Source: Energy & Management Powernews, August 26, 2022
As many smaller electrolysers as possible, the LEE NRW considers important for the hydrogen ramp-up. The association calls for lower approval hurdles for smaller electrolysers.
Smaller electrolysers do not want the NRW State Association of Renewable Energies (LEE NRW) to be disadvantaged in future approval procedures. As Thomas Griese, deputy chairman in the LEE NRW, according to a statement on August 25, the EU Commission with its current considerations brakes the climate policy indispensable breakthrough of hydrogen technology out.
The present draft from Brussels, with which the Industrial Emissions Directive of April 5, 2022 is to be amended, runs "in the completely wrong direction". According to the draft, the same approval procedures are to apply to electrolysers of all size classes, i.e., an elaborate test in accordance with the Federal Immission Control Act (BImSchG).
"This costs time and, above all, money, which the manufacturers of smaller electrolysers units lack," Griese criticizes. These units are the technological backbone for the development of decentralized hydrogen production based on renewable energies. There is no way around them for small and medium-sized commercial and industrial enterprises if they want to convert their production processes on site to be climate-friendly on the basis of green hydrogen.
The large electrolysers with several hundred megawatts of power are "certainly useful on the coast, where large amounts of offshore wind power are expected soon," says the LEE-NRW vice president. "But in an area like NRW, we need smaller, decentralized units for decarbonization."
Proposal: staggered approval procedure
As a possible solution, the LEE NRW advocates a staggered coupling of the approval procedure to the size of an electrolyzer:
- Smaller electrolyzers with a rated power of up to 500 kW should be able to be commissioned without approval,
- medium-sized (500 kW to 1.000 kW) are to go through only a simplified BImSchG procedure must.
- Only for larger plants (from 1,000 kW) the complete BImSchG full procedure is to be prescribed.
In as large a number as possible of decentralized, smaller electrolysers, the association also sees an instrument to minimize the import of green hydrogen. Griese is promoting the broadest possible domestic production of green hydrogen. "It will not help us in the future if we trade dependence in fossil energies on a few potentates for dependence on other anti-democratic potentates in green hydrogen."
The LEE NRW refers to a study by the Wuppertal Institute and DIW Econ from late autumn 2020. The experts concluded that the domestic production of green hydrogen triggers enormous value-added effects: 800,000 jobs and 30 billion euros in annual value added could be created by green hydrogen in the coming years - assuming the massive expansion of renewable energy plants at the federal level.
Author: Davina Spohn
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