Hydrogen Ios Download
Albert Phelps
The global hydrogen economy is growing despite global headwinds resulting from rising interest rates and constrained supply chains, according to an analysis of over 1,400 large hydrogen projects published today by the Hydrogen Council.
Alongside the vital climate benefits and cost-efficiency gains, a truly global hydrogen economy can provide meaningful contributions to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) both in emerging markets and in developed countries, fostering just transition, boosting sustainable growth, and providing clean jobs.
Tom Jaramillo, principal investigator on a HydroGEN seedling project, talks about how the capabilities and expertise of the HydroGEN Advanced Water Splitting Materials consortium can help researchers working on hydrogen technologies.
The Future of Hydrogen provides an extensive and independent survey of hydrogen that lays out where things stand now; the ways in which hydrogen can help to achieve a clean, secure and affordable energy future; and how we can go about realising its potential.
As a consequence, production of hydrogen is responsible for CO2 emissions of around 830 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, equivalent to the CO2 emissions of the United Kingdom and Indonesia combined.
Hydrogen can be extracted from fossil fuels and biomass, from water, or from a mix of both. Natural gas is currently the primary source of hydrogen production, accounting for around three quarters of the annual global dedicated hydrogen production of around 70 million tonnes. This accounts for about 6% of global natural gas use. Gas is followed by coal, due to its dominant role in China, and a small fraction is produced from from the use of oil and electricity.
Fuel costs are the largest cost component, accounting for between 45% and 75% of production costs. Low gas prices in the Middle East, Russia and North America give rise to some of the lowest hydrogen production costs. Gas importers like Japan, Korea, China and India have to contend with higher gas import prices, and that makes for higher hydrogen production costs.
While less than 0.1% of global dedicated hydrogen production today comes from water electrolysis, with declining costs for renewable electricity, in particular from solar PV and wind, there is growing interest in electrolytic hydrogen.
With declining costs for solar PV and wind generation, building electrolysers at locations with excellent renewable resource conditions could become a low-cost supply option for hydrogen, even after taking into account the transmission and distribution costs of transporting hydrogen from (often remote) renewables locations to the end-users.
The IEA has identified four value chains that offer springboard opportunities to scale up hydrogen supply and demand, building on existing industries, infrastructure and policies. Governments and other stakeholders will be able to identify which of these offer the most near-term potential in their geographical, industrial and energy system contexts.
Hydrogen is versatile. Technologies already available today enable hydrogen to produce, store, move and use energy in different ways. A wide variety of fuels are able to produce hydrogen, including renewables, nuclear, natural gas, coal and oil. It can be transported as a gas by pipelines or in liquid form by ships, much like liquefied natural gas (LNG). It can be transformed into electricity and methane to power homes and feed industry, and into fuels for cars, trucks, ships and planes.
There have been false starts for hydrogen in the past; this time could be different. The recent successes of solar PV, wind, batteries and electric vehicles have shown that policy and technology innovation have the power to build global clean energy industries. With a global energy sector in flux, the versatility of hydrogen is attracting stronger interest from a diverse group of governments and companies. Support is coming from governments that both import and export energy as well as renewable electricity suppliers, industrial gas producers, electricity and gas utilities, automakers, oil and gas companies, major engineering firms, and cities. Investments in hydrogen can help foster new technological and industrial development in economies around the world, creating skilled jobs.
Hydrogen can be used much more widely. Today, hydrogen is used mostly in oil refining and for the production of fertilisers. For it to make a significant contribution to clean energy transitions, it also needs to be adopted in sectors where it is almost completely absent at the moment, such as transport, buildings and power generation.
The IEA has identified four near-term opportunities to boost hydrogen on the path towards its clean, widespread use. Focusing on these real-world springboards could help hydrogen achieve the necessary scale to bring down costs and reduce risks for governments and the private sector. While each opportunity has a distinct purpose, all four also mutually reinforce one another.
