A couple of years ago I wrote a series of articles about hydrogen. There was a lot of attention on it at the time, and several pilot studies were underway. Two years later a degree of clarity is emerging around the role that hydrogen might play in reducing emissions, but it depends on three important questions:
- Does it work?
- Is it affordable?
- Is it green?
The answer to the first question is a qualified yes. There are hydrogen powered buses on the streets. There are trains, cars, ships, heavy machinery. It’s been proven in industry, including steel and glass. Soviet engineers proved it in aviation in the 80s. The Hydeploy pilot showed that it can be added successfully into the gas mix.
The second question is maybe, depending on the industry. In some industries it’s not going to be competitive. In others it’s going to be indispensable and so people will find ways to pay for it – like aviation, for example.
If climate change is our priority, then the last one of those is the deal-breaker. And the news isn’t good. Friends of the Earth released a positioning paper recently to explain why they don’t support hydrogen as a clean energy technology. They point out that just 0.04% of the world’s hydrogen is being made from renewable energy. The vast majority of it is being made from gas, by gas companies who see hydrogen as a way of prolonging their assets. The longer we keep piping gas into our homes and setting fire to it, the longer they can make money from that. But hydrogen under those circumstances is fossil fuels in disguise.
Here’s the summary graphic from Friends of the Earth, showing the various ways to make hydrogen and whether or not they are low carbon.
“Hydrogen props up the fossil fuel industry,” say Friends of the Earth, and there really is no place for anything other than green hydrogen. They’re against that too mind you, because it needs so much renewable energy and water. I think that’s slightly premature. They are right that it opens the door to extractive business models where hydrogen is created in poorer countries for export. But to me the answer is to create transparent and fair trade networks for hydrogen, not to refuse it altogether.
In short, there’s no simple answer to the question of whether or not hydrogen is better for the climate. Generally speaking, it isn’t at the moment. As the cost of electrolysers falls, that looks likely to become a strong maybe – but only if the world’s governments turn down the fossil fuel industry and insist on green hydrogen as the only legitimate kind. With a petro-state hosting the climate talks this year, that’s not looking very likely.
To me, the important thing is to keep distinguishing between the good and the bad forms of hydrogen, just as we have to be more nuanced about good and bad biofuels. We must beware of the fossil fuel lobby and their interests in hydrogen, but coming out too early against green hydrogen risks throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
The Earthbound Report 
Hello Jeremy,
I am a big fan of your newsletter and read them with great interest. Your articles are fair, fact driven and is well argued. I felt the article below on hydrogen was a little incomplete because it didn’t mention any NOx emissions when combusting hydrogen and hydrogen leakage during transmission. I am currently working in industrial decarbonisation projects and I can see the enthusiasm in using hydrogen, especially for high heat users. There seems to be a halo around hydrogen a lot of the time – especially for green hydrogen, but burning hydrogen fuel releases a lot more NOx than conventional natural gas and the very worrying thing is that 1 kg of NOx emission equal to 298 kg of CO2e. We need to look at total emissions as a whole and not just CO2 when talking about a low carbon future.
Secondly, hydrogen leakage during transmission is also a big issue and needs to be tackled properly before a wider implementation.
I hope the above was interesting to you.
Many thanks, Ratna
Hi Ratna, thanks for taking the time to mention this. You’re right, this is something I’ve forgotten to cover – mainly because I don’t really know the extent of the problem. I wonder if NOx gets overlooked in part because it isn’t technically from the hydrogen itself, but from the air as it’s burned. So it’s easy for hydrogen advocates to say it’s not their problem. Definitely a factor that needs more research and proper examination.
Does it work? No. The laws of thermodynamics mean when you electrolyse water to hydrogen you loose 30% of the energy you use. If you do this in a fuel cell then you’ve lost 30% twice as you convert it ‘back’ to electricity. This means a 50% loss of useful energy and none of the above take into account the other losses in system such as resistance, diffusion effects etc. See
The Future of theHydrogen Economy:Bright or Bleak? by Bossel et al.
They calculate that for every one unit of energy you invest in hydrogen you get 0.6 back, which is pretty useless. I can see a very limited role for it in the equivalent of a gas fired plant to handle peak electricity demand or making steel – but the production would have to be on site. Transfering it any disatnce as Bossel makes plain means the EROEI is even lower.
Another problem is where is all the platinum coming from.
Good point about NOX made too. The future is electric.