grey, and beyond—while providing an honest take on its opportunities and challenges.
"Green hydrogen is often called the Swiss army knife of the energy transition," says Klemens, "but you wouldn't use a Swiss army knife for everything. It should be reserved for cases where no better tool is available." He highlights where hydrogen can make the biggest impact—hard-to-decarbonize sectors like steelmaking—and outlines the challenge posed by inefficient production and transportation.
Beyond the science, Klemens delves into the economics and policy of hydrogen. From Europe’s regulatory push to scale green hydrogen, to the bottlenecks of rare materials like iridium, this conversation sheds light on the forces shaping hydrogen’s role in a net-zero future.
As the closing episode of Season 2, and featuring such a hotly debated subject, this one is not to be missed. A bold exploration of hydrogen's potential and pitfalls, offering clear-eyed analysis and a roadmap for its role in the clean energy future.
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Show Notes:
The colorful spectrum of hydrogen: grey, blue, green, and even pink.
Why hydrogen could be the "champagne" of the energy transition—expensive and therefore precious.
Lessons from the development of electrolyzer technology, from PEM to solid oxide systems.
Key countries pursuing global hydrogen production, in Europe and Asia.
Regulatory frameworks and standards shaping the future of hydrogen trade.
How material diagnostics play a critical role in improving electrolyzer durability and efficiency.
The role of policy and market mechanisms in scaling the hydrogen economy.
Transcript
[00:00:00.320] - Torsten
My guest today is Klemens Ilse. Welcome, Klemens.
[00:00:04.160] - Klemens
Hi. Thank you for having me.
[00:00:05.970] - Torsten
Yeah, thanks for joining. Let me briefly introduce Klemens Ilse. Klemens holds a PhD in physics and he's the group manager for materials diagnostics for hydrogen technologies at the Fraunhofer Institute in the city of Halle in Germany. He is also the deputy director of the Fraunhofer Innovation Platform for Hydrogen Energy at Kentech in South Korea, working on technologies for the production and logistics of hydrogen. Before we talk about your actual role, I would like to address the big picture for hydrogen right before we get started in what you actually do. In the last years, we've seen the interest in hydrogen accelerated massively. And why is that?
[00:00:56.520] - Klemens
I think that there is a hype, or there was a hype on hydrogen due to several reasons. First of all, because a lot of people have realized that there's a high potential that hydrogen is needed for the energy transition. And some of them also said that the hydrogen will be the army knife, which can solve any problem for the future energy transition. Which now this has been a little bit corrected. But I think most of the people would agree that green hydrogen will have a viable role in the defossilization of our energy and especially also of the economic system.
[00:01:39.630] - Torsten
So everybody who follows the hydrogen discussion now has learned that hydrogen can have different colors, blue, grey and green. And I think even more, what does it stand for? Why is that important?
[00:01:54.350] - Klemens
Let's say nowadays most of the hydrogen produced is grey hydrogen, or we call it grey or even brown hydrogen, as it is produced from fossil sources. So if you want to produce hydrogen, you take natural gas, go for steam, methane reformer, and then you crack the natural gas into hydrogen and carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide is emitted into the atmosphere, and the hydrogen is can then be used in your processes. And just to give you a rough estimate, with 1 kg of hydrogen, grey hydrogen, you will end up at about 10, 11 kg of carbon dioxide emission, something like that. So there's a big backpack of carbon dioxide in the actually used hydrogen.
[00:02:45.070] - Torsten
And what about the color? Why do the colors come into play?
[00:02:48.900] - Klemens
Yes. So now when one says, okay, we want to go for the Paris climate goals and want to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, then it would make sense to reduce the emissions from the hydrogen production. And if you do that in the form that you capture the carbon dioxide directly in the process, in the steam, methane reforming, then the hydrogen is called blue hydrogen.
[00:03:13.910] - Torsten
That means it's from natural gas.
