A hydrogen station, here at Orly airport, in Paris. - MEIGNEUX ROMUALD / SIPA

  • Hydrogen is causing increasing effervescence in the world, seen as a serious avenue for a successful energy transition.
  • This gas, which can be produced from renewable energies and stored over time, allows movement and heating, and can be used for many other applications in industry.
  • By 2030, France could produce 700,000 tonnes of green hydrogen, estimates Afhypac, the association which brings together the players in the sector and presents this Thursday its vision to get there. The condition ? Let the state provide support.

"If we miss the train, others will take it and win the bet." The warning is from Philippe Boucly, president of Afhypac. The association, which brings together 190 players in the hydrogen sector [large groups, SMEs, communities, etc.], publishes on Thursday its proposals for an “ambitious and coherent” national plan aimed at developing this potentially carbon-free energy. This is the must-see train that Philippe Boucly talks about.

The prospects are great especially in transport, hydrogen being the other way of doing electric mobility. Energy is no longer contained in a battery but stored in the form of gas: hydrogen, compressed in a reservoir. This gas, chemical energy, is then transformed back into electricity using a fuel cell installed in the car. It also works for trucks, trains, boats ...

A path for mobility, but also industry, construction ...

Advantages ? The prospect, already, of being able to travel long distances with an electric vehicle, since the storage of hydrogen will always take up less space than batteries, and refueling is done in a few minutes.

The prospect, then, of decarbonizing our transport by producing this hydrogen from renewable energies [solar, wind, etc.]. The process is known, it is the electrolysis of water: we use electricity - ideally, therefore, from renewable sources - to decompose water (H2O) into oxygen (0) and hydrogen. (H2). But this technique is still very marginal, hydrogen is today produced 95% across the world from steam reforming. The latter consists in extracting hydrogen from fossil resources (natural gas, petroleum, coal) but emits greenhouse gases.

Green hydrogen can also provide services in other sectors. It could, for example, be introduced into the natural gas transmission and distribution network and help further decarbonize the heating and electricity supply to our buildings. The same goes for industry: "Hydrogen is an option for decarbonizing processes that are difficult to electrify directly […] and has the potential to constitute in 2050 nearly 10% of energy in industry", points out the Afhypac. Finally, hydrogen offers the possibility of permanently storing electricity in underground cavities, as is currently the case for natural gas. This advantage is far from being negligible for renewable energies, which are said to be “intermittent”. Clearly, they are subject to a strong seasonal effect, producing little in certain meteorological conditions and more than necessary in others. It is this surplus that the hydrogen could store.

The European Union has just set its roadmap ...

These potentialities put end to end mean that "several countries are now putting in place ambitious hydrogen roadmaps", assures Philippe Boucly. He quotes China, "which puts several billion dollars on the table", Japan, "which aims to become the first hydrogen company in the world", South Korea. The European Union, for its part, presented its “hydrogen strategy” on July 8. "It sets the target for hydrogen to occupy, by 2050, a share of 14% in final energy consumption", specifies the president of Afhypac.

France is not content to stay on the sidelines. Philippe Boucly even places us in "the leading pack for all that is research" on hydrogen. Several communities have already placed orders for buses and other hydrogen vehicles. The government is not left out. Hydrogen is one of the ten priority innovation sectors retained in the “Productive Pact” that he wanted to launch before the Covid-19 crisis, and which will be partly included in the recovery plan. And at the beginning of June, the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, and Elisabeth Borne, then in the Ecological Transition, set in their plan for aeronautics the objective of flying on hydrogen in 2035.

Target 700,000 tonnes of green or low carbon hydrogen in 2030

On the hydrogen plane, Philippe Boucly still has some doubts *. On the other hand, Afhypac has a plan in mind to develop hydrogen solutions in France. The association traces a trajectory which would make it possible to arrive at a production of around 700,000 tonnes of renewable or low-carbon hydrogen produced per year by 2030. They would essentially be produced from the electrolysis of water, but Afhypac also keeps the door open to other means of production under development, such as the production of hydrogen from biomass, or the steam reforming associated with the capture and conditioning of the CO2 released during this process [ we then speak of low carbon hydrogen].

Of these 700,000 tonnes, about half would be used by industry. The other would go to mobility, Afhypac providing, in 2030, 300,000 light commercial vehicles and taxis running on hydrogen, 5,000 heavy goods vehicles [including hydrogen buses], 250 trains and 1,000 boats.

This trajectory would make it possible to reduce emissions by 4 million tonnes of CO2 for the year 2030 alone, and avoid more than 20 million tonnes of cumulative CO2 over the decade 2020-2030, assures Afhypac. It would also make it possible, according to the association, to generate between 120,000 and 250,000 direct and indirect jobs in France, either in the form of net job creation, or in the form of requalification of existing higher-tech jobs.

Strong support from the State

This brings us back to Philippe Boucly's initial warning. "Without state support, these objectives cannot be achieved," he insists. The French hydrogen sector estimates the sum to be invested in industry and research players at 24 billion euros by 2030, in particular for the deployment in France of electrolysers to reach 7 gigawatts of installed power. In this context, the State must send a strong signal, believes Afhypac. In its national plan, the French hydrogen sector makes twelve recommendations in its regard. From the introduction of subsidies for the purchase of vehicles to the establishment of governance to structure the deployment of hydrogen in France, including the establishment without delay of a support mechanism for the production of 'renewable or low carbon hydrogen.

For now, Philippe Boucly says he still lacks visibility. “At this stage, we do not know if the government will present a hydrogen plan separate from the recovery plan, nor when these plans will be announced, he begins. Is it in the next few days or at the start of the school year? The other unknown concerns the European recovery plan of 750 billion euros adopted early Tuesday morning. "No doubt that this plan provides for funds to be allocated to the hydrogen sector, but we have no details at this stage," adds the president of Afhypac.

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* Regarding the hydrogen plane mentioned in the French aeronautics recovery plan, Philippe Boucly says the possible runway for small planes. On the other hand, the president of Afhypac expresses some doubts that this will one day become a reality for medium-haul. He no longer envisages that these planes could one day carry hydrogen associated with other fuels.

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