Green Hydrogen for Cross Sector Decarbonization

The demand for power has increased rapidly over the past decade due to economic growth, population expansion, and the industrialization of developing countries worldwide. Managing this demand can be difficult and often results in high levels of pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, creating serious health and environmental concerns and elevating indirect costs on society. Industries such as power generation, manufacturing and transportation often rely on non-renewable resources, thus stressing the energy grid and accelerating pollution within the atmosphere. To combat this issue, there has been a shift to employ renewable power generation technologies such as hydro, wind and solar.

Renewables are well suited to meet the diverse energy demands of various industries by providing sustainable, clean, and efficient energy, free of harmful pollution or greenhouse gas emissions. However, the intermittent nature of renewable energy resources also is a limiting factor in terms of how much can be put on the grid. Energy storage eases intermittent power disruptions by storing excess power generated by renewable resources at times of low demand and distributing the power during periods of heightened demand. This helps to balance the load on the energy grid and reduce reliance on non-renewable resources. Combining grid intelligence with renewable resources and an energy storage solution provides a dependable, environmentally friendly and resilient supply of energy. Blazing the path for clean, reliable, and cost-effective energy storage is electrolysis technology, utilizing water and excess renewable energy to produce hydrogen. This can be distributed or stored for future use, essentially time shifting the energy supply to best align with cyclic and sometimes unpredictable power demands.

The green hydrogen enabled by electrolysis can be used for a variety of high value purposes. Biomethanization for example, uses hydrogen to convert CO2 into methane and can improve this conversion from 55% to 99%, reducing GHG emissions while producing biomethane that can be fed directly into the natural gas grid. Green hydrogen can also be used for “e-fuels”, which are chemically identical to fossil-based fuels but are essentially carbon neutral or even carbon negative in their production cycle. For example, hydrogen can be used to produce e-methanol, e-gasoline, sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and other “drop-in” replacements for existing fossil-based fuels. These green molecules leverage existing infrastructure for storage and distribution, thereby supporting commercial viability. In addition, when supplied to industrial applications, green hydrogen can be used to support various processes, including ammonia production, refining and hydrogenation. Green hydrogen from electrolysis is widely recognized as the only solution that is viable for true cross-sector decarbonization. This presentation will focus on the high value use cases for green hydrogen, and what is needed for commercial activation of these markets.