For a colourless gas, hydrogen gets described in very colourful terms. A new GTM series helps explain the weird and wonderful world of clean energy.
Interest in green hydrogen is skyrocketing among major oil and gas firms. Europe is planning to make hydrogen a big part of its trillion-dollar Green Deal package, with an EU-wide green hydrogen strategy expected to be published in July.
“We cannot electrify everything,” said WindEurope CEO Giles Dickson. “Some industrial processes and heavy transport will have to run on gas. And renewable hydrogen is the best gas. It is completely clean. It will be affordable with renewables being so cheap now.”
According to the nomenclature used by market research firm Wood Mackenzie, most of the gas that is already widely used as an industrial chemical is either brown, if it’s made through the gasification of coal or lignite; or grey, if it is made through steam methane reformation, which typically uses natural gas as the feedstock. Neither of these processes is exactly carbon-friendly.
A purportedly cleaner option is known as blue hydrogen, where the gas is produced by steam methane reformation but the emissions are curtailed using carbon capture and storage. This process could roughly halve the amount of carbon produced, but it’s still far from emissions-free.
Green hydrogen, in contrast, could almost eliminate emissions by using renewable energy — increasingly abundant and often generated at less-than-ideal times — to power the electrolysis of water.
