As the European Union launches a new push to make hydrogen one of the clean fuels of the future, two French industrial giants say they’ve found the right project to rapidly scale up the nascent industry. Engie SA and Air Liquide SA want to build solar farms big enough to power 450,000 homes in France’s sun-drenched Provence region, with enough electricity left over to produce hydrogen by electrolyzing water. Some of the clean-burning gas would be sold to refineries and chemicals makers in Fos-sur-Mer, curbing their emissions of carbon dioxide.
The “HyGreen Provence” project would produce renewable hydrogen on a much bigger scale than anywhere else, and trim CO2 emissions that come from the refining and petrochemical complex. The French industrial sector uses about 1 million tons of hydrogen each year, and the government would like between 20% to 40% of this to be carbon-free by 2028.
But the companies need government subsidies to do it. While producing so-called green hydrogen, which is done using water electrolysis and emits no CO2, it costs about three times as much as steam methane reforming — a process used by refiners which does produce the greenhouse gas.
BNEF projections of the cost of producing green hydrogen, when compared with hydrogen derived from natural gas.
“For the project to work, we need support from the state and incentives for companies to switch to green hydrogen,” Gwenaelle Avice-Huet, Engie’s head of renewables, said in an interview. “We need to scale up with projects of significant sizes to lower costs.”