Electromechanical Engineer and Engineering Consultant at Capgemini Engineering
Nipun Kaushik is specialized in energy transition and electro-mechanical design projects, and his career focuses on the research and development of sustainable mobility and energy technologies.
This Transcript is AI-Generated
Nipun Kashik: So there have been pilot projects launched for a few neighborhoods within Scotland using hydrogen for heating instead of gas-based heating.
Micah: The EU projects, that green hydrogen could make up 14% of the energy mix by 2050. That's up from just 2% today.
Chai: With such a dramatic rise on the horizon, which areas are likely to see the fastest growth in hydrogen use?
Nipun Kashik: One other place where I know hydrogen usage is going to scale is as we start to have more chip manufacturing machines, so.
The semiconductor lithography machines that we have, making the chips within your phones.
Micah: In this episode, we're diving into the complicated world of hydrogen. You'll hear about its promising applications, its different color codes, and how it could fit into the bigger picture of the green transition. I'm Chai Nussbaumer.
And I'm Micah Schweitzer. This is Balancing the Future from METTLER TOLEDO.
Chai: On this show, we delve into the world of science and technology and explore its transformative impact. On our lives.
Micah: Can you talk a bit about the different ways that energy is stored or generated with hydrogen? Just to give us a picture of hydrogen as an energy source or as an energy storage device.
Nipun Kashik: So the main way we convert and use hydrogen, or at least the greenest form of hydrogen, is with the use of electrolyzers and fuel cells.
An electrolyzer purely creates hydrogen outta water.
Chai: To help us unpack all this, we're talking with neon Kasic an an electromechanical engineer at Capgemini Engineering.
Nipun Kashik: And what it does is it takes electricity, breaks down water into oxygen and hydrogen, and then what we do is we leverage a fuel cell, which essentially uses the same mechanism just backwards.
Combines hydrogen and oxygen, not in a combustion reaction, in a reverse electrolysis reaction to produce electricity. So if you store a bunch of hydrogen gas and then you want to make energy out of it, it's actually not as efficient to just burn it and then produce electricity that way. Similar to, you know, how you would do in a gas turbine.
So that is an option. And that has been done in many situations. But the most efficient way, or the highest energy yield way of producing electricity through hydrogen is by using it in a fuel cell where you can achieve theoretical efficiencies of up to 92%. But with the current systems that we have, we top out somewhere around 75%.
Micah: And relative to other forms of energy storage, how good is 92%?
Nipun Kashik: So 92% is a theoretical maximum that you can get from reverse electrolysis. The systems that we have, we ballpark them around 60 to 75% efficiency, 60 being probably the lower end of the commercially available systems that we are using. So it is still significantly higher than any engine or any turbine of sorts.
So if you are using. Even hydrogen combustion, combustion of any sorts on a theoretical level tops out at around 50%, but in practice. We only really get anywhere from 30 to 40% and 40% is in ideal conditions when you are really in control of the combustion reaction. So you are already in that sense, 50% higher than that, even on a minimal threshold as as a bare minimum.
But what you then start to see is it's, unless you are on the higher end of it, it's still. Definitely edged out by pure electrification. When you're using electricity that has been captured by solar panels, wind energy of sorts, where you as a bare minimum start from 80, 85% and then go all the way up to 90, 99%, but it gives you that diversification and green diversification.
I might add. So you are not purely dependent on those days. You have lots of sunshine. You're not purely dependent on those days where you have a lot of wind available.
Chai: So hydrogen is usually branded as a clean energy source.
Nipun Kashik: Mm-hmm.
Chai: But is it really clean? How clean is it, would you say?
Nipun Kashik: So from what we know, hydrogen when used in a fuel cell reaction to produce electricity, so not in a fuel cell reaction, in a fuel cell through reverse electrolysis is very green.
So we do not produce any other byproducts but water, but. With that being said, if you're using hydrogen for combustion, that's where you start to run into fuel problems because hydrogen combustion is extremely difficult to control. So combustion in general is difficult to control, but we have reached better mechanisms of controlling combustion cycles of petrol of diesel or, or methane or you know, CNG for example.
