Hydrogen as a Fuel: A Conversation With Finn Doyle

The transcript below is from a brilliant conversation I had with a very good friend of mine, the great Finn Doyle.

We discuss hydrogen, and its use as an exciting emerging fuel source, its future applications, its limitations, and government policy.

My knowledge of hydrogen before this conversation was very limited. I now feel that I have a good appreciation for the technology and the industry, and I hope anyone who reads this finds our conversation as interesting and insightful as I did.

Finn, thank you my friend.

Conversation Location: Finsbury Park, London.

Tom:
Finn, thank you for taking the time. For people who don't know you, could you introduce yourself and explain how you came to work in the hydrogen space?

Finn:
Thanks for having me, Tom. I'm Finn Doyle, Hydrogen Application Engineer at Protium. My journey into the hydrogen space began whilst I was studying my undergraduate degree, where I chose the topic of sustainability for my dissertation. During the summer between my second and third year, I did a lot of reading around sustainability as a discourse and fell onto the topic of hydrogen. I thought that it needed more ‘people power’ as well as increased research and development to help it support our transition to a more sustainable world. Through continued research, I realised that there were not really any alternative solutions out there for applications such as shipping and heavy industry, so I decided to do my project on fuel cell application in the maritime industry, and that really sparked my interest in hydrogen.

After I finished my undergraduate degree, I pursued a placement at a renewable energy consultancy in Tokyo, where I researched the hydrogen economy for the CEO. I came back from Japan with a renewed vigour to develop my career in hydrogen, and COVID hit; but it was a perfect time to do my master’s, so I've now completed my master's studying the wider energy system, but with a heavy focus on hydrogen fuel cells and other applications of hydrogen.

During the dissertation for my master’s, I then focused on fuel cell applications in aviation, at which point I got involved with a government-funded yearlong project that was researching the future of aviation and the sustainability of aviation within a UK context. I sat within the fuel cell team on that project, researching and developing roadmaps for how aviation can implement hydrogen and fuel cells. After that year finished, I reached out to the team I had worked with, and there was a position going, and I joined the team full-time about two years ago. The company is about five years old and has spent that time trying to develop green hydrogen projects and infrastructure.

Tom:
So what is hydrogen, and how is it produced and made into a usable fuel?

Finn:
For the history of humans utilising hydrogen, pretty much all of it has been produced utilising a process called ‘steam methane reforming’, which utilises natural gas, water, and steam to produce hydrogen and multiple other carbon-based compounds, primarily CO2. It’s a very carbon-intensive process, and this is known as ‘grey’ hydrogen, and that's used in the petrochemical industry.

There has been a process theorised and developed to capture the CO2 produced, and that process results in something called ‘blue’ hydrogen. This involves the capture and storage of that CO2, for example by storing it underground or using it in other processes. But that has proven quite a difficult process to master.

There are also alternative methods for producing hydrogen, but the industry that I work in produces green hydrogen, and that is produced by utilising water that's put into what's called an electrolyser. This process utilises renewable energy to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen. You capture the hydrogen and utilise it in all sorts of different processes.

Tom:
What is hydrogen used for currently?

Finn:
Great question. Currently, it's utilised and has been for decades in the petrochemical industry for reformation, and within refineries to process petrochemicals. Basically, there's been a shift over the last 10-20 years to attempt to utilise it in transport applications. There are a small number of passenger vehicles that utilise it currently, and over the last 10 years, there's been more of an interest in trying to utilise hydrogen in a wider range of use cases.

We would like to see hydrogen implemented in food and beverage, heavy-duty industry, aviation, and transport use cases like this. So, there's a lot that it can be used for, but today, pretty much everything has been in the petrochemical industry.

Tom:
So still pretty niche, but getting there?

Finn:
It's pretty niche. Well, there's millions of tons of hydrogen that are used and produced every year, but it's very dirty and used almost exclusively in the petrochemical industry. What we want to do as a business, and as a green hydrogen industry, is to utilise hydrogen as a fuel, but for other applications for things that have proven difficult to electrify.

Tom:
You've been working in the hydrogen industry for two years. Can you explain specifically what you are working on?

Finn:
The business has been around for about five years, and we've got an operational asset that has been online for just over a year. This asset is an electrolyser, and this splits water into hydrogen and oxygen, and we currently use that hydrogen for applications like bus trials. We've sent our hydrogen to the Goodwood Festival of Speed, and Mr. Bean has driven a car utilising our fuel. So there are multiple possible applications, mostly at pilot stage.