[00:03:15.560] - Klemens
Yeah. So blue hydrogen. Blue hydrogen is produced from natural gas with carbon or carbon dioxide storage and sequestration. But there's also an alternative way of producing hydrogen in an electrolytic way. That means going for electrolyzers of water, which produces oxygen and hydrogen from water by using electricity, and in the best case, green electricity or from renewables. So if you do that with renewables, then it's called green hydrogen. That's the, let's say, prospect, especially to come to defossilization, then you would need to have green hydrogen.
[00:03:54.340] - Torsten
Okay. Are there more colors than blue and green?
[00:03:58.580] - Klemens
Yes, there are. There's also often called pink hydrogen. If you think, if you use the hydrogen from, or the power from nuclear, it's a colorful, colorful rainbow of hydrogen color. So for example, if you're digging for natural hydrogen, which is currently kind of hot topic in some communities, then they call it white hydrogen because you can find it in the earth crust to some extent. Yeah. And they are also, I think that the violet hydrogen is if you're also using methane, but you're going for pyrolysis, which results in elemental carbon and hydrogen instead of carbon dioxide and hydrogen.
[00:04:48.990] - Torsten
So you can actually mine hydrogen as well?
[00:04:52.590] - Klemens
Well, now, I haven't seen any economic feasibility of that, but currently investigated for sure. And there's also kind of hype about that.
[00:05:02.550] - Torsten
Hydrogen is already used by industry, chemical industry, and then various other industries. How much hydrogen do we work with our species today? And how much green hydrogen do you think we will need for the defossilization of our industry by let's say, 2040 or 2050? You pick.
[00:05:22.780] - Klemens
When you look at the various sources of how much hydrogen is currently used, because it's often also a byproduct and not necessarily produced for the purpose. But we talk about about 100 million tons per year, which is mainly grey hydrogen, so grey and brown. So in China they produce a lot of hydrogen, not from natural gas, but from coal. And coal results in an even higher carbon dioxide footprint of about 19 tons per kilogram hydrogen. Okay, so if you, if you look at that, it's currently the present hydrogen production accounts for about 2% of the global carbon dioxide emissions. So it's can be roughly compared to the emissions from aviation. Less than 2% is produced from electrolyzers nowadays. However, nowadays one says, okay, about 100 million tons, which has already a big footprint and which needs to be transitioned to a carbon fatality. However, due to the various applications where green hydrogen has a potential for defossilization in industry, looking into chemical industry or steel industry, one foresees an growth in hydrogen consumption until 2050 by a factor of about 5. How much hydrogen will be used in an energy system which agrees with the Paris goals?
[00:06:45.470] - Torsten
Before we keep on going and there's plenty more to talk about hydrogen and in general the E fuel industry, I would like to jump back into your early career.
[00:06:55.280] - Klemens
Right.
[00:06:55.590] - Torsten
You've got a PhD in physics. What was the initial trigger for you to go into the technical direction? Engineering and science was one special event or you just had good marks in school or when you reflect – what was the trigger?
[00:07:08.900] - Klemens
Actually it was a trigger in school when we had a mandatory internship with the target of going into research institutions or universities. And I at the time had my internship at the Max Planck Institute for Microstructure Physics in Halle with Otto Breitenstein, who is kind of godfather of lock in thermography for solar cells. And it was quite fun. Then at that time I also used that internship to apply for Jugen for which was also successful and joyful. And at that time I decided, oh, I would love to get a PhD in physics and solar cells. So it was decided in my 11th grade that I wanted to do that.
[00:07:50.390] - Torsten
How far did you get in the Jugenforsch? In translation, that would be like a young scientist award here in Germany.
[00:07:56.820] - Klemens
Yes, I was at the second level, that means from the local state – from Saxony, Anheit.
[00:08:02.990] - Torsten
It was already on, solar, I guess then?
[00:08:05.340] - Klemens
What I can recommend, because that's also something that I try to do – please let people have a look into your jobs, especially if you're a scientist, also into science when they're at school. Because that could have an effect on the decision. At least it did for me.