But for hydrogen, it's a super volatile gas that combusts super quickly. But what we see there is, of course, water is the main product, but at incomplete in combustions, what we start to see is a lot of nitrogen oxides being produced, which are still very toxic in their own way and that tends to happen because.
You are still using air. You're not using pure oxygen when you are causing combustion within these systems. So you start to then have that problem there.
Micah: When Nipun Kashik says hydrogen is volatile, he's not exaggerating. You only need to look at disasters like the Hindenburg, the airship tragedy that killed 35 people in 1937.
Chai: A leaking gas cell let hydrogen mixed with. Oxygen in the air, thin a spark maybe from static set off a fire that consumed the entire ship.
Micah: In more recent history, there have been smaller incidents in hydrogen fuel cell labs, even with hydrogen powered buses. The point is that hydrogen needs to be handled with serious care. Which makes it complicated to work with,
Chai: and that complexity doesn't stop at safety. You've probably heard of terms like blue hydrogen, green, hydrogen, maybe even pink hydrogen.
But what do these colors actually mean?
Nipun Kashik: Let's start with the most prevalent color of hydrogen. That's gray hydrogen. So steam methane reformation is, is how you. Produce hydrogen, but we produce a lot of co carbon monoxide and a lot of carbon dioxide during this process. So that's why it's gray hydrogen. It is the most carbon intensive form of hydrogen, but actually this is where we add the different colors.
So you even have this thing called brown and black hydrogen. So that's where you go into the most carbon intensive form of hydrogen. So we have. Aside from Steam methane reformation, we also have gasifiers that are used to create hydrogen. Now, gasifiers are used to sort of break down complex fuels into different gases, so it's not purely for hydrogen production, whereas steam methane reformation is purely for hydrogen production.
So in these systems you have a lot more of those. Unwanted byproducts that are produced, and that's why we call it black hydrogen. It is the most carbon intensive. If you're using lignite for example, instead of the common source that is used in, in normal gasifiers that is less carbon intensive, then that becomes brown hydrogen.
This is what we call the sad hydrogen when we move to the more optimistic green side of the hydrogen. We first start with blue hydrogen. What is blue hydrogen? You may ask the same process that we have steam methane reformation. If I add a carbon capturing system to it, just from that, we are producing on average without a steam reforming system, 12 kilograms of carbon.
Per kilogram of hydrogen produced. So as soon as I introduce one of these carbon capture systems, and if we bring it down to the threshold of two to three kilograms of carbon dioxide emitted, that is then classified as blue hydrogen. So there's even certain distinctions between blue hydrogen as well, because what we see is that blue hydrogen that is on the threshold of two kilograms.
Per carbon dioxide, per kilogram of hydrogen produced and lower is preferred and is what ends up getting you a lot of those tax credits as well as different subsidies that are renewable oriented with hydrogen production. Then we have big hydrogen. Pink Hydrogen is hydrogen that is produced from nuclear energy and there is a lot of talk around pink hydrogen.
There's a lot of projects that are being pursued within France, within the USA. A lot of pilot projects also in Sweden to see the feasibility and a lot of it is dependent on people's perception of nuclear energies. And then we go to green hydrogen. That's produced through electrolysis, what we talked about with Electrolyzers.
You put in green electricity, so that's also what is important to mention. Unless you're using green electricity, I. Into a electrolyzer. It's not really green hydrogen per se. And then lastly, you have white and gold hydrogen that is naturally occurring hydrogen, so naturally occurring hydrogen that is there within, uh, different gas deposits that's white hydrogen and gold.
Hydrogen is more so available within the atmosphere, but we can't really extract it super well even though there have been talks off. Harnessing and extracting it in the future. So there are building systems around it, but that's kind of how we, uh, complete the hydrogen spectrum.
Chai: So does the cost of production depend on the color?
