Azerbaijan updates on green hydrogen production study

BAKU, Azerbaijan, February 1. Azerbaijan has launched the conduction of a feasibility study for green hydrogen production in the country, Elnur Soltanov, Deputy Minister of Energy of Azerbaijan told Trend.

"Currently, we are on the first and very important stage of a feasibility study, and we are pretty sure that there are certain advantages to be exploited," he said.

According to the minister, the European Bank for Reconstruction and development (EBRD) is preparing a strategy for hydrogen production in Azerbaijan.

"We are definitely very glad for this cooperation, and this is also a part of our government strategy for 2022-2026. I have personally participated in several meetings with the EBRD on this issue. The point is, the overall production of hydrogen is expensive, and I want to focus on the most expensive one, which is green hydrogen. Hydrogen may be produced from methane, by using fossil fuels as the source of energy, and, in fact, this is actually what we have been talking about with EBRD, hydrogen can be produced from natural gas, and this type is called blue hydrogen," the deputy minister noted.

As Soltanov explained, this is a very appealing idea, because the production of blue hydrogen also includes capturing carbon dioxide.

"However, we want to focus on the production of green hydrogen, the cleanest form of it, produced by using water, and, as a source of energy, renewable energy us used. This is the most expensive way, but this is a future and this is where we want to go direction wise," he noted.

Soltanov added that the agreements with Masdar and Fortescue Industries companies a big potential in renewable energy production, including offshore wind on the Caspian.

"And in the projects of such scale the production of hydrogen will make economic sense in terms of balancing issues. Given the specifics of some projects, using hydrogen can actually bring down the overall cost of them. So, there are certain niches to exploit,"

Also, according to the deputy minister, the EU is very much interested in green hydrogen production.

"Some of the corporations in Azerbaijan have already defined this field as one of their priorities. So, there is a very interesting synergy here. Of course, this is a very complex and expensive issue, but we are keeping our options open," he concluded.