[00:08:23.210] - Torsten
If you have a good supervisor.
[00:08:25.050] - Klemens
If you have a good supervisor, yes.
[00:08:26.920] - Torsten
It can backfire as well.
[00:08:29.640] - Klemens
Right.
[00:08:31.010] - Torsten
At the same time it was engineering science and also solar.
[00:08:33.960] - Klemens
Right.
[00:08:34.240] - Torsten
It was at the same time, right?
[00:08:37.700] - Klemens
Yeah, I decided to go for solar because I had a big interest into the technology and it was a strong growth phase at the time, also in solar industry. And there was also a new professorship established in Halle with a focus on PV finance by QCET at that time, or initiated by QCET. Yes. And yeah, I found that very attractive.
[00:09:00.610] - Torsten
So you did your PhD, and I think it's worth mentioning that it was an award winning thesis that was in solar PV, particularly soiling of PV modules. But your work now is very much focused on hydrogen and green hydrogen, of course. So why did you make that move, from electrons to molecules?
[00:09:22.410] - Klemens
I was asked internally if I could support our international efforts at the front of IMWS on the green hydrogen research.
Because at the time I was already having lots of collaborations, especially with the Middle East and North Africa due to my PhD in soiling. So if you have PV modules which get dusty and dirty, that typically occurs very heavily in desert areas. And we were building strong collaboration with Morocco at that time and they were looking for someone who wanted to push that. And as Korean hydrogen projects are, from my understanding, also green energy projects and often also solar projects. So more than 60% of the CapEx of a green hydrogen project goes into the renewable energy system, I've heard that. Having the PV perspective could be also a good benefit to jump into that topic.
[00:10:17.900] - Torsten
So you get to travel to Morocco, but certainly Korea, I guess with your work.
[00:10:23.800] - Klemens
Yeah, especially during my Ph.D. I went to many different desert areas. And since then our Korean collaboration also strongly increased.
[00:10:33.120] - Torsten
The group you're leading is called Material Diagnostics for Hydrogen Technologies. What exactly do you do?
[00:10:41.300] - Klemens
Our background is material science mostly and we try to understand materials and especially to understand how they work and why they fail. So that's why we call it diagnostics. We try to help our customers learn what went wrong, if something went wrong, or will it go wrong.
So looking into quality control, both in production and also during operation of, in this case electrolyzer systems. We have this strong materials focused to look at really the catalyst coated membrane level from large devices down to the atomic scale. And to have these diagnostics to find defects, just as an example.
[00:11:27.300] - Torsten
I imagine a classic situation is that some electrolyzer breaks down and you get samples of the membrane or something and you apply your diagnostics tools to find out if there are impurities, scratches, ripped membranes or something like that.
[00:11:46.110] - Klemens
Yeah, that could be a typical description of what we do and what we prepare for. Because nowadays there are not too many electrolyzers deployed because the hydrogen economy is just in its starting phase. That means there is no long term experience on fluctuating operation of such electrolyzers. But we believe that there will be lots of material challenges or material challenges arising from this non–constant operation modes. And in order to be ready once that happens, and to help the electrolyzer manufacturers to understand where they can improve their technologies, we are currently developing all the diagnostic methods at the same time.
We also try to understand the systems, especially how much they fluctuate and what would be the operation conditions. We try to broaden our picture from the pure diagnostics to the systemic aspects, also understanding how standardization and regulatory framework works and would change the different projects, and how we can assure that the green hydrogen projects are really green and are helping the energy transition.
[00:12:58.370] - Torsten
We will jump to regulatory and standards, et cetera, in a few seconds. But you mentioned something, I think that's very much at the core of running electrolyzers for green hydrogen, right? That's fluctuating power from wind and solar, and that's why the electrolyzers have to ramp up and down, right? What's actually causing the problem for electrolyzers? So ideally, they run at the same power nonstop. Why does it cause an issue if they get different power inputs?