Nipun Kashik: Very much so. A good cost for hydrogen, from what I understand, is around two to three euros per kilogram. That's kind of what we're aiming for, but we are quite far off of that. If we're purely dependent on green hydrogen, green hydrogen. Is two, maybe three times more expensive, whereas blue hydrogen sits more closer to gray hydrogen because it's produced the same way with a few extra costs.
On top of that, maintaining the carbon capture system. Offloading that carbon, having the transportation systems to bring it to either a carbon utilization plant or a carbon storage seabeds. So that's kind of where you have the extra cost associated with blue hydrogen. But green hydrogen is the most expensive because even today, if you want to work with green hydrogen.
Chances are it's not fully green because you are getting that energy, at least a share of that energy that's powering your electrolyzer to create the hydrogen coming from the grid or coming from the coal power plant in some form or or so.
Chai: So it sounds like green hydrogen production is ideal, but not always cost efficient.
So what are the current bottlenecks in scaling up green production?
Nipun Kashik: That's great that you asked. There's a, a slight mismatch between what the market wants and what the producers are doing, so there's a lot of incentives for the producers to bring down the costs, and there's a lot of incentives available on that front, but there are fewer incentives for.
The buyers to proceed with green hydrogen. So that is coming slowly within Europe now with the CAM policy, which is the carbon border adjustment mechanism, uh, policy within Europe, which is now putting a carbon based tax based on the imported product, be it AGA or imports of sorts paying per kilogram off.
Uh, carbon dioxide emission that is connected to the product that you're importing for. Now, since 2023 to 2025, companies have only had to report it. They only had to report their carbon emissions if they were for a product that they were importing. But from 2026 onwards, there will be a tax of 85 euros.
Per kilogram of emission that you are importing off a certain product. So for example, if I'm importing five kilograms of oranges and those five kilograms cost two kilograms of carbon dioxide emission, I'm gonna have to pay 170 euros just to import those as a, as a carbon tax. So that's kind of the equation that you're looking at, which is.
A, it's sort of a retaliatory function to try and bring more people to use green hydrogen because if you're, for example, transporting green hydrogen from emerging markets where there's a lot of work being done on hydrogen, specifically, one that comes to my mind earliest is Morocco. There's a lot of work being done in Morocco to uh, just around renewable energy and hydrogen production plants that run on that renewable energy.
So if you're bringing that in, you of course have to pay less off that tax when importing that hydrogen into a country like Germany, into a country like the Netherlands.
Micah: You know, it makes me wonder about the role of government regulation and incentives or, or in some case, disincentives around the development or the adoption of green hydrogen.
Are the hurdles to wider adoption more on the technical or engineering side of things, or are they more on a regulatory side of things?
Nipun Kashik: I'd say a bit of both. One thing to say for sure is there is still this notion that people compare hydrogen to a lot of other sources where they shouldn't be comparing it, and that sort of creates a negative stigma.
Of the adoption of hydrogen. So when you start to see many different vehicle platforms, so, so for example, car manufacturers trying to manufacture hydrogen vehicles and then they don't perform. Not just because of technical problems or the fact that they're not comparable to the rest of competition, but also because of the fact that there's not enough infrastructure there, refueling infrastructure for hydrogen vehicles.
What you start to see is this mixed notion, uh, everybody asking this question, what is better hydrogen or battery electric vehicles? And then that sort of also starts to impact other applications where hydrogen. Is clearly better. So there are other places where it is very important to, for example, for steel production, where we can move away from many different gases that we're using for steel production to move purely to a hydrogen based, uh, steel production system.
Of course, many technologies that we associate with green hydrogen. Or the state of the art ones are still on a lower technological readiness level. However, there is a lot of interest. There's a lot of manufacturers ready to make this as well. It's just this moving public sentiment. There's a lot of competition that is coming in for space that would've been previously there for hydrogen production.