Our next operational asset is coming online later this year, and that will represent a step change in the amount of hydrogen that we'll produce. That's when we want to start taking our hydrogen into heavy industry and see hundreds of kilos of hydrogen utilised every day, rather than the 40 kilos that we currently produce. That would primarily be for transport applications, fuelling our next significant project that is going to develop hydrogen fuelling stations along the M4 corridor to try to decarbonise HGVs that operate there.

As we move into the future, we've got other projects in the pipeline, that once operational will lead to significant progress in the amount of hydrogen that we'll be producing, and that will be co-located or be distributed around the country. That will aim to decarbonise many different off-takers, but we'd like to see it in the food and beverage industry, heavy industry, and I personally would like to see it in aviation.

Tom:
We're in a space with the electricity industry for example, where we are rapidly moving away from fossil fuels to reasonable success. Nowadays, in a typical year renewable energy provides about 40% of our electricity. What I'm interested in is what traditional fuel sources do you see hydrogen disrupting and potentially replacing in the future?

Finn:
Good question. Our mantra is to ‘electrify everything’. It's the most efficient way to decarbonise our energy system. However, there is a proportion of the industry, or there are locations, or there are just use cases where you cannot use electricity. And that's where we believe hydrogen is the answer.

Think of the hydrogen and electricity relationship as the ‘ying and yang’, both complementing one another. Hydrogen has a role to play where electricity falters, and vice versa. I wouldn't necessarily say there's a specific fossil fuel that it will replace, and I guess people oftentimes think that it will replace natural gas. But there are a lot of applications that could currently be supplied by renewable energy that still use natural gas to this day. On the other hand, there are things like coal, which is used in the steel industry that cannot be electrified. We propose, and we suggest that the solution is to utilise hydrogen, because you can get that high heat from hydrogen that you need that you get from burning coal.

So, to answer your question, I don't think there's necessarily a specific fossil fuel that hydrogen will displace. It's just dependent on what industries are hard to decarbonise, and what fossil fuels they use in that industry where hydrogen could play a role.

Tom:
Really interesting. I work in construction, and one of our clients released a policy that I believe was a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to the direction that the country and the world are going, moving into that renewable space, to ask that all of our on-site plant is electric, where possible. Electric vehicles are great, but they have their flaws, so this is where hydrogen could play a role.

Now, one thing that I'm keen to understand is how long you think it will take for hydrogen to move from an emerging fuel to one that is cost-competitive with increased application?

Finn:
I think perhaps, if we just go back to the construction application, that's something that hydrogen is useful for; and our hydrogen has been used for trials on construction sites. For example, you have to remember that on construction sites there may not be a grid connection available whilst the project is being built. So that's where something like hydrogen could be utilised. You can transport the hydrogen to the site and power generators or machinery in a sustainable manner.

If we go back to your next question, which was when it will move to a more established fuel source. If you think about the way that offshore wind in this country has gone from a niche technology to now being a significant source of electricity in the last 20 years. I think that's a good yardstick to utilise if the correct investment vehicles and methods are used, like the way that offshore wind was supported by government policy. Then without a shadow of a doubt, within 15-20 years hydrogen could be cost-competitive and a valuable fuel in the decarbonisation of our energy system.

Tom:
So we could be on our next holiday flying on a plane that uses hydrogen potentially?

Finn:
Well, the aircraft manufacturers must up their game and produce the aircraft, but the fuel will be there.

Tom:
You mentioned grey hydrogen, blue hydrogen, and green hydrogen. You are working on green hydrogen specifically. Is that carbon neutral?

Finn:
Yes, carbon neutral. There's no carbon in the process of producing green hydrogen, and that's where it differs from grey and blue hydrogen.

Tom:
So you're using green hydrogen and trialling it. What are the downsides of using it as a fuel?

Finn:
So, as I think I might have mentioned previously, it's the lightest and smallest element in the universe. This means that it's not very dense, so it takes up a large volume for storage. Now, there's ways around that. To compress it is one method, but obviously, that requires energy to be able to do that. As an industry we need time to hone the process. There are industries like the petrochemical industry that have been around for 120-150 years. They've had all that time to refine the process, and that's what we're going to have to go through over the next 20 years if we're going to make hydrogen cost competitive. We need to refine the process of producing hydrogen, being able to store it and being able to transport it.

So, the intrinsic property of hydrogen, not being particularly dense, is a problem, but not something that we cannot overcome. There's the potential to liquefy it as well, which increases the energy density even further by taking it down to a low temperature, much like what is done in the LNG industry. So, there's a lot we can learn from that industry in the process, we just need to apply it and obviously produce hydrogen at a high enough volume to make that process cost competitive.

