Jera launching hydrogen pilot plant in Japan

• 3 years ago (2021-08-27)
• David Flin

Asia 894 Gas 394 Hydrogen 60

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Jera , Japan’s largest power company, plans to launch a pilot project backed by the government to displace 30 per cent of the LNG used to generate electricity with hydrogen at a selected power plant. A government grant from the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organisation (NEDO) will help fund the switch to hydrogen as a fuel at an unspecified large-scale LNG power plant.

Jera plans to gradually increase the use of hydrogen and ammonia at its facilities. LNG is currently used to generate 71 per cent of the company’s power.

Jera said that it will introduce hydrogen later this year and will evaluate the operational and environmental performance of the fuel from this October to March 2025. The results will help inform Jera’s aim of building hydrogen supply facilities, along with combustors that can co-fire hydrogen and natural gas, at the power plant and displace 30 per cent of the LNG used with hydrogen by 2025.

This initiative will be Japan’s first to use a large amount of hydrogen as a fuel in large-scale commercial LNG thermal power plant operations.