INTERVIEW 'Hydrogen economy will accelerate carbon neutrality'

Dr. Joseph S. Francisco Courtesy of Dr. Joseph S. Francisco

Distinguished UPenn professor stressed transparent communications, research investment

By Lee Kyung-min

The government should maintain transparency in communicating with people fearful of job loss and industries unsure of return on investments, in a coordinated effort to promptly advance the carbon-neutral initiative, a distinguished professor of chemistry said.

The global green drive is increasingly gaining traction in countries around the world as an opportunity to reduce our actions that impact the environment, an inevitable course of action due not to a question of morality or ethics but rather one of economic survival.

Infrastructure building should therefore be pursued via effective use ― or reuse ― of existing facilities, equipment and, above all, human resources, which in turn will help reduce the cost of initial investment and smooth the transition of workers and their skillsets developed in the past few decades.

Long-term green research investments will seem counterintuitive to many carbon-reliant businesses that bear short-term profit-generating responsibilities to their stockholders, especially since they have no return visibilities on the hefty spending.

Yet continued pressure and incentives from the government combined with heightened public scrutiny will ultimately make those parties factor environmental awareness into their business models, a step toward establishing a new normal whereby sustainability concerns will not be trumped by corporate profit motives.

The costly price to generate renewable energy will decline gradually in the years to come, driven by closer cooperation among the government, research institutes and businesses, the three key players with the power and influence to create synergy in bringing fundamental changes to energy production and consumption.

Transparency

“My advice would be to have an open discussion,” Dr. Joseph S. Francisco said in an online interview with The Korea Times.

He is a distinguished professor at the University of Pennsylvania in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science, and Department of Chemistry.

People fear change the most when they have no sense of how government and industry are going to look out for their interests. The collective legitimate concern therefore should be allayed by transparent communication, a time-consuming yet crucial process to bolster what he calls “togetherness.”

“It should not be a unilateral push, but really about bringing people together and helping them understand the need to move forward to cleaner energy sources,” the former president of the American Chemical Society (ACS) said.

With carbon-based fuel investment still dominant, businesses will be concerned about covering losses and making a return on their investment and, for infrastructure builders, about transition of workers' skills.

This he says is where the government can step in to address the fears of the potential loss of direct revenues, unemployment and loss of skillsets.

“I don't think the industry is ready to deal with all those questions right up front, but I think this is where the government-industry partnership should come in, answering how the process will be handled and how they will work together,” he said.

Not enough discussion, he said, is underway about how to put old infrastructure to better use, a highly important question to integrate or modernize the existing infrastructure to bolster economic savings and better allocate relevant resources.

“I think that is one of the first things that should be thought through. There are new things that people have thought about, creating new fueling stations, for example, but what should also be considered is how old stations can be retooled for the same purpose.”

Pandemic and air quality

The need to move toward cleaner energy according to the professor will be felt best by the public amid the COVID-19 pandemic, as illustrated by “before and after pictures of some major cities in the world.”

“The pictures clearly show clean air in New York, Paris, Beijing and even New Delhi. In cities where air pollution was so thick and bad, now you see clean air during shutdowns as a result of the pandemic. The impact of local and regional air quality is significant. Those images show what the future would look like if we move to the hydrogen sector and away from the carbon-based sector.”

The pandemic illustrated long-term real benefits for air quality, a reason why the senior chemist views it shows a promise of the future rather than a challenge.

“The beautiful thing about this hydrogen economy is there is really no net impact on the oxidative chemistry of the atmosphere coming from the loads of H2 being used in the energy sector. So that's a good thing.”

Water electrolysis

Francisco acknowledged that criticism continues over the carbon-intensive nature of the hydrogen economy, a debate he believes can move forward by ways to advance the use of “electrolysis,” a cleaner energy production method in need of long-term investment to lower production cost.

Using methane as a source of recovering hydrogen still has problems, because carbon will be converted to CO2, a major greenhouse gas.

But electrolysis does not produce any carbon at all, if water is used, which makes it a very plausible go-to green hydrogen source, he said.

Electrolysis is whereby electricity is used to split water molecules to get hydrogen. However, if carbon-based fuels are used to supply the electricity, this still means carbon-reliant energy is needed to a degree, a reason why he says research investment will play a pivotal role to advance sustainable energy production. It also means that a mix of renewable (wind, solar, biomass) or nuclear energy technologies as options for possible electricity sources to overcome the electricity generation for hydrogen production via electrolysis.

“New research investment should be about how to build optimized processes where you can drive innovation while pushing the price down and how to link those processes more efficiently

Laboratory research outcomes sometimes do not translate into the commercial use of relevant technologies, a gap he views should be bridged by greater government efforts to help make the price point competitive through regulations such that time is given to bring new technologies to scale and drive price down for the consumer.

“I do think there are some research and innovations that are already there, but haven't yet made it to the marketplace. The two will be better linked with the government properly stepping in,” he said.

Hyundai

South Korean carmaker Hyundai is speeding up a variety of efforts to take the initiative in the hydrogen economy, which he said has a set of forward-thinking business strategies.

“I think Hyundai is forward-thinking," he said.

One of the things that he saw was that Hyundai was developing partnerships with Germany and also the European Union, working to learn from those countries about what they were doing towards moving to a hydrogen economy.

"I have to say that EU and Germany have been very progressive in that regard. They don't have to reinvent the wheel in terms of the research and development part, but also in terms of the infrastructures that are needed. Partnerships and lessons-learned there will help the firm when technological advances are brought back to Korea. I think it is a great opportunity. I think there are great opportunities there.”

Germany, he added, is working on developing a roadmap for building refueling infrastructure and how that would support moving certain infrastructure in metropolitan areas.

“Also, they were developing the XCIENT Fuel Cell for heavy-duty trucks for commercial use in Europe, using some of that R&D as a test case in the European market. They are gaining some knowledge from testing and making demonstrations as to why this makes sense to bring to South Korea. So, I think Hyundai will be a great leader in making the Green New Deal workable.”

Hyundai signed memorandums of understanding (MOUs) with hydrogen research institute firms in Australia, among others, and plans to set up 20 charging stations in Korea by the end of this year.

It launched H2U (Hydrogen to you), a campaign which will continue until next August in Europe.

The carmaker seeks to increase the annual production of electric fuel cell vehicles to 111,000 by 2025 while setting up an assembly plant with an annual manufacturing capacity of 500,000 vehicles by 2030.

Hyundai Group's logistics subsidiary Hyundai Glovis said recently that it plans to move forward with ocean transport of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Its steel arm Hyundai Steel makes hydrogen using byproduct gases.

Park San-dol contributed to this article.