[00:13:31.810] - Klemens
So depending on the level of power input, there are various effects which can occur. Just some from the basic physics. If you have an electrolyzer with a membrane and you have a gas crossover through the membrane of the product, gasses like hydrogen or oxygen, they can go for crossover. And they do this typically independent of your operating power. And that means that if you go to very low current densities or very low production rates, you still have a high crossover and then you have less dilution, and then you can form, for example, explosive environments.
In terms of operation, there are some challenges to the electrolyzers to run in a safe mode, especially at low operational levels. And besides that, there's a lot of electrochemical, I call it magic, taking place, which is not well understood. So the experts, which knew how electrolyzers work for 50 years or something like that, even they tell us that they try to run these electrolyzers in a fluctuating mode, that they see tremendously increasing or decreasing efficiencies, or for some of the technologies which were not expected, for example, catalyst dissolution and so on, which gets triggered especially through thermomechanical stresses or the electrochemical stresses once you don't have stable conditions.
[00:14:57.540] - Torsten
So that's electrochemistry, right at the core. I worked at the Electrochemical Institute once, at the research center, which was actually specialized in fuel cells. And I was in a tiny solar cell group, and I got to hear a few of their issues back then. And yeah, it did sound more like magic than science. So there's, I guess, plenty of work to be done to handle the chemistry and the physics of these fuel cells.
[00:15:21.830] - Klemens
Unfortunately, yes, I think there is still a lot of more work needed to really understand what's happening.
[00:15:27.980] - Torsten
There's different types of fuel cells, right. Could you briefly outline which ones they are, and what are the pros and cons?
[00:15:35.630] - Klemens
Do you mean fuel cells or electrolyzers?
[00:15:38.380] - Torsten
Fuel cells. But are there different ones also for electrolytes?
[00:15:41.620] - Klemens
Yes. For example, we have the alkaline technologies, which are the old established ones, which have been there for more than 100 years, something like that. Also in operation, for example, in Egypt or at big water resources, they have been continuously operating and producing hydrogen for ammonia production, just as an example.
Then we have technologies which were originally, I think, developed by the guys from NASA for hydrogen and oxygen production in space, which are for space. At least to my understanding. And they needed to be compact and they developed the PEM electrolyzer. So which have a polymer membrane as electrolyte at its core, but running on noble metal, or the catalysts needed are based on noble methods like platinum or iridium. So this is PEM technology, which has a small footprint, much smaller compared to the alkaline technology, and it can also operate more flexible, but can be much more expensive because of the materials needed.
And then we have the high temperature electrolyzers, solid oxide electrolyzers, or solid oxide based electrolyzers. So as the name says, you are using oxide membranes, which are operated at high temperatures, like 8, 800 degrees, and which have the benefit that the hydrogen generated or the energy needed to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen comes not only from the electricity, but also from hot steam.
If you have hot steam, then a part of of the power is already there. So they are much more efficient compared to the other two technologies. But high temperatures and steam need to be available.
[00:17:33.350] - Torsten
So what's the classic electrolyzer which is in use now and also planned then for the green hydrogen production?
[00:17:40.050] - Klemens
For the time it's mostly alkaline and PEM technologies. However, the other, there are also other technologies emerging like the SOEC and also AEM, which is kind of a combination of alkaline and PEM technologies. So it's alkaline electrolyzer, which also has a membrane and doesn't need too many platinum group methods as catalysts. But the majority for the time being is alkaline and PEM technologies.
[00:18:11.040] - Torsten
But what's their key advantage over the other technologies?
[00:18:14.800] - Klemens
That they are old enough and known well, especially the alkaline technologies. The PEM technologies, they're a little bit newer and they are more compact. So if you want to produce a hydrogen in an area where you don't have much space, then the PEM technology is really could be a good choice. For example, if you want to produce hydrogen on the sea, if you want to put it on a platform or something like that. But if you want to go into the desert where you have plenty of space, then currently the alkaline systems are favored because of their lower costs.
