NCE Maritime CleanTech and Greensight launched a report that estimates the future maritime hydrogen demand in Western Norway. The report also outlines the largest barriers for implementation of hydrogen in large scale.

The research and analysis for the report have been executed by Greensight and Norled, with support from Equinor and Gasnor. The mapping has been partly financed by Hordaland County Council.

The new report has studied how a major transformation of fuel supply within the segments of car ferries, high-speed crafts and platform supply vessels would affect the need for LH2 in Western Norway. In the analysis two ferry routes and 26 high-speed craft routes have been found likely to run on hydrogen. The total demand, if all these vessels convert to LH2, is about 105 000 tons LH2 per year and 287 tons LH2 per day. This represents over 80 percent of today’s global production capacity.

The most important factor for the dimension of a future value chain for liquid hydrogen is the expected market demand. Our report shows that just a few passenger routes or PSVs switching fuels would represent a substantial increase in demand for LH2. Criteria for emission reductions in public tenders can therefore be an effective tool to increase the demand.

The report also estimate that in 2030 liquid hydrogen can compete with current bio-diesel prices and ammonia in terms of fuel cost alone.

The NCE Maritime CleanTech and Greensight report has further identified several barriers that need increased intention in the years to come. A first step for creating a Norwegian value chain is to create a demand that leads to production of liquid hydrogen in Norway. Our volume scenarios and cost comparisons clearly show that the current European capacity is both too small and distant to serve a Norwegian maritime market.

Another barrier identified is cost development within production and infrastructure. For production of hydrogen from natural gas, which currently is cheaper than electrolysis, the report also finds that carbon capture and storage (CCS) is necessary in order to achieve a low enough level of kgCO2/kg LH2 to label hydrogen from natural gas as blue hydrogen.

A large-scale implementation of hydrogen in shipping is further dependent on new technology development, especially within new cost efficient or flexible forms of distribution for larger volumes. There is also a need for the development of international standards for a maritime use of hydrogen, especially concerning bunkering.

Supported by Sparebanken Vest, NCE Maritime CleanTech and its partners will follow up and facilitate a supply chain for liquid hydrogen within the cluster’s expert group for hydrogen.