O BNDES (National Bank for Economic and Social Development) announced last Friday (01) a program to support pilot projects for the production or use of green hydrogen (H2V) in Brazil.
The maximum amount for financing is R$300 million and will rely on resources from the Climate Fund, destined for the renewable energy chain. The bank said it is also open to financing large plants for export.
The new credit line will be the first from BNDES to offer below-market interest rates, through the “bald” TLP (Long Term Rate) model. In other words, without additional remuneration, considering the resources of the Climate Fund, whose rate is 1% per year (per year).
Despite the initiative, Ennio Peres da Silva, doctor in mechanical engineering and coordinator and researcher at the Hydrogen Laboratory at Unicamp (Universidade Estadual de Campinas), assesses that the resources allocated are too low to make any important initiative in the country viable.
“With the resources made available (up to R$300 million) there is very little that can be done. The price of a single electrolyzer, of up to 100 kW, is in the range of a few million reais. It is not possible to take this value and build a hydrogen plant, because it will not be competitive”, he commented.
According to him, the minimum value to start operating a plant in the country is close to billions of reais, mainly due to the costs of equipment and professionals. “If it were still a demonstration project, where economy is not sought, that would be fine. However, this is not the case,” he commented.
Green Hydrogen
Abundant in nature, hydrogen is an element widely used by industry as an input for fertilizers, methanol production and oil refining, for example. However, as it is only found in combination with other elements, to obtain it in pure form, it must be separated.
Historically, separation processes never involved the use of renewable energy but rather polluting sources. The most common have always been hydrogens: brown (obtained by the gasification of coal) and gray (obtained from natural gas, a fossil fuel).
With the advent of renewable energy sources, a new way of carrying out separation began to be increasingly used around the world, which was green hydrogen, produced from solar and wind energy, with zero greenhouse gas emissions.
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