Brazilian Potential for Hydrogen Energy Market

Hydrogen energy concerns the use of hydrogen and compounds containing hydrogen to generate and supply energy for all applications with high efficiency, incredible environmental and social benefits, aiming at economic competitiveness. For the first time, it shall be possible to achieve a circular, clean and beneficial route for the production and use of energy. The production of hydrogen through water electrolysis and its storage on a local system can stabilize the dispatching of electrical energy, regulating the electricity generation intermittence through renewable energy. It is also possible to produce hydrogen with products such as urban, rural, and industrial wastes.

The fact that gaseous or liquefied hydrogen and hydrogen-containing compounds such as ammonia can be distributed across sectors, countries, and regions, using pipelines, trucks, trains, or ships, has given rise to a new commodity international energy. Countries and regions that currently have little availability for energy supply may be able to meet their energy demands locally, due to the varied possibilities for hydrogen production from specific local options, in addition to the recent knowledge of the existence of hydrogen occurrences. natural on earth [Science and Engineering of Hydrogen-Based Energy Technologies. Elsevier, 2019].

Thus, the access to energy shall be immediately and significantly increased, which shall foster a large beneficial effect to the human development, contributing to the decrease of social inequality. In a country like Brazil, which disposes of a remarkable variety of options for production of renewable energy and access to management and waste biomasses, the potential for production of renewable hydrogen is huge.

A relevant aspect that emerges when considering the use of hydrogen energy is the possibility to connect sectors of the Society currently disconnected with respect to the use of energy. That occurs because hydrogen is, at the same time, a fuel, as are the fossil fuels used nowadays, already existing naturally in our planet, which also offers a huge advantage for not containing carbon, and is also an energy vector, an energy carriageway, such as electricity.

Hydrogen and electricity may be produced through diverse ways. While electricity is based on electrons flow, hydrogen is a chemical energy carriageway, composed of molecules, which facilitates the storage, transport, and use, in a safe and stable way, just as occurs with fuels used nowadays. Thus, hydrogen may be used for the production of thermal, electrical, or mechanical energy; as static or mobile supply, in buildings, residences, or in the transportation segment; as fuel in thermal machines or feeding fuel-based batteries which generate electricity; in the industry, as heat source required for the production of cement, or as oxides reductive element, in the direct reduction of iron ore for the production of sponge iron (direct reduced iron) and steel.

Some current factors impose the quicker emerging of a hydrogen energy market, such as environmental emergency on which we live and submits Earth to conditions which place us in a high risk; the consequent effort made to decarbonize anthropogenic activities; expectation that the expressive world populational increase takes us to a number higher than 9 billion people by 2040, requiring about 800 EJ of energy for consumption (1 EJ corresponding to the energy contained in 170 million of barrels of oil); social inequality existing nowadays, which can be mitigated through a better access to energy and energy unsafety caused by remarkable geopolitical conflicts.

In this regard, governments from several countries, and some large companies, have established goals for zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 (some of them by 2045), which led to the announcement of a variety of projects for hydrogen energy production and use. TheWorld Energy Outlook, 2021forecasts that if all projects regarding the use of electrolysers planned and announced in the world are successful, that shall lead to about 90GW of global capacity installed. Furthermore, being the increase of commitment with decarbonization gradually greater, 80% of the world gross domestic product is currently located in countries with the ambition of reaching zero emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050. The demonstration of hydrogen energy technologies and investments made in the segment were accelerated in response to the commitment with decarbonization undertaken by governments and companies, making investments in the sector to achieve US$600 billion by 2030, considering the projects publicly announced, the investments required for the governments to achieve their goals, as well as information provide by companies[Hydrogen Council, 2021].].

In this scenario, Brazil performs an exciting potential for the production and use of hydrogen for energy purposes. Today, as well as in other places in the world, almost all the hydrogen produced in Brazil, representing about 1% of the world production, is produced by natural gas steam reforming for use in non-energy industrial applications.

The significant oil production in the country, with growing prospects for natural gas, allows projecting that the production of low-emission hydrogen, with the sequestration and use of CO₂, will represent a way to monetize our own fossil fuel industry. Although Brazil has relevance in the production of fossil fuels, the highlight is due to our potential for the production of renewable hydrogen [CGEE, Renewable Hydrogen, March 2022].

If the option is the production of hydrogen using water electrolysis, we have current availability of hydroelectric, solar, wind, and biomass electricity origin, with potential for also obtaining it from oceans and geothermal energy in the future. But it is relevant the fact that Brazil does not depend only on water electrolysis to produce renewable hydrogen, since it has large availability of waste and management biomass, with which it is possible to produce hydrogen through thermochemical and biological processes independent of use of electricity. It may also foster steam reforming of ethanol and subproducts resulting from the production of ethanol and biodiesel, having a huge availability of biogas which may be submitted to the dry reforming with CO2₂and, in addition, there are also situations where natural hydrogen production wells shall emerge in many regions in the country.

The mentioned factors aroused the interest of the national industry for hydrogen energy. THE Brazilian Hydrogen Association (ABH2), is very recent, having been created in April 2017. Even so, it has already accumulated important achievements, such as the International Conference on Hydrogen Energy (WHEC2018), the 1st. and the 2nd Brazilian Hydrogen Congress, in November 2019 and December 2021, and also the international event H2-Brasil, in February 2022, to which were added many meetings with government agencies, academic entities and companies, dealing with planning and regulation for the sector in the country. ABH2 also became the maintainer of the Brazilian Association of Technical Norms, ABNT, to develop norms and standards for the new technologies required.

With seven companies associated only one year ago, ABH2 currently counts on 41 partner companies and needs the continued support to the great effort to plan, install, and operate a new hydrogen energy market In Brazil. For such, the capture of new partners, certainly, shall foster a great aggregating effect.

Paulo Emilio V. de Miranda He is a Full Professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, UFRJ, where he heads the Hydrogen Laboratory at the Alberto Luiz Coimbra Institute for Graduate Studies and Research in Engineering, Coppe/UFRJ. He holds a Doctorate, Masters and Degree in Metallurgical and Materials Engineering from UFRJ and post-docs from Ecole Centrale de Paris and Université de Paris-Sud, France. He is president of the Brazilian Hydrogen Association, member of the Board of Directors of the International Hydrogen Energy Association, Brazilian representative in the International Partnership for Hydrogen and Fuel Cells in the Economy, member of the International Advisory Committee of the European Forum on Fuel Cells, member of the International Scientific Committee of Engie and Editor-in-Chief of the magazine Matéria.