How does Hydrogen help nations break free from fossil fuels?

How does Hydrogen help nations break free from fossil fuels?

Nations must break free from fossil fuels to help reduce fuel poverty for residents, contribute to combating climate change and to help countries reach impending emission reduction targets. Geopolitical risks can bottleneck fuel entering countries that don’t generate their own power and cause global fossil fuel supply disruptions. Therefore, it's crucial that all nations are able to produce their own energy to escape the long-term economic and environmental costs of fossil dependence. Green hydrogen is being touted as a potential solution to this - we explore more.  

How can Hydrogen replace fossil fuels across sectors? 

Green hydrogen can replace fossil fuels in various sectors, reducing carbon emissions across industries.  

Industry: Replacing coal and natural gas in steel and chemical industries  

Heavy industry often requires a lot of fuel over a long period. Green hydrogen could eventually be a suitable solution to this as it has the ability to fuel manufacturing facilities for longer than current renewable energy alternatives, such as wind. 

Transport: Powering heavy-duty vehicles, shipping, and aviation 

Due to how green hydrogen can be burned in modified combustion engines, the fuel is seen as a solution for transport requiring fuelling over a long distance, such as long-haul shipping. 

The aviation industry is also turning its attention to green hydrogen, which potentially has the required energy density to make low-carbon flying possible.  

Electricity: Hydrogen as a backup for renewables and peak demand 

Hydrogen fuel cells can convert hydrogen into energy, making them a good backup for renewable plants during downtime periods. Energy storage such as batteries is a vital tool in the energy transition from fossil fuels, which are dispatchable and immediately available, to non-dispatchable renewable sources, which are more volatile.  

Green Hydrogen: the cleanest path forward 

Green hydrogen represents a real opportunity to ease reliance on fossil fuels and facilitate the green energy transition. We examine three key ways its production will harness clean energy.    

1. Electrolysis using renewable energy 

Green hydrogen can be produced via electrolysis by harnessing existing renewables. Solar power, for example, can split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, making the entire process sustainable.  

2. Zero carbon emissions in production and use 

Green hydrogen is what’s known as a zero-emission fuel: it doesn’t produce carbon emissions, just vapour and heat. The only true output from green hydrogen, aside from heat and water, is energy, which makes it a green and eco-friendly source of energy,  

Comparison with blue and grey hydrogen 

Green hydrogen is one of the most well-known, but also expensive forms of hydrogen. Other forms of hydrogen include blue hydrogen, which uses natural gas to produce hydrogen, while grey hydrogen utilised fossil fuels for production. Green hydrogen by comparison can harness renewable power to generate hydrogen, making it a greener option.  

National Hydrogen strategies and global leaders 

Hydrogen rollout isn’t just a power-producer concern, it’s a source that needs backing on a governmental, public and private level for it to be a success.  

Examples from the EU & Japan 

The EU has focused on hydrogen via its EEG policy, which aims to improve the quality and number of renewable energy options connecting to the grid. It features a competition-based auction scheme to help finance the technology, stabilising the sector on the energy market. In Japan, Eneos, Idemitsu Kosan, and Hokkaido Electric Power Company plan to develop a green hydrogen project with up to 100MW of capacity by 2030. Producing 10,000 tonnes of H2 a year, it will be the largest in Japan. 

Public-private partnerships driving innovation 

It's not just power producers that green hydrogen developments concern. Governmental support is available via policy direction and regulations. But Public-Private Partnerships offer something else - finance, innovation and technical knowhow. These skills and investment can help to move the industry forwards more quickly.   

Hydrogen and energy security 

Countries that don’t produce enough energy import energy from other countries. When frictions occur, this can affect the supply of their energy. This is why it's important to enhance these countries' resilience against market volatility and geopolitical tension. 

Reducing reliance on imported fossil fuels is important because geopolitical events can disrupt energy supply. The war in Ukraine created friction with the countries that Russia supplied that did not support its political actions. This disrupted power supplies and causes price spikes for those countries that Russia supplied. 

Creating domestic green hydrogen supply chains are crucial to the widespread rollout of green hydrogen. This process involves creating hydrogen networks through designing and implementing infrastructure to produce, transport and use green hydrogen on a domestic scale.  

Barriers to adoption and how to overcome them 

Infrastructure limitations are a big barrier to green hydrogen adoption. This is because our current infrastructure was built for fossil fuels rather than hydrogen, with connectivity issues potentially occurring with connection to the grid. Hydrogen requires pipelines to be transported to its end destination - we currently have national pipelines to deliver this, but they aren’t able to withstand the extreme conditions hydrogen puts the pipelines through. Updating these existing pipelines could provide a successful solution to hydrogen distribution.  

High production costs and scalability challenges 

Green hydrogen is one of the most expensive types of hydrogen to produce. Electrolysis via renewable energy is still not as effective as fossil fuel alternatives, which makes the processes expensive to run. Further research into alternative, more efficient green hydrogen production could help decrease these costs.  

Scaling Hydrogen to power the future 

Scaling up green hydrogen as a solution depends on the successful creation of international green hydrogen projects. This hinges on good international cooperation and cross-border collaboration to streamline certification, definitions, standards, technology development and finance is key. 

Scaling green hydrogen requires investment, innovation, and collaboration—but it remains essential to a cleaner, more secure, fossil-free future.