Now being taken over by data centers. So a lot of the data centers are now competing for the same funding and, and the same funding specifically with regards to, uh, renewable energy. And now with AI as a growing sector, they are diverging and bringing a lot of that momentum away from hydrogen. Into developing sustainable greener AI oriented data centers.
Micah: In 2024, Deloitte reported that the power we use for AI related data center activity could double by 2030. Right now, it makes up about 2% of the grid. But as AI touches almost every aspect of our world, it's interesting to see how shifting priorities might pull research and even funding away from hydrogen.
Chai: That said, it doesn't have to be one or the other. In some cases, AI and hydrogen could help each other think AI, optimizing hydrogen production, or managing storage and distribution more efficiently.
Micah: Earlier, Nipun Kashik mentioned a few countries already investing in hydrogen, but what are some other real world examples of projects happening right now?
Nipun Kashik: So there have been pilot projects launched for I think a few thousand homes. Uh, a few neighborhoods within Scotland using hydrogen for heating instead of, you know, gas-based heating. Other projects that are there for hydrogen. This is then where we start to go more within vehicles, for example. So vehicles, you have lots of different projects within Asia, specifically China of lots of hydrogen buses running between different provinces of China.
That's where it's most prevalent. We also have a few pilot projects that were semi-successful within Europe and we also. Most importantly have the hydrogen rail system that's there in Germany. It covers a journey which has been historically difficult to maintain electrified for the German railway providers, uh, db.
So those are the few projects that come to my mind directly.
Chai: So aside from the storage of hydrogen, what other infrastructure is needed to exist in order for hydrogen fuel to be affordable and also a real reliable option worldwide?
Nipun Kashik: So one of the things that people always try to do with hydrogen is repurpose the existing technology to work with hydrogen as much as possible.
So when we mentioned at the start engines, there was a lot of talk, or there is a lot of work currently going on within TNO, which is the, uh, national organization. Of research and science technology here within the Netherlands. Also for many different institutes in France, Italy, and Germany, where they are trying to repurpose existing engine platforms and make them hydrogen compatible, but people are really struggling on that front.
It's a much more difficult engineering challenge than one had expected. Next to that, what we see is definitely. The hydrogen transportation, that tends to be still a bigger issue than people had expected, purely because of the fact that hydrogen, even if you start to blend it, so so forget purely transporting hydrogen that is already very risky, has its as, has huge challenges of purely transmitting.
Hydrogen through existing gas lines and gas pipes that we have installed, even at lower percentages mixing, for example, methane with hydrogen. We already start to see the dreaded symptoms that we associate with hydrogen transport, embrittlement. So what we see is the current. Pipes, they start to em brittle easily, and either they're rendered useless for hydrogen or they start to, with continued usage.
They also are no longer then usable for methane. So it really starts to break down the pipes themselves, create holes within them and cause leakages. And as we know with hydrogen, it's, it's a very volatile gas. We don't want any sort of leakage to be happening on that front. So when we talk about the aspect of storage, we have traditionally been using hydrogen gas, but we, there has been a lot of work done on storing hydrogen in liquid form, which is.
Frankly, even more difficult than the high pressure tankers that we were already using, because not only do you need high pressure, you need extremely low temperatures. Temperatures of around minus 270 degrees Celsius. That's just two, two and a half degrees over, uh, absolute zero. So it's extremely difficult to maintain those temperatures, not only for storage.
Uh, for storage. We see it is becoming more and more feasible. There's. A few airports, for example, the Rotterdam, the Hamburg Airport, and a few other airports that have started initiatives of cryogenic hydrogen storage. As part of that transition that we want to happen for hydrogen within the aviation industry, but for transporting liquid hydrogen, we still see that the, the valve infrastructure and the pipes, they're maintaining that temperature through the transport system.
Is still extremely difficult and at a very low technological readiness level.
Micah: Isn't that very energy intensive to bring temperatures down that low?
