A Study of Suga Yoshihide's Eight Characters
During the 3rd China International Import Expo held in Shanghai recently, a number of Toshiba executives told this newspaper that apart from the Japanese vision of a "hydrogen energy society", Toshiba is very optimistic about the development prospect of hydrogen energy in China.
Looking around the world, Japan is one of the countries most keen on developing hydrogen energy in recent years. Japan's "Basic Strategy for Hydrogen Energy" proposes that by 2030, it is necessary to establish domestic hydrogen production technology from renewable energy and build an international hydrogen energy supply chain. The long-term goal is to realize decarbonization of cheap fossil fuels and hydrogen production from renewable energy by using carbon capture (CCS) technology. For Japan with low energy self-sufficiency, it is undoubtedly an ideal choice for the post-Fukushima era to produce clean, efficient and easy to store and transport hydrogen energy from renewable energy with zero carbon emissions.
The course of energy transformation in Japan
"Toshiba began to do research and development of hydrogen energy technology as early as 50 years ago and made relevant technical reserves. The products we introduced to the market 40 years ago have already had the shadow of hydrogen energy utilization. " Zhang Tong, business director of Toshiba (China) Co., Ltd., which is in charge of hydrogen energy business, told this newspaper that Toshiba's early hydrogen production route was hydrocarbon-alcohol reforming. However, under the concept of zero carbon, the company has completely upgraded its hydrogen energy system in the past decade, and Toshiba's fuel cell systems are all pure hydrogen fuel cells.
It is reported that Toshiba has delivered more than 65,438+000 pure hydrogen fuel cell systems in Japan. This 100kW modular unit can be flexibly combined as required, and the start-up time is less than 5 minutes, which can efficiently convert the hydrogen in the pipeline or gas storage tank into electric energy and heat energy.
Toshiba has delivered more than 65,438+000 pure hydrogen fuel cell systems in Japan.
A typical scene is the new comprehensive application center of hydrogen energy in Dongzhi, which uses solar energy to electrolyze water to produce hydrogen, which is directly applied to the fuel cell logistics forklift of Toshiba Japanese government factory. In this way, not only does the fuel cell logistics forklift not emit carbon dioxide during its operation, but also because hydrogen made from renewable energy is used as fuel, zero carbon emission is realized in the whole process from hydrogen production to hydrogen utilization.
When a sudden disaster occurs, this small distributed energy can also be used as a lifeline to provide electricity and hot water for 300 affected people for a week.
Although pure hydrogen is good for everything, it is still trapped by the high cost of the world. According to the paper, the above-mentioned Toshiba pure hydrogen fuel cell systems landing in Japan are all projects supported by Japanese government policies.
Zhang Tong said that the global renewable energy is developing rapidly, but there are always intermittent problems in wind power generation and photovoltaic power generation. Especially in China, the rapid growth of wind power and photovoltaic installed capacity has great requirements for peak shaving of power grid, and the problem of abandoning wind and electricity is widespread. It is an ideal combination to convert this part of electric energy into hydrogen energy, store it and recycle it when necessary. "The combination of renewable energy and electrolytic hydrogen production technology makes hydrogen completely green."
He believes that in this field, Toshiba's strengths are its in-depth understanding of power systems, electronic equipment and control systems and its long-term technical accumulation of hydrogen, and it is currently exploring cooperation with a number of upstream hydrogen production enterprises. In the initial stage of hydrogen energy, Toshiba called on the government to give policy support to the whole industry, encourage more enterprises to participate in the improvement of the hydrogen energy industry chain, and clarify the laws and regulations on the use of hydrogen energy as soon as possible. Under these conditions, the cost of hydrogen energy can be rapidly reduced with the scale effect.
The reduction of hydrogen energy cost depends on a sufficiently large and rapidly growing downstream market. Toshiba is promoting the application of pure hydrogen fuel cell system H2Rex in China market as soon as possible, so that its cost can meet the potential demand in China market as soon as possible, and will jointly explore the market with China partners.
In fact, after the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan, Toshiba's understanding of the "ultimate energy solution" has completely changed. Toshiba used to be an important player in the global nuclear energy field, and its Westinghouse Electric Company has a brilliant history. However, due to the slowdown of global nuclear power construction after the 20 1 1 Fukushima nuclear accident, the construction cost increased sharply, and Westinghouse Electric filed for bankruptcy protection, Toshiba finally chose to divest its nuclear power assets.
In June+10, 5438, Japanese Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide announced in his policy address to the Provisional Parliament that Japan would strive to achieve zero net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. This indicates that Japan, as the third largest economy and the fifth largest carbon emitter in the world, has undergone great changes in its position on climate issues. At present, at least 80% of greenhouse gas emissions in Japan come from the energy sector.
"Zero carbon dioxide emission is not a recent sound, and everyone has been discussing it for a long time." Gong Qiyang, general representative of Toshiba China, told this newspaper that the Fukushima nuclear accident has changed the global thinking on carbon emission reduction. Before 20 1 1, both Japan and Europe pinned their hopes on nuclear energy. However, after the Fukushima accident, due to the upgrading of safety standards and the substantial increase in the cost of nuclear power generation, major European countries chose to abandon nuclear energy.
Gong Qiyang said that besides hydrogen energy, Toshiba has other competitive energy businesses and carbon capture technologies, which can be flexibly combined according to the characteristics of different regions. Specifically, in the field of hydropower, Toshiba ranks first in the world in terms of actual supply quantity and technical strength, and has supplied more than 2,300 hydraulic turbines and 1800 generators to 44 countries and regions. In the photovoltaic field, Toshiba's industrial photovoltaic power generation system has 2,700 applications in Japan, and the residential photovoltaic power generation system has more than 654.38+million customers in Japan; In the geothermal field, Toshiba has provided a total of 3.7GW of geothermal power generation equipment to the world, ranking first in the world in terms of equipment capacity.
Fukushima Hydrogen Energy Research Base (FH2R)
The Fukushima Hydrogen Energy Research Base (FH2R), led by NEDO, a comprehensive development institution of new energy industry technology established in Japan, was completed by the end of February this year in cooperation with two other Japanese companies.
Overview of FH2R system
The project has built the world's largest 10MW hydrogen production device using renewable energy, and is verifying clean and low-cost hydrogen production technology. The hydrogen produced here is not only used to balance the power system, but also to provide power for fixed hydrogen fuel cell systems and mobile hydrogen fuel vehicles.
Proofreading: Liu Wei