The relationship between hydrogen and energy dates back centuries with the first demonstrations of water electrolysis and fuel cells in the 1800s.
Today, its use in industry has grown significantly, justifying its nickname of “fuel of the future”. Indeed, the demand for hydrogen has been growing steadily over the last decades and now reaches more than 75 million tonnes per year in its pure form (MtH2/Yr).
However, it is important to note that hydrogen is a derivative of fossil fuel and therefore its production is responsible for carbon dioxide emissions of up to 830 MtCO2/yr.
Nowadays, the main source of demand for hydrogen remains oil refining with an estimated demand of 39 MtH2/Yr to extract impurities and upgrade the heavy fractions. The chemical sector is another major consumer of hydrogen with the production of ammonia and methanol.
In addition to these sectors, steel manufacturing through the production of direct reduction iron-based steel is another important source of hydrogen demand. Finally, due to its potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, hydrogen is now used in the road transport, power generation, domestic heat and industrial high-temperature heat sectors.
Many voices are now advocating for hydrogen including renewable electricity suppliers, automakers, oil and gas companies, industrial gas producers, large engineering firms, electricity and gas utilities and governments of the world’s largest economies.
In 2017, the Hydrogen Council was formed with over 50 members to enable the various hydrogen stakeholders to work together to ensure that the market develops properly.
In mid-2019, the total number of targets, mandates and policy incentives in place globally to directly support hydrogen was around 50 with a large share attributed to the transport sector.
Hydrogen has never attracted so much international and cross-sectoral interest, even in the face of impressive recent advances in other low-carbon energy technologies such as batteries and renewables.
As the cost of technologies falls and ambitions to tackle climate change and air pollution rise, understanding hydrogen is increasingly important.
The potential role of hydrogen as a flexible complement to electricity is better understood. Although the current level of investment remains very modest compared to the scale of the energy system and the challenges of deployment are significant, the current level of attention has opened up a real window of opportunity for policy and private sector action.