CRL Energy's role in New Zealand's 'EnergyScape'

15 October 2007

EnergyScape – CRL Energy’s new $533,334 FRST-funded contract to develop a pathway to a hydrogen energy economy if hydrogen becomes part of this country’s energy future research programme began on 1 March 2007 with specific objectives to identify the knowledge and expertise gaps that must be filled in order for New Zealand to transition to a hydrogen economy, identify the role that research investment may play in filling those gaps and produce an action plan to enable that research.

Already, the first stage in the process – the release of an issues document for raised awareness among selected high-level government and industry stakeholders has been completed.

“We canvassed a wide range of issues including the potential to use hydrogen to run vehicles and generate electricity; and how surplus electricity - from sources such as windpower, wavepower or ocean currents - could be used to split hydrogen out of water and store it until needed.”

The project is also looking at other ways to produce hydrogen, ranging from the concept of extracting it from big coal deposits - and re-burying the unwanted carbon - to producing it from methane from digester systems making use of manure and other effluent from dairy farms. Chemical fuelcells can use hydrogen and oxygen via a catalyst to generate electricity, with heat and water the only waste.

“We received over 90% feedback from our issues document, and from that we are now proceeding to model the hydrogen supply chains deemed most likely to play a role in the development of New Zealand’s hydrogen economy. From this analysis, the knowledge gaps should become obvious,” says Dr Clemens.

The programme is one of three closely linked initiatives included within EnergyScape. The other two programmes are led by Scion and the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA). NIWA’s programme will incorporate energy demand modelling, and undertake a detailed appraisal of our climate-driven renewables (wind, hydro, marine, solar, bioenergy) and earth-based resources (geothermal, oil and gas, coal). Scion’s programme will investigate bioenergy options such as how energy may be created from pine plantation waste, short rotation crops, forage crops, grasses, dairy farm wastes, algae on sewage ponds, and other biomass.

Between them these two programmes aim to identify gaps and construct research plans for the biomass resource and all other resources respectively. CRL Energy is heavily involved in all three and leads the Hydrogen programme.