INTERVIEW WITH STEPHEN CROLIUS, PRESIDENT OF CARBON-NEUTRAL CONSULTING

Muscat – Stephen Crolius, a former Climate Advisor at the Clinton Foundation, is the President and Co-founder of the global energy transition consulting firm Carbon-Neutral Consulting. His company provides consulting services in the fields of decarbonisation, green hydrogen and ammonia, renewable energy, and transport electrification. As a thought leader, Crolius focuses on sustainable and low-carbon fuel sources, such as green hydrogen and ammonia, renewable energy, and clean transportation. In an exclusive interview with Muscat Daily, Crolius shared his insights and views on the role of green hydrogen in the global energy transition and Oman’s leading position and potential on the global green hydrogen map.

How significant is the role of green hydrogen and ammonia in the global transition towards sustainable energy sources? In your view, what makes green hydrogen and ammonia more attractive as sustainable fuels compared to other alternatives?

Green hydrogen and ammonia have highly significant roles to play in the energy transition. Since the advent of the Industrial Revolution, fossil fuels have been the major form of primary energy employed by human society. With the shift away from fossil fuels necessitated by the climate crisis, it is necessary to turn to the sun as a major form of primary energy. The most practical methods of turning sunlight into usable energy – photovoltaics, wind, and biomass – all involve conversion of primary energy into electricity. Electricity is a valuable and versatile form of energy, but it is limited in the degree to which it can be stored on a massive scale and transported over great distances.

Converting electricity into energy-rich chemicals allows both of these limitations to be overcome. The simplest form of conversion involves extracting hydrogen from water. Molecular hydrogen, however, brings its own set of storage and transportation challenges. One method of overcoming these challenges is to convert hydrogen into simple derivative molecules such as methane or methanol. Ammonia is an especially attractive derivative molecule because it does not contain any carbon atoms, and therefore does not produce carbon dioxide as a byproduct of any downstream energy extraction process. It is also the case that hydrogen derivatives can often meet the need in other settings where a fuel must be used rather than electricity, such as certain transportation applications and industrial processes.

What challenges do producers globally currently face in scaling up the production and distribution of green hydrogen?

The primary challenge for green hydrogen producers comes from competitive economics. It is not yet clear where the green hydrogen production costs will eventually settle vs. those of legacy energy commodities such as natural gas. What is clear is that the first generation of green hydrogen plants and related infrastructure will yield product costs that are higher than those of its legacy competitors. This means that green hydrogen producers must build investment cases that rely on non-traditional elements, such as carbon taxes, government subsidies and incentives, and voluntary procurement programmes of customer companies. Country-by-country and bloc-by-bloc, progress is being made, but only as a result of the great creativity and commitment of green hydrogen players.

What do you say about Oman’s ambitious plans to develop large-scale green hydrogen and ammonia projects? What lessons can Oman learn from existing producers to become a more competitive producer of green hydrogen and ammonia?

Oman is already positioning itself as a serious player in emerging global markets for green hydrogen and ammonia. The hydrogen space within the energy transition is at a very early stage of development, with the first large-scale production facilities just reaching final investment decisions. The opportunity for Oman, therefore, is not to learn from existing producers, but rather to learn with them.

Two examples from Oman’s current portfolio of hydrogen projects are representative of the country’s activities in this regard. The first is the Amnah Consortium’s decision, announced in January, to devote the hydrogen that will be produced at its planned installation in Duqm to the in-country production of green steel. The second is an announcement made in March of Hydrom’s MOU with Germany’s VNG that will focus on development of a green fuel value chain between Oman and Germany. In both cases, Omani companies will participate in the projects as partners, and in so doing will position themselves on the cutting edge of global clean energy development.

To what extent can the planned green hydrogen projects in the Gulf countries contribute to the global push for sustainable energy?

Several countries in the Gulf region and broader Middle East – notably Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt, in addition to Oman – are unquestionably among the global leaders in the push for sustainable energy. The common denominators across these countries are an abundance of renewable energy resources; favorable geographic placement for servicing of markets in Europe and Asia; and extensive experience with large-scale development of energy infrastructure.

What potential does green hydrogen hold for decarbonising hard-to-abate sectors, such as transportation, heavy industry, and power generation?

The common theme running through the hard-to-abate sectors is the need for energy and/or material inputs that take forms other than electricity. In the transportation cases, the need is for chemical fuels that allow large quantities of energy to be stored at high volumetric and gravimetric densities.

In the case of industrial and chemical processes, the need is often for substances that embody both energy and specific chemical properties that allow them to react with other molecules. Hydrogen and its derivatives perform very well on both of these dimensions, bringing both high energy density and desirable forms of chemical reactivity.

One other consideration that informs the potential that green hydrogen and its derivatives hold for the hard-to-abate sectors is that there are no other ready alternatives that can fill the needed functions. Hydrogen’s essential properties including its abundance, chemical reactivity, and susceptibility to simple, inexpensive production put it in a class by itself among the Earth’s chemical elements.

What are your views on the potential of green hydrogen as a maritime fuel, particularly in light of Oman’s strategic location and maritime transport links?

Hydrogen itself is likely to have a limited role in the maritime sector because it is difficult to store. It can be stored as a gas, but even at high levels of compression, its very low energy density does not fit the needs of energy-hungry vessel propulsion. It can also be liquefied, but the extreme cryogenics involved in reaching the temperature of liquefaction themselves involve parasitic consumption of large amounts of energy.

Hydrogen also embodies safety hazards that can be managed, but at the cost of added ship-board complexity. These challenges with hydrogen in its elemental form create an opening in the maritime sector for methanol and ammonia. Both fuels have properties that are close enough to those of current maritime fuels that ships can be deployed with fuels systems and engines that are only modestly different from those in use today.

Oman is well-positioned to participate in the emerging maritime green fuel economy, for example by investing in ammonia bunkering facilities in the Sohar Port and Freezone.