UAE investing in green and blue hydrogen projects as part of clean energy move: official

Dubai — The UAE is investing in green and blue hydrogen projects, an undersecretary at the energy ministry said Oct. 19, as OPEC's third-largest oil producer seeks to develop new sources of clean energy.

"Hydrogen is very high on our agenda, right now we are really at initiation phase," Sharif al-Olama told the Siemens Energy week virtual conference. "We are in the process of setting the roadmap of where we are going with hydrogen."

State-owned Dubai Electricity and Water Authority is developing a pilot green hydrogen mobility project at Expo 2020 by powering a number of fuel-cell vehicles that use the fuel produced by a solar-driven hydrogen electrolysis facility at the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park in the emirate. The solar park will have capacity to generate 5 GW by 2030.

The competitive prices for solar power "definitely will be an enabler for hopefully in the near future to produce a very competitive price for green hydrogen," he said.

Capturing CO2

The UAE is also looking at blue and gray hydrogen, capitalizing on its experience in carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS), Olama said.

The country plans to "study the technology of CCUS with hydrogen production from fossil fuels," he said.

Currently, state owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., the UAE's biggest energy producer, has the ability to capture 800,000 mt/year of CO2 from Emirates Steel and inject the CO2 into its oil reservoirs for Enhanced Oil Recovery.

ADNOC is on track to expand its CCUS capacity at least fivefold to 5 million mt/year of CO2 by 2030, through capturing CO2 from its own gas plants. The company's Shah gas plant has the potential to enable the capture of 2.4 million mt of CO2, while the Habshan and Bab plants could enable the capture of almost 2 million mt of CO2.