[00:18:50.630] - Torsten
You mentioned these expensive sounding metals or elements. Are they being used up? Is there like a degradation or a wear of these electrodes?
[00:19:01.970] - Klemens
There are some degradation mechanisms which can lead to the catalyst to be leached out of the electrolyzers. I'm not very familiar if there are methods to filter them later on from the water or something like that, but there are a lot of activities to go into recycling after the electrolyzers are at the end of their lifetime. So recycling is currently a very big topic. Especially because when talking about PEM technologies, the Iridium, this is really a critical and limited resource.
[00:19:33.770] - Torsten
Now the calculation that this could become a bottleneck. Or is that indeed?
[00:19:38.740] - Klemens
Indeed. And that's why current efforts are going into the direction that much lower loadings of Iridium are used, trying to reach the same efficiency and durability. But that's an ongoing challenge. So that could be a bottleneck for the PEM technologies.
[00:19:55.750] - Torsten
Yeah. Talking about developments in that area, what are the hot topics currently in the industry, coming from manufacturing?
[00:19:59.430] - Klemens
Manual assembled tools to highly industrialized processes, so that you have the large scale production facilities. And we are currently in the phase of transition that the first gigawatt factories are put together and they are very deep into automatization and scaling so that the costs can come down, and when the costs come down then there will be more deployment.
And the operational experience, that's definitely a hot topic because for now there are barely any green hydrogen projects which has not a pilot character. So there are some larger ones which are now being built, but just starting the operation. So you don't have long term experience on the different technologies.
[00:20:56.290] - Torsten
Who are the key players in the for the manufacturing of the electrolyzers you mentioned? The companies now attempt to have serial production, mass production of these units.
[00:21:07.470] - Klemens
Talking about Germany and Europe, there's Siemens Energy who are producing PEM electrolyzers, and there's a Thyssenkop Nutera who are very big in the alkaline business. And there's also M Energy Solutions or HTech, but I think they reprinted recently. There are like 5, 6, 7 large companies in Germany who are producing electrolyzers. But when you're looking into the Chinese market, which has also very strong dynamics in that regard, you may know some of the names like Yingli or Sungro or Trina who are producing now alkaline electrolyzers, also at large volume capacities.
[00:21:57.100] - Torsten
And these, let's say solar companies at the core, are they, in terms of size, the leading electrolyzer manufacturers now, or are there others? I mean there's many large, large, large industrial players in China.
[00:22:11.500] - Klemens
No, I think in terms of electrolyzers, they are currently trying to copy their growth model from pv. So I don't know what is reality and what is numbers from the newspapers, but they are going to big scales, like also multi gigawatt scale manufacturing capacities.
[00:22:28.530] - Torsten
Let's move from making hydrogen to storage, which is always a classic when you talk about hydrogen.
Hydrogen is tiny. How can you capture it? When does it make sense to store it?
[00:22:39.570] - Klemens
Yeah, that's a good question. So currently transport and storage is always a big question and expensive. We in Germany, we are lucky that we could use salt caverns for large volume hydrogen storage. So which are currently in use for methane or natural gas, they may be reused in future for hydrogen.
Also pipelines can be used to some extent also as a storage. When it comes to large volumes, it's mainly this. Or you can also talk about compressed hydrogen storage, but not at large sizes ,or you transform it or into derricates like ammonia or methanol. Or you can also use liquid organic hydrogen carriers, which can uptake hydrogen and then release it once you heat them, as an example.
[00:23:34.490] - Torsten
But then you need extra energy, right? To liquefy the hydrogen, and you lose a lot of full circle efficiency.
[00:23:41.980] - Klemens
Yes. So let's say hydrogen transport and storage is always entails energetic efforts.
[00:23:49.230] - Torsten
When you look at the full cycle from electricity back to electricity, where do you have the largest loss when starting?