Nipun Kashik: Indeed, indeed. So that's where you sort of throw the buckets when it comes to that, that higher efficiency that we're dealing with. When if you are going to use hydrogen instead of another gas, you know, for combustion, then you have to account for the losses that you have in terms of energy and both hydrogen, because cryogenic has this, this huge problem that there's a lot of hydrogen boil off.
That happens. You lose a lot of hydrogen when transporting cryogenic hydrogen from one source to another. It's also important to mention, this is something I found recently, the more concentrated or the higher pressure storage system you use, even for gaseous hydrogen. The more percent of hydrogen that is usable that you end up losing.
So to give an example, what I found out was if you're using 700 bar storage vessels for hydrogen, which is very common, uh, specifically for transportation, so for hydrogen trucks, for hydrogen vehicles, you lose anywhere from 12 to 14% of hydrogen that you stored inside. So that has to also be accounted for.
When you are doing the energy calculations of how much hydrogen I produced versus how much I used the well to tank efficiency, as we so call it.
Micah: And if you have green hydrogen being stored, but you're using carbon intensive energy to make that storage possible, is it still green hydrogen in the end?
Nipun Kashik: That's, uh, that's very smart. And there I, I don't want to go tit for Ted. But then you use the same sort of arguments then going on for batteries, which even now production processes wise are not really using the most green methods. Of either extracting the metals that you have or producing the large quantities of batteries that we have.
So if you then start to account for that, it's not green or less green, but what we definitely see is that for, for hydrogen vessels that we're producing, a lot of them are very carbon fiber intensive and, and a lot of them are now being designed in such a way. Such that when they're no longer usable, a lot of the materials that are going into it can be recycled again, so they are being made greener, both the storage mechanisms as well as the production mechanisms.
Chai: So earlier you touched on hydrogen used in mobility, so there's a lot of debate about this, the role of it in mobility. Do you believe that fuel cell vehicles still have a place on the market, or because of the rise of so many electric vehicles everywhere now has overshadowed this?
Nipun Kashik: It's super easy to break it down within smaller vehicles.
For everyday usage for passenger vehicles, four wheelers, two wheelers, you name it, hydrogen in its current form. If you're going to use the, even the state-of-the-art 700 bar tankers is just not feasible when it comes to the range that you're getting. And of course, the infrastructure being its own challenge.
But now here we are assessing the vehicle. To another vehicle. We're not talking about all of the auxiliary challenges that are attached next to just owning a vehicle, for example. But in terms of performance, we don't really see that much of a stark gain as compared to a battery electric vehicle for non intense.
Consumer usages, hydrogen vehicles just aren't going to cut it unless we somehow magically move to cryogenic hydrogen liquid storage. And that is, you can maintain it and you don't have those energy losses that we discussed. So if that's the case, yeah, yeah, we absolutely can have hydrogen vehicles. But for now, with the gasier storages, it's not a question.
However, what we do see is at the given moment, even though batteries. Have scaled at an unprecedented rate, even more so than a lot of scientists who actually created the first lithium battery had anticipated. So this was something that that shocked me. The researchers at University of Texas, they had been the ones.
Who sort of came up with the modern lithium ion battery as we see it, and even they hadn't anticipated how fast the energy density would scale when electric cars came into, uh, massive use. So with that being said, we still see that for intense usages wherever we need to have long distances being covered without any downtime, hydrogen is still greener and more suitable because again.
With hydrogen, you have next to no refueling time, at least the same refueling time as the alternatives do. So hydrogen refueling for a fuel cell system is the same as if it would be for a CNG vehicle. So you would take the same time to fill up a tank and that starts to be useful when you are dealing with heavy duty machinery that is operating day in, day out.
Uh, trucks, logistical trucks that are transporting goods, thousand 500, 2000 kilometers a day on end, who can't afford to have those even 15 minutes of high speed charging time that you expect, you know, with the state of the art megawatt chargers, with EVs? So, a, they are those megawatt charger as much as I believe in them, and I want them to be successful.
