Governments in Southeast Asia need to outline their national vision for hydrogen and increase regional cooperation to grow the hydrogen economy, delegates heard at a clean energy conference in Singapore on Tuesday.

Southeast Asia is lagging southern neighbour Australia and countries in East Asia and Europe in the global race to lead production and utilisation of hydrogen. A hydrogen economy in the region is being stymied by geographical fragmentation and varying stages of economic development,  according to Wenbin Qian, head of clean hydrogen in Asia-Pacific for chemical company Linde Gas.

On a panel at the Asia Clean Energy Summit, Qian noted the countries that make up the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) still lack a strategic roadmap that sets out a clean plan for hydrogen deployment.

“There is no such policy in place yet for hydrogen as a complementary energy, whether it is for mobility or industry, for export or import,” says Qian. “This is a big challenge, to incentivise formation of the hydrogen ecosystem and commitment to promoting a hydrogen society.”

“It would be great if all countries in this region can work together and build, for example, a CO₂ corridor” Qian, Linde

Dozens of countries around the world have announced dedicated hydrogen strategies and roadmaps that seek to take advantage of the fuel’s potential to decarbonise hard-to-abate sectors. But more cross-border initiatives are needed for Asean countries to work out how to decarbonise their economies together.

“They are still yet to work out a policy that can harmonise the decarbonisation in this region. And decarbonisation absolutely needs regional collaboration,” says Qian. This has led to untapped potential in some areas, such as the considerable number of potential CO₂ storage sites in the region that would be ideally suited for blue hydrogen production.

“All the countries are in quite different development stages and it is a challenge for infrastructure development, which requires a bit of concerted effort to build among different governments,” says Qian. “It would be great if all countries in this region can work together and build, for example, a CO₂ corridor, such that you can achieve blue hydrogen on a massive scale.”

International cooperation is important but remains in the “infancy stage”, agrees Hasto Kristiyono, a senior power and renewable energy official at Indonesian NOC Pertamina. Pursuing hydrogen as a state-owned oil group with public-service obligations poses its own challenges in Asean’s largest economy, such as fairly splitting the costs of converting fossil fuel infrastructure to hydrogen.

“The first thing that is faced is the transition cost needs to be carried by all of the relevant stakeholders,” says Kristiyono. “We still have some gaps to fill when it comes to ensuring that the transition costs will be borne by all of the impacted stakeholders. When it comes to transferring the cost to consumers, we will need to ensure that we get the full support from the government.”

Renewable energy capacity

The relatively high cost of renewable power in Southeast Asia will limit green hydrogen progress for now. One of the important conditions for green hydrogen to become economical in the region will be excess renewable energy capacity in the system, according to panellists.

“That is maybe why Australia is leading the pack in the region because Australia on some days is already operating at high volumes of renewable energy,” says Frederic Carron, energy business vice-president for the Middle East and Asia at engineering group Wartsila.

“When you are operating at 100pc capacity with renewables, then you can start talking of having excess capacity to produce hydrogen.”

Multiple factors—from plentiful renewable energy resources and established trade connectivity, to robust infrastructure and deep experience with exporting LNG—have helped Australia emerge as an early leader in hydrogen within Asia-Pacific, with at least 74 projects announced, according to Fiona Simon, CEO of industry association the Australian Hydrogen Council.

“It is not just the fact that we have the core ingredients, but it is the opportunity for Australia to potentially replace its fossil fuel exports with this cleaner, greener alternative,” says Simon. “That has captured the imagination of our politicians, and that in turn puts out funding announcements and starts to drive messages to industry that this is this is real.”

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Author: Shi Weijun