Europe's Giant Bet on Green Hydrogen is Full of Holes

financialpost.com:

(Bloomberg) — This is the first story in a Bloomberg Green series breaking down the Hydrogen Hype.

The tree-lined street in Leipzig may seem an incongruous beachhead for the future of German energy. But the government has billions riding on its success.

Today, the bright yellow power plant tucked behind a graffiti-covered fence burns planet-warming gas to produce electricity. But if all goes to plan, it will one day switch to emissions-free hydrogen. It’s the first, tiny part of a dream energy system being sketched out by policymakers across Europe, who are banking on the green fuel to meet some of the world’s most aggressive climate targets. That dream rests on converting newly built polluting infrastructure to burn hydrogen, a fuel that’ll be many times more expensive than natural gas and that no one has figured out how to move safely and cheaply in bulk.

Experts agree that hydrogen will have to play some role in getting the world to net-zero in sectors such as steelmaking, aviation and shipping. The handful of early projects focused on using hydrogen to generate power in Europe, however, show that it won’t be as easy a swap as advocates make it out to be.

The Leipzig power plant was inaugurated in October. It was built in just two years, despite pandemic-induced supply chain hurdles, and workers were still applying shiny blue paint to the railings in April. A sheet steel and plastic case houses two Siemens Energy turbines that are supposed to be able to combust 100% hydrogen gas with just a few tweaks.

Leipziger Stadtwerke, the local utility running the project, aims to do its first commercial tests with hydrogen by 2026, according to Christoph Jansen, the company’s head of generation. It could be a “gamechanger,” he