They are a huge toll on the grid, and the grid absolutely cannot handle them in its current state unless we ramp up the grid capacity by two x three x. So moving to a full logistical battery electric transport system. Is actually farther away than developing a few hydrogen, uh, refueling stations and using hydrogen trucks instead of it.
So until we get to that point where megawatt charging is sustainable. If we want a sustainable solution for cargo, long distance, cargo, heavy duty machinery to be general, hydrogen fuel cells still are more favorable when it comes to that niche.
Micah: If you're curious about electric vehicles and how we scale up. Battery tech. Check out our chat with Simon Taylor from season one, episode 10. You'll find a link to it in the show notes.
Chai: Simon had plenty of reasons to be hopeful about the green transition, and so does Nepo.
What makes you most hopeful about the future of hydrogen?
Nipun Kashik: What I see is, of course, hydrogen is not going anywhere. Hydrogen is something that we were already using even before we started to talk about these, uh, fuel cell electric vehicles, which got me into the field. But yeah, so hydrogen is an essential component of many.
Many different industrial processes, many different productions. So one other place where I know hydrogen usage is going to scale is as we start to have more chip manufacturing machines. So the semiconductor lithography machines that we have, making the chips within your phones. Many of those sub parts within the machines actually also require a constant supply of hydrogen to function optimally.
So since we are moving towards a more AI age, we so like to say we require that ramp up in computer machinery. So a computer hardware that is being developed specifically for ai, that means. You also need more production machines that produce that AI related hardware. And for that, even though it's not the same increase in scale as we are expecting for maybe a full scale change within the mobility industry or the trucking industry to be precise, it is still another place where hydrogen is essential and you can't really replace it with something else.
Micah: So for people interested in working in the hydrogen sector, what advice would you give?
Nipun Kashik: One thing to say for sure is, this is something my mentor at Capgemini also told me and was very, I admire his optimism a lot because since stepping into it, I have seen lots of ups and downs. I have been to a few conferences I've seen, I.
Lots of promises and then lots of promises broken as well. So it's, it's one of those things, and I say this not just to people going within the hydrogen field, the energy transition field period, because I see it as bigger than that, I, I. While I know a lot about hydrogen, I care more about the broad energy transition scheme of things.
So, uh, the main thing to say there is you have to stay hopeful. Specifically when you see a lot of deals collapsing, you see a lot of mass media panic similar to how sustainable future building anything requires a lot of time. You can break it down within couple of days, but. Building things takes a long time and you might be within this field for a while.
You might have to change fields as well. Something better might come along than hydrogen, so be prepared, but always stay excited for energy transition. There's always, there's a lot of good work happening and you will definitely learn a lot, even if what you're working on doesn't become the next savior of tomorrow.
Chai: We've been speaking to Nipon Kashic, an electro mechanical engineer at Capgemini Engineering. So Micah, what were some of the key takeaways from this conversation?
Micah: I. One of the things that stood out to me is the color coding involved in hydrogen production, and the idea that hydrogen is not inherently a clean or a green energy source, nor is it inherently a dirty or sad, as Nipun Kashik said, energy source.
It really depends on how it's made and how it's used, and I think oftentimes we're tempted to oversimplify how we think of energy sources. Either it's a dirty energy source. Or it's a clean energy source and in the case of hydrogen, it depends.
Chai: Yeah. And you know, maybe some new colors get added next week or in the future.
It's such an evolving industry to keep an eye on. And also
Micah: very interesting to think about the role of AI in hydrogen. It struck me that on the one hand, what NI is saying is that the energy needs of AI data centers could actually draw attention away from hydrogen. But on the flip side, hydrogen applications could actually benefit from.
AI analysis essentially, where we might learn new ways to optimize the applications of hydrogen.
Chai: Yeah, like maybe in chip manufacturing,
Micah: exactly where that's going to need a continuous supply of hydrogen. And you know, even if it's not the scale of say, mobility, uh, it's still an important area for it to be used.
Chai: This has been Balancing the Future from METTLER TOLEDO.
Micah: What questions about science and technology do you want answered in a future episode?
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