ISLAMABAD: Experts at a seminar on the prospects of green hydrogen-on-chip production in the country’s just energy transition stressed that Pakistan must not miss the opportunity to achieve a clean energy transition amid the emerging trend of non-carbon green fuels.
The Clean Energy Transition (NCET) Network of the Sustainable Development Institute (SDPI) organized a workshop here titled “Public-Private Dialogue on “Exploring the Potential of Green Hydrogen in Hard-to-Damp Sectors of Pakistan”.
Dr. Abid Qaiyum Suleri, Executive Director of SDPI said in his opening remarks that hydrogen as an element is highly reactive in nature, avoids isolation in nature and forms bonds with other elements such as carbon or oxygen, complicating its nature.
Dr Suleri said: “The world produces nearly 90 million tonnes of carbon each year, causing 800 million tonnes of CO2 emissions. However, there is a global debate on how to make its production environmentally friendly, but the amount of energy required to do so is a costly undertaking.”
He explained that hydrogen was of a different nature, namely blue hydrogen, which was produced by splitting methane gas molecules, green hydrogen by hydrolysis of water, and pink hydrogen produced through a nuclear power source.
SDPI’s executive director emphasized that the main issue was the availability of electrolyzers for hydrogen production, while the US was producing electrolyzers globally and regionally India and China were striving to produce efficient hydrolyzers.
Greenko, said that it is an Indian electrolyser company, students and researchers working on this topic should study its model to learn efficient solutions for hydrogen production.
He suggested that experts, researchers and students work out investment and joint opportunities between Pakistani and Chinese firms under CPEC to achieve green hydrogen development capacity.
Senior Research Fellow and energy economics expert, Dr. Khalid Waleed, gave a detailed presentation on hard-to-reduce sectors where reducing existing carbon emissions is costly or impossible with available technology.
Director General of the National Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (NEECA), Sardar Mohazzam termed the seminar as an informative and stimulating meeting.
He said that hydrogen production is without any doubt the future as it is an inevitable source of energy in the prevailing increasing climate change, population increase and energy intensity.
The director of NEECA said that to achieve a favorable transition, it is necessary to align policy initiatives with the concept of hydrogen production, as it requires a clear vision, policy, funding and regulations.
He mentioned that the main constraint in the development of hydrogen production is financing, while a thorough inventory of daunting issues such as the source of funding for public, private or foreign direct investment, processes to facilitate foreign investors in the industry and other issues need to be resolved before production can begin. industry policy.
He also emphasized the importance of conducting a detailed cost-benefit analysis and developing substitution methods, identifying local and international requirements and certification mechanisms to address them.
Other countries such as Oman, SA and India and the EU, Germany, Korea and Japan have demand and projections indicating an increase in hydrogen production due to their international commitments to offset carbon emissions to achieve NetZero, he added.
Head of Department, National Skills University, Dr Irfan Ahmed Gondal said that hydrogen is a complex element that has challenges in its use and production, while its production infrastructure is more important.
“It takes about 9,000 tons of hydrogen to replace the 450 tons of coal that runs a steel or cement system. Approximately 2,000 10 GW electrolysers are required for the plant. Hydrogen is a fanciful idea, but it is not possible to produce it in our system,” he said.
Abubakar Ismail, Amreli Steel said that two production processes are helping the steel industry, namely primary steelmaking done through ores in glass financing and secondary steelmaking done through electric furnaces. However, the latter process was 70% less carbon intensive than primary steel production.
He added that most of the steel produced by the secondary process was used in electric furnaces, which helped emit fewer carbon emissions.
“The steel industry is focusing on adopting biomass and renewables as energy sources to reduce carbon emissions for 100% green steel,” he added.
He mentioned that the main problem is economics, as the transition to hydrogen was expensive, while hydrogen is not practically viable in all industries.
Naheed Memon, Pioneer of Green Hydrogen Project, Oracle Power, said the firm seized the opportunity to explore hydrogen and related molecules.
She added that the application of all these molecules is staggering globally and is growing with an upward trend. She added that the opportunity for hydrogen production was large and viable only if the project was developed on a large scale.
She added that green hydrogen is the direction the world is going. Memon argued that it is imperative to maintain competitiveness in the process of promoting green hydrogen production and penetration into the system.
“Pakistan has a huge opportunity to be part of the global hydrogen supply as it has the resources to become a legitimate supplier of these molecules in the region. We need to produce these molecules competitively with cost-effective and better manufacturing processes, which requires policy, adaptation and mobilized adaptation. Investors, businesses and industry will need government legislation to adapt with the proper infrastructure on the ground,” she added.
