The Dutch hydrogen balance, and the current and future representation of hydrogen in the energy statistics
report
Hydrogen may be an important element in the future system, because it provides a versatile carbon free connection between a variety of energy sources (solar, wind, fossil sources/biomass with CCS, nuclear) and various forms of energy demand, like transport, (high temperature) heating and feedstocks for the chemical industry. Currently, in the Netherlands already a lot of hydrogen is produced using fossil energy, but this is not directly visible in energy statistics, because hydrogen is not considered as an energy product. We quantified total hydrogen production and consumption in the Netherlands from information on plant capacities and related this production and consumption to the current energy statistics. Total hydrogen production was estimated from plan at 180 PJ each year. This relates to pure hydrogen and hydrogen in waste gas mixtures. If we restrict ourselves to pure hydrogen and hydrogen in waste gases that can be easily upgraded to hydrogen the estimated production is about 155 PJ. Hydrogen was mostly produced from natural gas (105 PJ) and oil (65 PJ). Main applications of pure hydrogen are N-fertiliser production (60 PJ) and hydrogenation and desulphurization by oil refineries (65 PJ). Total gross energy consumption in the Netherlands is about 3000 PJ, which implies that already to date hydrogen production has a substantial impact on our energy system and related carbon dioxide emissions.
Topics
TNO Identifier
877473
Publisher
TNO
Collation
33 p.
Place of publication
Amsterdam