Governments are trying to spur clean-hydrogen capacity the same way they did for renewable energy
The vital nature of this comes from one of the subsequent uses of the gas. As well as being used to process oil in refineries and to produce methanol for use in plastics, hydrogen is also, crucially, used for the production of almost all the world’s industrial ammonia. Ammonia is the main ingredient in the artificial fertilisers which account for a significant part of the world’s crop yields. Without it, agricultural productivity would plummet and hundreds of millions would face starvation.
The Hydrogen Council, an industry consortium, reckons some 350 big projects are under way globally to develop clean-hydrogen production, hydrogen-distribution facilities and industrial plants which will use hydrogen for processes which now use fossil fuels . They will have electricity demands in the tens and hundreds of gigawatts, on a par with those of large countries, and are slated to receive $500bn of public and private investment between now and 2030.
At present, grey hydrogen costs about $1 a kilogram—the cost depends largely on the natural-gas price. Add colour, and you add a premium. No one is yet making blue hydrogen at scale, but when they start doing so the costs will probably be double those for the grey. Green hydrogen, meanwhile, costs over $5/kg in the West. In China, which typically uses alkaline electrolysers, cheaper but less capable than those preferred in the West, prices can be lower.
Prices will fall as a result of growing experience, just as they have in the solar sector. Today the world has about three gigawatts of electrolyser capacity—a gigawatt being the power output of a nuclear plant or a very large solar farm. McKinsey, a consultancy, expects that to grow to over 100of capacity by 2030. Bernd Heid, one of the company’s experts in the field, reckons this scaling up could in itself cut the cost per gigawatt of capacity by 65-75%.
Hydrogen is not the only way to balance the times and places where electricity is in surplus with those where it is in high demand; large interconnected grids help a lot, as does battery storage and smart-grid technology that reduces loads when necessary. But for long-term storage that can deal with differences from season to season and even year to year, hydrogen looks better than any of its competitors.
Airbus, a European aeroplane-maker, is giving hydrogen its full-throated support. In September, it confirmed a plan to power planes using hydrogen by 2035. Guillaume Faury, the company’s boss, extolled its virtues: “Hydrogen has an energy density three times that of kerosene…[it] is made for aviation.”
An intriguing borderline case is afforded by domestic heating. On an efficiency basis, electrically powered heat pumps beat domestic boilers fired by hydrogen quite handily. But retrofitting urban housing already equipped with boilers to burn hydrogen may be more attractive in some places than trying to fit heat pumps on to every building. Britain is likely to be a test case for this trade-off.
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