The Japanese appliance brand has unveiled a cutting-edge green energy project that places a big wager on one particular technology.”If you can do it in Wales, you can do it anywhere,” joked the Japanese ambassador to the UK, Hiroshi Suzuki, at the unveiling of Panasonic’s newest green energy project in Cardiff, Wales, on Tuesday.The famously rain-soaked nation might not be the most obvious choice to site a facility that relies heavily on solar power, but as Suzuki pointed out, this makes it a trial by fire (or rather, water) for Panasonic’s HX system—the first attempt outside Japan to run an entire Panasonic factory on 100% renewable energy.
But that’s not what makes the £2o million ($25 million) upgrade such a bold move. The eye-opening part is that, along with 372 kilowatts of solar capacity, the Cardiff plant will rely on 215 kilowatts of hydrogen fuel cells using locally-produced green hydrogen, a “clean” form of hydrogen produced via electrolysis using power from renewable sources.
That’s a big deal. The green hydrogen industry is still in its infancy, and in the UK the sector has been characterized as “riddled with uncertainty” owing to concerns around supply of and demand for the product. The firm chosen to supply the hydrogen is UK firm Protium, which revealed to me in an email that the hydrogen will be produced at its nearby Pioneer 1 pilot project, formed in partnership with University of South Wales at the nearby steel town of Port Talbot. Pioneer 1 is, at present, a small-scale facility that Protium says can produce 40 kilograms of green hydrogen per day. Can it really deliver on the hydro-hype?
‘Hydrogen Society’
Pushing back on the idea that the Cardiff project might be a gamble, Panasonic Corporation CEO Masahiro Shinada told me that major firms need to express confidence in green technologies if the world is to cut the emissions that are causing global heating.
“A carbon neutral society cannot be established by Panasonic alone,” Shinada said. “We have to partner with other industries to [decarbonize] our supply chains. So with this Cardiff site, we’re inviting opportunity to realize a hydrogen society.”
Shinada told me that the UK’s commitment to green hydrogen production had been a factor in encouraging the firm to choose Cardiff as the site of its first fully green-powered site outside of Japan. He also pointed to UK commitments to heat pump manufacturing and installations, with the Labour government having pledged £3.4 billion ($4.3 billion) in the recent Autumn budget to accelerate clean heat in homes.
“This is part of our vision for a healthier society and planet Earth,” Shinada explained. That society would achieve net zero was, in his view, “inevitable” despite the challenges, which include “the difficulty of balancing supply and demand.” He added: “This pilot means we can learn how to make that supply chain, and achieve a more reasonable cost for green hydrogen.”
Which Way, Green Energy?
Among researchers, there is no shortage of skepticism regarding green hydrogen’s scalability as a green energy winner, versus alternatives such as w