[00:23:57.360] - Klemens
With electrolyzers, being optimistic, you have an efficiency of something between 60 and 70% at a system level. So 30% are already lost during production. Then when you want to transport and store it, just from rough estimate, which I heard it's about also 10 to 20%, which can be of the energy economy, which can be lost to that depending on the method. So when talking about hydrogen liquefaction, you may need to use 30% of its energetic value to liquefy. And then also depending on how you go back to electricity, if you're using a fuel cell or if you're using an engine deficiency, you will also, I think at least lose like 30%. So the round trip efficiency in terms of electricity to hydrogen to electricity is not too good. One can say the same would be also true, for example, for heating.
[00:24:56.460] - Torsten
From your personal view, what's your ideal scenario for the role of hydrogen or other green gasses in the future?
[00:25:04.670] - Klemens
I think there are two pictures of the green hydrogen which are often mentioned. So one is that green hydrogen is a Swiss army knife for energy transition on the one hand, and on the other hand it's the champagne of the energy transition because it's very expensive. And I think bringing these two pictures together could help a lot for understanding its future role.
Because yes, indeed, hydrogen could be used for everything. Like a Swiss army knife could be also used for many tasks. But in practice you may don't want to use your Swiss army knife for everything. If you have, if you're needing a screwdriver and you have a screwdriver available, you may prefer the screwdriver instead of having the Swiss army knife. So green hydrogen, especially due to the energy which goes into its production and which is kind of lost, makes it a valuable product which you should use mainly in sectors or in applications where you don't have a real alternative, which are unavoidable, so to say, and where there's no competition with other technologies which may have a better energy balance over everything, or better carbon footprint. So you should really look for which applications you really want to spend this value product.
[00:26:29.880] - Torsten
There's a very strong policy in Germany and possibly also in other countries which tries to support the hydrogen industry. When you look at the policy and support schemes, does that match with your ideal world with how hydrogen should be used in the future, and where do you have doubts that this is the right thing to be supported?
[00:26:50.550] - Klemens
A lot of R&D is supported in various areas – I think that's always a good place to look at what science can help with and what technologies may develop. For the time being, what I see is that there are major support schemes going into the green hydrogen production in order to generate a market and also to help in setting regulatory framework conditions, mostly at the European level, which is then implemented in Germany, so that not only the support is assured, but also the uptake as well, because the hydrogen is so expensive, the green hydrogen, there won't be a necessary shift because the carbon dioxide prices would need to be much higher in order to make this product competitive with its grey brother. And that's why I think that having regulations and helping the technologies to flourish and to thrive through mass production is helping the industry to speed up in that process.
There were definitely some nice support schemes, especially during the COVID crisis. I think there have been multibillion Euros being spent in this direction, both on the R&D level, but also in supporting some companies, for example, with the IPSA projects, the European projects or important projects of common interest, where we have, I think, several electrolyzer manufacturing plants being supported with public money.
I think there was also especially strong support talking about hydrogen mobility, so developing fuel cells over many years, also in terms of uptakes, at least to start the triads on what we can use green hydrogen for in this application, maybe in the chemical industry and to develop platforms to test the technologies. There was also strong support, but it's just currently gaining traction. For example, at a European level, and I think this is really important until 2032, more than 40% of the grey hydrogen should become green hydrogen of its current use. As we have talked about in the beginning of the podcast, that the grey hydrogen or the current hydrogen production is a huge emitter of more than 2% of the global carbon dioxide emissions. One priority must be, at least from my point of view, to green those usage scenarios that's currently already used.
[00:29:39.760] - Torsten
Are there any other countries that put so much emphasis on the support of the hydrogen industry with public money?
