How hydrogen will change our lives. Next stop: Brazil, 2035

#TouchingHydrogenFuture 2023 – tour across the globe in 'Jules Verne style'

Short series of stories on global Hydrogen future, written by a group of Hydrogen passionados, making concepts accessible to wider audience, allowing both entertainment and education including readers from all continents for whom affordable and clean energy is key.

In 2022, we as a group of Hydrogen passionado’s launched the “Touching Hydrogen Future” book – it is now downloaded in over 120 countries, over 7500 times and counting; presented in global Hydrogen audience via EnergyPost webinars, and World Hydrogen Leaders congress in Rotterdam 2022 – available at www.europeangasmarket.eu and enabling accessible global hydrogen education at universities and debate at businesses, governments.

This year we continue to build-out stories – here is the story on Brazil from Luiz Piauhylino Filho – welcome Luiz to “Touching Hydrogen Future” writers’ community.

Imagining the future is delivering it.

Authors: Luiz Piauhylino Filho. Editors: Erik Rakhou and Rosa Puentes Fernández

Green H2 – Brazil, 11 February 2035 - flying into a green industrial paradise

On February 11th, 2035, I am flying to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil from Portugal to visit our green hydrogen projects in the country of carnival and champion of renewable energy in the world, with more than 92% of renewable energy in its energy production mix.

My plane is still 55 KM away from the coast line of Ceará state. I can already see a number of offshore wind parks, and their huge Green Hydrogen platforms where they are producing, compressing or liquefying and exporting green hydrogen to Europe, which will need to be climate neutral by 2050.

I can´t count all of them, but, in my last counts, there were more than 15 GW of offshore wind parks installed in operation in that region. Environmental licenses for over 100 GW offshore wind parks (1) are still pending as illustrated below!

In another half hour, I will start to see the state of Ceará and Pecém port, where many offshore pipelines are coming onland to supply green hydrogen to many industries at the port. This includes green steel, green ammonia, green methanol and SAF (2) to fuel the airplanes that fly in the northeast of Brazil.

In three hours I will land in Rio de Janeiro, but, before arriving there, in around 50 minutes, from the right side of the plane, I would see the second biggest port of Brazil in operation, Açu Superport, surrounded by offshore wind parks, onshore wind farms and onshore floating solar farms. Here, a huge green hydrogen project for green steel manufacturing had been implemented. The project includes 2 GW from onshore floating PV (solar), and 1 GW from onshore wind farms to produce 100,000 tons of green hydrogen per year to our off-taker, producing green steel. Some of this from older days of planning illustrated below.

Touring from Rio to Açu Superport in Hydrogen spirits

I finally arrived in Rio de Janeiro, after flying for almost 10 hours from Portugal. A couple of nights in Rio de Janeiro to meet old friends would be great.

I rented a Toyota Mirai, fuelled with green hydrogen, to drive 4 hours back to Açu Superport, and to see our projects in operation. Whilst driving, I see many fuel stations selling green hydrogen locally produced from the ethanol reforming system, which is installed in gas stations. Brazil has over 40,000 gas stations selling ethanol for more than 40 years.

At 20 KM from Açu superport, I arrived at the location I flew over earlier, where our projects are producing renewable energy feeding 2.5 GW of electrolyzers located inside Açu Superport, close to the green steel plant (the client). The energy production at the site is amazing, as mentioned, it includes 2 GW of floating solar in a lake located less than 20 KM from the Port, surrounded by our 1 GW onshore wind farms; all of this connected through direct power transmission lines with minimal reliance on the grid. Our green hydrogen is getting more than 90% of off-grid energy delivering a very competitive LCOE (3).

After spending few hours supervising the energy production site as pictured in part above, I drive another 40 minutes to arrive in Açu Superport pictured below, to inspect the 2.5 GW electrolyzers plant.

Flying out to Foz do Iguaçu

After few days in the region, I catch the green hydrogen based SAF fuelled plane from the airport of the city of Campos to fly to Foz do Iguaçu. Here I will visit our second green hydrogen project, the biggest "Green hydrogen"/"Green Ammonia"/"Urea" project in Brazil. This project involves 2 GW of floating solar at Itaipu reservoir, and 1 GW hydro energy from Itaipu to produce fertilizer for the agriculture of states of Paraná, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, and Goiás.

Sao Paulo - making use of its water for industry and transport

Now São Paulo is waiting. Before landing at Congonhas Airport, I fly over the Billings Reservoir, pictured below, with 10,700 hectares of water surface, only 23 KM from São Paulo city center. This project involves 1 GW of floating solar plus renewable energy from the grid to power 800 MW of electrolyzers, producing 40,000 tons of green hydrogen/year to fuel buses for the metropolitan area of São Paulo, and chemical and fertilizer industries located in Cubatão, close to Santos Port.

Final reflections on Brazil hydrogen future

During this week spent visiting all the projects in Brazil with LCOH (4) below 2 Euro per KG, we could see how much the country has developed in the past 12 years to become one of the biggest producers of green hydrogen for itself and for the world, making global economies cleaner, and more competitive.

In this Brazil of 2035,

• we now burn less gasoline and gas oil,
• we no longer import fertilizers,
• our industries produce goods domestically and sustainably,
• we are domestically producing electrolyzers for our projects, no longer needing technology imports,
• SAF for our airplanes is being produced in several states of Brazil,
• the Brazilian oil company Petrobras is converting its oil platforms into green hydrogen platforms to produce green hydrogen for its refineries (5).

The above is what future may hold domestically in Brazil for hydrogen. Let us consider eg opportunity to export to European markets.

By 2035 Brazil would have had up to 250 GW of installed capacity from all the energies sources. However, if the country decides to support the European market with e.g. 20 million tons of the green hydrogen and its derivatives demands under RePower EU, we may need to install additional 200 to 300 GW of new solar and wind parks within next years if we would use loadfactors similar to North Sea in Europe as anchor for our calculations (6). That is both a material challenge, and opportunity to reflect on.

On to next chapter - Portugal

Finally, it is time for me to go to Portugal to visit my daughter to see how the green hydrogen project at Sines Port is proceeding, and enjoy cod fish accompanied by red wine from Alentejo region, and as dessert, “Pastel de Nata”. Fair to say, wine and good food help any Hydrogen project negotiations.

[…to be continued..]

Disclaimer:

The opinions expressed are purely those of the authors and in no case can they be considered as an official position of the organizations.

The information presented here is based on available public information from announced projects. In any case it can not be considered a guarantee of what may or may not happen in the future. The author(s) reserve(s) the right to include additional fictional projects or features for the solely purpose of this story.

This is just a chapter of the complete book that we will be released as a free update to “Touching Hydrogen Future” (2nd edition), to be downloaded in late 2023 from www.europeangasmarket.eu .

Notes. 

(1) http://ibama.gov.br/phocadownload/licenciamento/2021-07-21-Denef_Offshore.zip

(2) Sustainable Aviation Fuel

(3) Levelized cost of energy

(4) Levelized Cost of Hydrogen

(5) Petrobras used to be the biggest gray hydrogen producer and consumer in Brazil in the past 12 years (see from 2035 perspective).

(6) How large a wind farm is needed to make a million tonnes of hydrogen? If we assume a capacity factor of 50%, say 4400 hours, for a well-sited North Sea wind farm, each gigawatt of capacity will provide about 4,400 GWh a year, or 4.4 TWh. At the efficiency level of about 75%, this will produce about 100,000 tonnes of hydrogen. Under these assumptions wind output from 10 GW of wind would be needed to make one million tonnes of hydrogen.