What is Green Hydrogen?
Green hydrogen has been in the news often lately, but what is green hydrogen? Simply put, it is hydrogen fuel that is created using renewable energy instead of fossil fuels. It has the potential to provide clean power for manufacturing, transportation, and more — and its only byproduct is water.
Interest in green hydrogen is skyrocketing among major oil and gas firms. Europe is planning to make hydrogen a big part of its trillion-dollar Green Deal package, with an EU-wide green hydrogen strategy expected to be published in July.
How do you make green hydrogen?
With electrolysis, all you need to produce large amounts of hydrogen is water, a big electrolyzer, and plentiful supplies of electricity.
If the electricity comes from renewable sources such as wind, solar or hydro, then the hydrogen is effectively green; the only carbon emissions are from those embodied in the generation infrastructure.
There is more hydrogen in the universe than any other element—it’s been estimated that approximately 90 percent of all atoms are hydrogen. But hydrogen atoms do not exist in nature by themselves. To produce hydrogen, its atoms need to be decoupled from other elements with which they occur— in water, plants, or fossil fuels. How this decoupling is done determines hydrogen energy’s sustainability.
The challenge right now is that big electrolyzers are in short supply, and plentiful supplies of renewable electricity still come at a significant price.
Compared to more established production processes, electrolysis is very expensive, so the market for electrolyzers has been small.
Why green hydrogen is needed
One of the paths to near-total decarbonization is electrifying the whole energy system and using clean renewable power. But electrifying the entire energy system would be difficult, or at least much more expensive than combining renewable generation with low-carbon fuels. Green hydrogen is one of several potential low-carbon fuels that could take the place of today’s fossil hydrocarbons.
The opportunity for green hydrogen to be applied across a wide range of sectors means there is a correspondingly large number of companies that could benefit from a burgeoning hydrogen fuel economy. Of these, perhaps the most significant is the oil and gas firms that are increasingly facing calls to cut back on fossil fuel production.
Green hydrogen seems to be on everyone’s mind at the moment, with at least 10 countries looking to the gas for future energy security and possible exports. The latest nation to jump on the bandwagon is Portugal, which in May unveiled a national hydrogen strategy said to be worth €7 billion ($7.7 billion) up to 2030.
That said, pundits still expect hydrogen to play a role in decarbonizing some vehicle segments, with forklifts and heavy-duty trucks among those most likely to benefit.
Source: greentechmedia.com / news.climate.columbia.edu