Can Hawaii become the Saudi Arabia of Hydrogen by Michael Markrich

Can Hawaii become the Saudi Arabia of Hydrogen? by Michael Markrich

It was recently announced that Saudi Arabia is now investing in solar powered technology that will enable it to sell shiploads of liquid hydrogen to Japan

Stan Osserman, the former director of the Hawaii  Center of Advanced Transportation Technologies believes that this is a path that Hawaii, can use as well.

Stan believes that because of Hawaii’s geothermal energy resources it has a natural advantage, not unlike Saudi Arabia, that it could produce liquid hydrogen at such great quantities so cheaply that it could one day transform the Big Isle economy into an energy exporter shipping liquid hydrogen to Japan, China or even the Mainland US.

Only a few years ago such projects would have seemed no more than fantasy:

The idea that Saudi Arabia, one of the lowest electricity costs in the world, would someday produce a product that would compete with oil would have seemed no more likely than Hawaii with the worlds highest

Energy costs would some day have plans to become an energy exporter

But such plans are in active discussion. The key to make them happen is to change our thinking about batteries, says Stan. The large batteries that are used to store energy have drawbacks; they are expensive, leak and can be a source of environmental contamination.

“The bigger picture requires that HECO opens their eyes to see more than batteries. They need to add as much PV as they can to their grid and use all their power to make Green Hydrogen, store it and use that

Stored hydrogen for night time use, converting it back to baseload electricity using MW scale fuel cells.” 

Stan explains that once that is done the stored hydrogen can be used to power the local county buildings and eventually -the g fuel can be containerized, shipped by barge to Oahu, where it would be the ultimate power source for Honolulu.

From there it would be a small step to begin exporting liquid hydrogen to Japan, which is a much closer to Asian markets than Saudi Arabia.

Hawaii has been promoting the use of hydrogen as a means of powering cars and buses for the past 30 years. But It only opened the first publicly accessible refueling station in 2018. This is now available at Servco on the island of Oahu. By way of contrast there are 48 hydrogen refueling stations in the entire United States, 43 of which are in California. There are 127 in Japan.

What is the reason that things are so slow in Hawaii? It is not lack of trying. Legislation was passed in 2006 (Hawaii Revised Statutes 196-10) to make Hawaii a show case for Hydrogen. Alas except for a successful military project at Hickam AFB there were no hydrogen refueling stations until 2018 when Servco invested in a hydrogen production and dispensing station on Oahu. Then started bringing in Toyota hydrogen cars (the Mirai). But as Stan explains the problem is primarily administrative. Hawaii’s laws and administrative rules are out dated. Hawaii needs to aggressively update and adapt its energy codes to accommodate hydrogen. But how can this be done.

Stan has an idea for this too. He imagines this scenario. “A local investor purchases 3-6 hydrogen fueling appliances ($750 k) and several used fuel cell cars from California ($15,000 each). He puts the station on vacant land (state or private) and enters into a power purchase agreement to use all of the PV generated electricity too make “green” (clean carbon free) hydrogen. Lease the cars or sell the cars with hydrogen included - like Servco does.

With new vehicles) and as the market grows, add stations and – solar to make more hydrogen.” From there he sees an easy path forward to hydrogen demand and growth.

To a visionary like Stan the market is there to make the dream viable.  The only question facing Hawaii is whether Hawaii’s business community and political leaders have the will to make it happen.