I think something that isn't particularly spoken about enough in the industry, is that hydrogen is an indirect greenhouse gas. If it's released into the atmosphere, then it can react with the oxygen and all the other elements in the atmosphere to produce greenhouse gases. And effectively, what we need to do as an industry is to hold ourselves to account and to ensure that we don't release hydrogen into the atmosphere. If we don't release hydrogen into the atmosphere, then we can either burn it or use it in a fuel cell, and from both processes the only waste products are water and heat.

Just to round that off, there are those problems that we face as a hydrogen industry, but all of them are completely rectifiable, and the ambition is to reduce the amount of CO2 being released into the atmosphere. Climate change is a huge problem that humanity faces, and if we're to get around that, then we need to think of innovative ways to utilise hydrogen.

Tom:
We spoke briefly about construction and your mantra of ‘electrify everything’, with hydrogen filling the gap where that's not possible. Are there any industries specifically you think may struggle to transition away from fossil fuels?

Finn:
I work with hydrogen on a daily basis. So the way I look at it is, where are the challenges for hydrogen?

First and foremost we should work to electrify as much as possible. Then if something cannot be electrified, then it should utilise hydrogen. But then we ask ourselves, what are the main challenges within the hydrogen space?

For heating homes, we predominantly use natural gas for that, and I don't think there's particularly a place for hydrogen to replace natural gas in the electricity grid for example. I think heating homes is a difficult area for us to move away from fossil fuels, and also aviation. Aviation is a tough one because of the safety considerations. It is a highly regulated industry, so any sort of new technologies are difficult to introduce and work within existing regulations.

Tom:
So, Finn's utopian view of the world. Cast your mind forward 100 years. What do you see the future role of hydrogen being in the future? What's it going to look like?

Finn:
Hydrogen will undoubtedly play a huge part in heavy industry, heavy goods vehicles, these sort of applications. Railways are something I've not really mentioned. If it's difficult or especially costly to put overhead power cables on certain routes, then trains with the ability to utilise hydrogen is the next best solution. I would also like to see it used in aviation. I think it's probably the only solution that is truly sustainable for aviation. There's a lot of talk of SAF (sustainable aviation fuel), but that's taking carbon from near ground level and putting it thousands of meters up into the air. This puts greenhouse gas emissions directly into the atmosphere. So, if we can move away from anything that's carbon-based for aviation, then I think hydrogen is certainly one of those solutions.

Heavy industry, so steelmaking for example, you cannot produce the heat required in steelmaking through electrification, so hydrogen is going to be incredibly useful in that space. Hydrogen can also be used for anything where you require energy storage over long periods of time. We can all recognise the downfalls of batteries; if you leave your phone on the side for a day it will have run out of charge by the next time you come to use it. So anything where you need storage of power for a long time, that's where hydrogen fits in.

Tom:
Finally, at Renewal Energy, we're particularly interested in government policy. So, what are the government doing now to facilitate the hydrogen industry, and what additional action would you like to see taken to support it?

Finn:
Yes, it's a really good question. The previous government set up a process called the ‘Hydrogen Allocation Round’. Effectively, this is a contracts-for-difference (CfD) style policy, so a similar process to how offshore wind was government-backed and became a profitable form of energy supply over the last 20 years. That same sort of CfD mechanism is utilised in the hydrogen allocation round. There was a small pot, and the first allocation round has already happened, and then the second pot for which applications have just closed recently. The funding has increased, and that's forecast to scale up over the next few years.

The new government pledged in their manifesto to fund green hydrogen specifically. So I think the fact that they're even talking about it is great, but utilising the same mechanism, and building upon it is absolutely the way that hydrogen will flourish in the UK. We must work to support those businesses and develop those projects through the government purse, and ultimately try to reduce private-sector risk in project investment.

Then once we've got 10, 20 or 30 multi-megawatt facilities on the ground, we'll have learned and developed so much that the industry will flourish, and outside investment will come flooding into this country because it's a place to develop profitable hydrogen projects.

I hope it’s something that becomes a cornerstone of this country, and if we can invest through the government and de-risk private investment, we can as a nation be at the forefront of hydrogen development. We will be able to export services and technology to the rest of the world.

Finally, to answer your question, it's utilising the same mechanisms, but just increased investment; more investment from central government, and that will bring in more private sector investment. That's what we need to do.