[00:29:47.410] - Klemens
Yes, indeed. I would say that they are globally, and that's why we can call it a hype. There's a race both on the technology developments, but also project developments for green hydrogen production for who can become a leader in terms of either hydrogen supply or usage. So just to name some countries, like South Korea or Japan, they were among the first with developing hydrogen strategies for their countries and making clear that a huge fraction of the energy imports in the future might become hydrogen. In the United States, the Inflation Reduction act also strongly supports green hydrogen, green and blue hydrogen projects. So there's a lot going on there and at the European level for sure. If you're looking at maps of the early adopter projects, a huge fraction of those have been deployed over Europe, with now having the countries who are in a good position in terms of renewable energies, like the MENA region, Middle East, North Africa or South Africa, Chile, Namibia or even India, they are now also planning to become big hydrogen producers and are looking for their participation in the downstream process.
[00:31:08.580] - Torsten
Right in the beginning you mentioned the topic of regulatory and standards. What is this about? I think it plays a certain role when you talk about global hydrogen trade, I would assume. Is that correct?
[00:31:22.580] - Klemens
Yes. So let's say we are now rolling out a new technology because we want to transition towards a climate neutral energy system. And that means that you need to assure that this new technology really fulfills these goals. That means that you need to assure that if you go for electrolytic hydrogen, that the carbon footprint is lower compared to their grey alternatives. And for that it's very important that the electricity input has a very low carbon footprint. Because if you would run an electrolyzer with the current mix of our electricity grid in Germany, then the overall carbon footprint of the produced hydrogen would be higher compared to grey hydrogen.
So if you are using this new technology in the wrong way, this could lead to negative effects. That's why you need to have standards and regulations which tell you how you can use this so that you can achieve green hydrogen. And typically some of the regulations, they look at the carbon dioxide emissions from the green hydrogen or from the hydrogen production, they should be at least lower than 4 kg per ton instead of the 10 kg per ton hydrogen produced. That's something. And on the other hand, as I also mentioned, previously a huge fraction of the capital or investment of the hydrogen comes back to the renewable electricity. You need a lot of electricity power to split the water. And due to that you need to install many renewable energy plants. And now the big question is if you are in a market where you are in a country where your local grid is still dirty, and now you are adding up renewable energy capacity which is then used for green hydrogen production, for export, for example, to Germany, because we don't have enough capacity producers on our own, then you can undermine the local energy transition because the carbon footprint reduction would have been much higher if you would use that green electricity in that country to green their grid, which is dirty.
And that's why the regulations they are looking into, that you should not use green electricity which is already in the grid, and also geographical correlation, and that you don't buy green electricity from Norway to produce clean hydrogen in Germany, even though the grid has a big carbon footprint. Also the temporary correlation, so that you producing the green hydrogen when the renewable energy is there, so that there is no coal powered fire plant which just runs during your operation because you have low sun and low wind and then you produce again hydrogen, which has a worse climate footprint compared to the grey variant.
[00:34:33.660] - Torsten
Complicated situation I can imagine, particularly if it's like international trade.
It's been fantastic to have you on the show. My classic final questions is what is required from your point of view to get solar, and the energy transition, to the next level?
[00:34:51.680] - Klemens
At least from what I've learned so far, is that the industry doesn't move if you don't push them with regulations towards a cleaner economy. So there are some starting points, but if you just look at, for example, how Meta or Microsoft are currently just kicking out their former emission reduction goals because of artificial intelligence and computing, we need for the politics need to be clear that we have to transition and we need to give the right framework so that the companies can invest in the future. And if these boundary conditions are there then the transition will happen.
Looking at China who are pushing a lot into this direction, especially in pushing the core technologies, there will be a multitude of tools which we need. However, it helped us a lot that PV became the cheapest energy ever. So there's always pros and cons on where the PV modules are produced right now and what is their quality and about market dominance. But realizing the energy transition needs cheap solutions on the one hand and on the other hand the right framework conditions. And as long as we do not internalize the externalized costs by regulation, it's going to be hard for the industry players to invest.
[00:36:20.280] - Torsten
Thanks so much Klemens. Thanks for sharing your insights and sharing your experiences along the journey here on The Solar Journey. All the best.
[00:36:34.580] - Klemens
Thank you very much Torsten for the great discussion.
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