The potential of hydrogen in Italy. The Intesa Sanpaolo report
Hydrogen has the potential to create new opportunities for specialization and growth in Italy, not only for the big players in the energy sector. What the report of the Intesa Sanpaolo Studies and Research Department says
In addition to renewable energy sources and batteries for storage, "another undisputed protagonist of the projects linked to the energy transition is certainly hydrogen, for which the PNRR provides about 3.5 billion euros, including incentives for research and development , production and use ”, reads the report Energy transition: the renewable energy technology chain in Italy created by the Studies and Research Department of Intesa Sanpaolo .
Below is an excerpt.
INTEREST IN HYDROGEN
In recent years, the use of hydrogen as an energy vector has attracted the attention of governments and industries, to the point of becoming increasingly central in the political and industrial debate on the energy transition. In Italy, the involvement of the big players in the energy sector (SNAM, Eni, Enel, A2A, Edison, Italgas, etc.) is very strong, but also of other manufacturing, research and Public Administration realities.
Globally, this is still a niche phenomenon but is growing. According to BloombergNEF, annual investments in hydrogen in the three-year period 2018-2020 averaged $ 1.5 billion worldwide (compared to about $ 300 billion in average investments in renewable energy over the same period). Many technologies for the zero-emission production of hydrogen and its use have already been developed but, as often happens with “disruptive” innovations, they are not yet market-ready and remain prohibitive in terms of costs. For this reason, the role of policy-makers in creating a market for this technology where this can lead to an efficient reduction of emissions is crucial. The European Union defined the official strategy for hydrogen in July 2020, determining a roadmap that envisages the ambitious goal by 2030 of installing electrolysers with a total power of at least 40GW for the production of about 10 million tons of hydrogen. green at European level. At the same time, the European Clean Hydrogen Alliance was born, a collaboration between companies, research centers and public authorities for the definition of projects and investments in this area. Italy is also in the process of publishing a national strategy for hydrogen but the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) already foresees that 3.19 billion euros financed by the Next Generation EU (more than 5% of the investments planned for the "Green Revolution" in the PNRR) are intended to promote the production, distribution and, above all, the final uses of hydrogen.
There are three main reasons why we have decided to address the issue of hydrogen in this report. The first two are of a technological nature: first of all, the zero-emission hydrogen production capacity, the so-called “Green hydrogen” directly depends on the ability to install additional renewable power in addition to that already envisaged to meet the emission abatement targets. Secondly, one of the advantages that hydrogen could bring to the energy transition is to provide, thanks to its high energy density, a solution to the problems of intermittence and seasonality of renewable energy sources. The third reason why hydrogen is relevant to this study is that it is an innovation that, just as happened with renewables 20 years ago, has the potential to create new opportunities for specialization and growth, not only for the big players in the energy sector, but also for the Italian manufacturing and engineering reality, the same that has managed to grasp the technological change induced by the spread of RES.
ITALIAN COMPANIES IN THE HYDROGEN CHAIN
As for the analysis presented in the fourth chapter83, we used different data sources to identify the companies on the Italian territory that are already present in the hydrogen supply chain or that seem willing to be part of it. This survey, far from being complete, aims to provide some indications on the sectorial and territorial distribution and on some structural characteristics of the companies identified. First of all, we selected the companies that have filed patents relating to technologies for hydrogen and fuel cells, identified thanks to the ENV-TECH classification of the OECD84, at the European Patent Office (EPO). There are about 220 patents, mainly relating to components for the storage and distribution of hydrogen (including fuel cells) but also to electrolytic cells for production. Of these patents, 117 were filed by joint stock companies, for a total of 66 companies identified. We then integrated the sample with the companies belonging to the two main trade associations present at Italian and European level: H2IT and the European Clean Hydrogen Alliance. The final sample, excluding the companies that are in liquidation as of 2019, is of 133 companies, for which we have extracted structural information on the sector and territory of origin, date of establishment and dimensional elements (turnover and employees) from the ISID85 database. The focus is not, unlike the fourth chapter, only on manufacturing companies but on all the realities, also in the field of research and development, which are approaching hydrogen.
The turnover produced by the companies in the sample was, in 2019, equal to approximately 85 billion euros for a total of over 130 thousand employees. This result is largely influenced by the presence of 17 very large companies (with turnover exceeding 500 million euros). These are some big players in the energy, construction and even manufacturing sectors. By eliminating these subjects from the sample, the total turnover is equal to 7 billion euros and the employees to 19,160, figures that are however not negligible if we consider that the turnover and the number of employees of the 400 companies in the renewables sector identified in the fourth chapter are equal, respectively, 24 billion and 60 thousand employees.
All the dimensional classes are represented in the sample in a rather uniform way, to testify that this process of technological innovation does not only concern large companies but can also involve smaller ones. Particularly significant is the high share of micro enterprises (with less than 2 million turnover), which represent more than a quarter of the sample. These are mainly small companies active in research and development and in engineering consultancy that operate on the technological frontier and are highly innovative: in fact 65% of these are included in the sample precisely because they have already filed patents related to hydrogen technologies. They are also very young companies, with a median age of 9 years against 21 for the sample total.
PROJECTS FOR HYDROGEN IN ITALY
The PNRR delivered at the end of April to the European Commission presents 3 chapters in which the production and use of hydrogen are promoted by developing flagship projects in the hard-to-abate industrial sectors (2 billion), or in all those sectors in which electrification it is not a conceivable solution because they need heat at very high temperatures (such as the steel industry), or they already use hydrogen in their production (refining, chemical industry, etc.); favoring the creation of "hydrogen valley", leveraging in particular on areas with abandoned industrial sites (500 million); by enabling the use of hydrogen in heavy transport and in selected non-electrifying railway sections through recharging stations (530 million); supporting research and development and completing all the reforms and regulations necessary to allow the use, transport and distribution of hydrogen (160 million). With these investments, the aim is to create competitive supply chains in Italy in the areas with the greatest growth, in which the use of the purchase of technologies from other countries is reduced to promote the internal development of electrolysers and technologies for electrochemical storage, which they should stimulate employment and growth in the area.
Therefore, important prospects are opening up to support technological research in the sector and to strengthen the initiatives already launched in the area or the feasibility study. In order to have a more complete picture, even at a national level, of the current situation with respect to this issue, we have analyzed some of these initiatives, without claiming to be exhaustive. In particular, we report three experiences with different fields of application: use of hydrogen in road mobility (South Tyrol), use in rail mobility (Valcamonica) and the possibility of converting port areas to transform them into hubs for the production of hydrogen from renewable sources. (Marghera and Ravenna).
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/energia/idrogeno-italia-intesa-sanpaolo/ on Sun, 27 Jun 2021 06:00:49 +0000.