The EU strategy on hydrogen (COM/2020/301) was adopted in 2020 and suggested policy action points in 5 areas: investment support; support production and demand; creating a hydrogen market and infrastructure; research and cooperation and international cooperation
Since, the Fit-for-55 package (July 2021) has put forward a number of legislative proposals that translate the European hydrogen strategy into concrete European hydrogen policy framework. This includes proposals to set targets for the uptake of renewable hydrogen in industry and transport by 2030. It also includes the Hydrogen and decarbonised gas market package (COM/2021/803 final and COM/2021/804 final), which puts forward proposals to support the creation of optimum and dedicated infrastructure for hydrogen, as well as an efficient hydrogen market.
Investment support has also been provided through the Important Projects of Common European Interest (IPCEIs) on hydrogen. The first IPCEI, called "IPCEI Hy2Tech", which includes 41 projects and was approved in July 2022, aims at developing innovative technologies for the hydrogen value chain to decarbonise industrial processes and the mobility sector, with a focus on end-users.
In September 2022, the Commission approved "IPCEI Hy2Use", which complements IPCEI Hy2Tech and which will support the construction of hydrogen-related infrastructure and the development of innovative and more sustainable technologies for the integration of hydrogen into the industrial sector. Finally, the Clean Hydrogen Partnership was established in November 2021 (taking over from FCH 2 JU) to support research and innovation in the hydrogen ecosystem.
With the publication of the REPowerEU plan in May 2022, the Commission complements the implementation of the EU hydrogen strategy to further increase the European ambitions for renewable hydrogen as an important energy carrier to move away from Russia's fossil fuel imports.
The focus of these actions is to accelerate the uptake of renewable hydrogen, ammonia and other derivatives in hard-to-decarbonise sectors, such as transport, and in energy-intensive industrial processes. Scaling up the development of hydrogen infrastructure and supporting hydrogen investments are also identified as key areas to support hydrogen uptake in the EU.
Within the hydrogen accelerator measures, the Commission has proposed to establish a global European hydrogen facility to create investment security and business opportunities for European and global renewable hydrogen production. President Von der Leyen announced a European Hydrogen Bank in her State of the Union speech in 2022 and the initiative was included in the Commission work programme for 2023.
The Communication on the European Hydrogen Bank (COM/2023/156), published on 16 March 2023, describes its concept, tasks and structure. The European Hydrogen Bank is a financing instrument run internally by Commission services. It is not designed to be a physical institution. The main objective of the facility is to unlock private investments in hydrogen value chains, both domestically and in third countries, by connecting renewable energy supply to EU demand and addressing the initial investment challenges. It will establish an initial market for renewable hydrogen, offering new growth opportunities and jobs. On 23 November 2023, a pilot auction (competitive bidding) was launched under the Innovation Fund, supporting the production of renewable hydrogen for European consumers. The terms and conditions for the pilot auction were published by the Commission on 30 August, allowing potential bidders to start preparing.
Furthermore, green hydrogen partnerships will facilitate the promotion of the import of renewable hydrogen from third countries and contribute to incentivising decarbonisation. Together, the European Hydrogen Bank and the green hydrogen partnerships aim at delivering a framework to ensure that partnerships established by the EU countries and the industry provide a level-playing field between EU production and third-country imports.
The Hydrogen Energy Network is an informal group of representatives from the energy ministries in EU countries that aims to help national energy authorities build on the opportunities offered by hydrogen as an energy carrier. It acts as an informal platform to share information on good practices, experience and the latest developments in hydrogen, and to work jointly on specific issues.
The Clean Hydrogen Partnership (2021-2027) is a joint public-private partnership supported by the Commission, through Horizon Europe. It builds upon the success of its predecessor, the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking and includes also the Hydrogen Valleys Platform, an EU led-initiative under Mission Innovation. On 1 March 2023, the Commission and key stakeholders signed a joint declaration on renewable hydrogen research and innovation, committing to step up and accelerate joint action in research, development, demonstration and deployment of Hydrogen Valleys.
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