In conversation with Manuel Kuehn, head of new energy business Middle East, Siemens Energy

As a growing number of regional green hydrogen projects get off the ground, what are the main opportunities?

Green hydrogen is a clean burning, renewably produced element. As a highly efficient energy carrier, it has the potential to decarbonise not only energy generation, but parts of our industrial landscape that are not accessible to renewable energy. 

Renewable energy will play a foundational role in the energy mix of the future, but the expansion of renewable energies alone is not enough to achieve the goal of decarbonised energy systems. We need more options to store and transport energy from solar and wind, and conversion into molecules is one option. Green hydrogen can be the key to minimising CO2 emissions across industry, transport and energy sectors, and to achieving climate neutrality in the long term.

Hydrogen is already used in many industrial applications. Now it is about decarbonising this feedstock. There will be many more opportunities as the industry matures and costs decline. 

Are there any industries or areas of consumption where hydrogen has a particular edge?

Transport is an interesting sector where hydrogen has significant decarbonisation potential, especially in applications where batteries might have challenges, for example aviation. 

Green hydrogen can be used in a fuel cell, directly used as a fuel, or combined with carbon to make a carbon neutral synthetic fuel, which can be used in conventional aircraft engines. This can enable current airline fleets to decarbonise and removes the need for costly re-engineering, or purchase of new equipment. Existing fuels can be blended with synthetic fuels as a route towards decarbonisation. We are working with companies such as Porsche, Etihad, Lufthansa and Masdar to create this new generation of carbon neutral synthetic fuels. 

And then we have the feedstock into the chemical and petrochemical industry. It is already technically possible to produce polyethylene or fibers from green feedstock. The key benefit of hydrogen lies in its ubiquity. It has the potential to decarbonise almost every sector.

How amenable is existing regional infrastructure to conversion for use by a future hydrogen industry?

Existing natural gas infrastructure is well suited to hydrogen conversion and natural gas pipelines can handle hydrogen being blended in.

However, to guarantee safety and efficient operation modifications will be required for pipelines to handle a mix of natural gas and hydrogen. Industry experts estimate that retrofitting costs of existing natural gas pipelines to 100 per cent hydrogen will be only 10-15 per cent of a new build pipeline. 

For the power generation sector, Siemens Energy is working to ensure our gas turbines can handle up to 100 per cent hydrogen from 2030. Some of our turbines can already operate with a blend of up to 75 per cent hydrogen and more.

For chemical processes there is still work to do. We look at highly interconnected value chains that have been optimised over decades, e.g. by reusing heat and recycling intermediate products.

The first steps can be taken relatively easily, but for higher degrees of decarbonisation we need to redesign some of the processes. 

At the same time, the costs for green hydrogen are still high, so we need to drive all the necessary steps in sync.

How can regional governments help provide a supportive regulatory environment for green hydrogen, and what further steps are needed?

Governments all over the world, and especially in the Middle East, have done a great job establishing favourable regulation to support development, availability of cost-effective renewable energy supply and a market for offtake.

Now, there needs to be an incentive for businesses, not only to invest in technology, and research and development, but to actually scale the measures for decarbonisation in a commercial environment.

To build that foundation, you need to have policies and stimulus to drive behaviours. This could take the form of penalties such as carbon taxes, or incentives such as green hydrogen subsidies, to help bolster and grow the market.

Siemens Energy is working with regional governments to help create the foundations that will lead to a sustainable, successful green hydrogen economy. 

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