published by the Institute for Renewable Energy (REI) and reported by New Atlasthe denunciation is of a rare violence: according to the institution, Japan is on the wrong path, and not a little, in its decarbonization promises from hydrogen.
In 2017, the country implemented a long-term strategy aimed at creating, use the actual terms of the programa “hydrogen society”. The goal was to make all of the nation’s businesses, its economy and its people green and to take a leadership position in the field of this then promising fuel.
Almost six years later, chaos: the REI judges that the plan in question “It was a total failure” and that 70% of its ten-year budget was “spent on bad ideas”.
Hydrogen will not only not allow Japan to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, but at times it could even increase them, targeting precisely what should not be targeted and infringing on the potential of the domestic sector in the context of fierce international competition .
This is the first point raised by the institute. Other countries or institutions have understood that the specific characteristics of hydrogen as a fuel make it “efficient” from an environmental point of view only in some specific cases (air or sea transport, heavy industries such as iron and steel…).
Japan, for its part, has made a completely different bet, which is proving to be extremely inefficient or even inept from a technical and ecological point of view: that of private vehicles and houses powered by hydrogen, as in the prototype city presented in 2020 by Woven Planet and Toyota.
According to REI calculations, the market for “residential cells”, intended to power homes, should not reach even a fifth of the targets assigned to it for 2030. Even worse for hydrogen vehicles, which will painfully rise to one fortieth of the their initial goals.
Black is black, gray is gray
These objectives are all the more harmful as the hydrogen with which the archipelago intended to supply its cars and individual homes is far from being decarbonised. The country had like this on the so-called “grey” hydrogen. to 2030 to begin its transition, and in particular on coal gasification fuel production, with Australian industrial partners.
It’s the dirtiest of hydrogens, a method that emits a lot of carbon dioxide and methane. And Japan had nothing very concrete to promise to change course and switch to greener hydrogen after 2030.
This puts it in a very awkward position on a competitive and international level, because it is very far from the standards that will surely be applied in the future to consider energy as “clean”.
As for the production of so-called “green” hydrogen, which is produced using renewable energy, the report explains “Europe and China are at the forefront but that, given the latest developments, Japan’s lag is appalling”.
This is mainly due to the fact that renewables are not very popular in the archipelago, with solar potential being more mediocre and wind at uncompetitive costs and weighed down by heavy bureaucracy.
The conclusion of the Renewable Energy Institute is as sharp as its results: absolutely everything needs to be reviewed, from the applications sought to the methods used, if Japan does not want to remain hopelessly behind on its environmental objectives.
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