FEATURES AND PROSPECTS OF DEVELOPMENT OF HYDROGEN ENERGY SYSTEMS IN THE REGIONS OF UKRAINE

The article deals with modern environmental and technological challenges of the energy market development process. The necessity and key vectors of functioning of the renewed energy system, where an important role is assigned to increasing the energy efficiency of measures for the prevention and adaptation of climatic changes to the global energy trend, have been clarified. As a result, there is an active introduction of innovative measures in the energy sector of Ukraine and regions. This can be traced in the segments of production, processing, transportation, storage and consumption of energy resources. The main document has been processed, which specifies and implements the main stages of the transformation of the energy sector: "Energy strategy of Ukraine for the period up to 2035: safety, energy efficiency, competitiveness." It is noted that the implementation of the strategic changes specified in the document is important and most acceptable, subject to the influence of sectoral, regional, socio- economic factors and the resolution of the escalation of the Ukrainian-Russian conflict. The future development of Ukraine is modeled in the conditions of decarbonization of energy, where the main place will belong to the hydrogen direction. The stages and features of the formation of hydrogen energy, the natural properties of hydrogen are considered, the world practice is considered. The priority and economically justified methods of using hydrogen to produce ammonia and as an alternative resource for oil and gas are noted and proposed. However, several obstacles are highlighted that institutionally prevent Ukraine and the regions from fully using hydrogen technologies.

Hydrogen-Based Energy Storage Systems for Large-Scale Data Center Applications

Global demand for data and data access has spurred the rapid growth of the data center industry. To meet demands, data centers must provide uninterrupted service even during the loss of primary power. Service providers seeking ways to eliminate their carbon footprint are increasingly looking to clean and sustainable energy solutions, such as hydrogen technologies, as alternatives to traditional backup generators. In this viewpoint, a survey of the current state of data centers and hydrogen-based technologies is provided along with a discussion of the hydrogen storage and infrastructure requirements needed for large-scale backup power applications at data centers.

An overview about the feasibility of the hydrogen power plants

In order to make the decision to implement a project from any domain, several aspects must be analyzed in the preliminary stage, leading to the justification of the practical realization of the project. Feasibility is based on technical-economic criteria but also involves other impact factors, such as social and ecological. In the case of hydrogen, there are not many countries with experience in the field, but in the future it is expected that hydrogen technologies will expand, from production, transport, storage, distribution and use. There are more and more factors that encourage the development of hydrogen projects and the funding proposed through European environmental agreements is a real challenge for specialists. Therefore, the authors of the paper aimed to analyze several aspects of the feasibility of hydrogen production and storage projects with the identification of implementation conditions: benefits, efficiency, costs, sources of funding, entities involved, constraints or legislative framework.

Decarbonization of economy as a factor of influence on the development of coal industry of the world and Russia

Decarbonization of economy, allowing to decrease so called carbon footprint – carbon dioxides emissions due to application energy sources with low carbon content, is one of effective measures to decrease greenhouse gas emissions into atmosphere. Most of countries of the world had ratified the Paris Agreement and confirmed intention to decarbonize economies. It was noted that still in 2020 many countries began to decrease coal consumption and use renewable energy sources for coal substitution for energy generation. Data on the world production of coking coal, export and import of it presented, as well as place of Russia at the world market of coking coal described. Influence of the modern climate “agenda“ in basic countries of the world on the development of coal mining shown. New standards of investment projects financing and their influence on restriction of mining and utilization of coal, considered. Also measures to decrease greenhouse emissions at the production of ferrous metallurgy products, including introduction by EC countries of carbon tariff – European border carbon tax considered. It was highlighted that application of the transborder carbon tax, hydrogen technologies and announced decarbonization can become instruments of effective impact resulting in considerable decrease of market of both energy and coking coals. In the Center of study of coal industry of the world and Russia of the Institute of energy studies two variants of forecasting of world mining of coal elaborated, taking into account existing tendency of transfer to “green” metallurgy and application of hydrogen technologies instead of coke. Due to the first variant a further expanding of steel industry capacities is provided for production of metal with stabilization by 2035 of coking coal mining at the level of 1470 million tons. Beyond the period, the world mining of coking coal most probably will slightly decrease by 2036–2040 down to 1390 million tons. According to the second variant, a decrease of coking coal consumption will take place due to decrease of steel production volumes and due to the transfer to metallurgy decarbonization, implementation of “green” energetics and hydrogen technologies. This variant is characterized by systemic decrease of coking coal mining by 2036–2040 down to 580 million tons.

Research and Development Investment and Collaboration Framework for the Hydrogen Economy in South Korea

South Korea developed its hydrogen strategies to achieve carbon neutrality and dominate the hydrogen economy amidst, and with the impetus, of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The government strives toward the goal via continuous investment in green hydrogen technologies, as well as strategic collaborations. To facilitate the transition into the hydrogen economy, this study presents a research and development (R&D) investment and collaboration framework as a national strategy. The framework offers abundant information to elucidate the technology, R&D spectrum, and regional dimensions of the strategy. Furthermore, the proposed framework was applied to the Korean hydrogen economy comprising 955 nationally funded projects worth USD 565.7 million. The statuses and trends of the government’s investment in nationally funded research projects are illustrated with regard to the value chains of the hydrogen economies of 16 regions, as well as nine technology clusters relating to the hydrogen economy, thereby determining the research organizations that played crucial roles in each cluster of the 16 regions between 2015 and 2020. The results indicate that the research organizations in Daejeon acquired the highest government R&D funding in many hydrogen-economy-related research fields, and that an R&D spectrum-based research/strategic collaboration is required to accomplish specialized complexes in the regions.