Tokyo's Akasaka District Launches Green Hydrogen Facility for Urban Decarbonization
A Tokyo-based supplier of electricity, heating and cooling to a commercial district in the city has commissioned a green hydrogen facility to decarbonize energy operations.
Akasaka Heating & Cooling Supply Co. celebrated the start of operations for utilizing carbon-free green hydrogen to its combined heat and power (CHP) portfolio. The company, which is called Akanetsu on second reference and is owned by TBS Group, serves the Akasaka five-chrome district in the Minato-ku region of Tokyo.
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The project is to create and store green hydrogen for power generation via fuel cells and heating via hydrogen co-fired boilers. Hydrogen is abundant in the world, but difficult to generate at commercial scale and must be produced from either steam reforming of methane gas or by electrolyzers which split the H2 atoms from water.
"The full-scale operation of this green hydrogen facility represents a major step towards the decarbonization of urban infrastructure and demonstrates the potential of a new social infrastructure from Akasaka,” Ryujiro Abe, President & Chief Executive Officer of TBS Holdings, said in a statement. “Moving forward, we will continue to accumulate knowledge while ensuring safety and a stable supply, and we will continue to communicate our efforts to society through our GX initiatives.”
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The Akasaka project generates green hydrogen and carbon-reduced CHP electricity, heating and cooling to cover energy consumption in the commercial and residential district of Minato-ku. The fuels used an electrochemical transfer to convert H2 into emissions=free electricity for lighting and cooling, while burning hydrogen to heat boilers does not produce CO2 at the point of use.
The company stressed the efficiency of the project, using the hydrogen released from tanks to pass through piping on the way to co-fired boilers to produce steam. This reduces consumption of natural gas which, if mixed with hydrogen at 50%, could reduce boiler emissions by about 21% compared with using city-supplied natural gas alone.
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