"We really have to talk about the big buzzword in the world of energy…" "Hydrogen." "Hydrogen." "Think hydrogen." "The wonders of hydrogen." It's the magic fuel that can power our cars, trucks, trains, ships and planes. We can even make steel with it. And the best thing: "The only byproduct of consuming that fuel is water again and the energy that comes with it." "This all sounds great! Maybe just a little too great? Let's take a closer look and see what's behind the hype around hydrogen." But first off, if you're like me and have a BIT OF TROUBLE remembering what went down in chemistry class, let's start with the basics. Hydrogen sits at the very top of the periodic table. It's the most abundant element in the universe that can even be found in our sun and stars. It's a very clingy gas, though, so you'll usually find it bound up with other elements – for example with oxygen in water. If we want to get pure hydrogen, we have to split up these bonds. And a simple way to do this is called electrolysis. All you have to do is put some baking soda into water – this will help with conductivity. When you pass a current through this solution, bubbles form along the wires. This is water splitting up into hydrogen and oxygen. There should be twice as much hydrogen as oxygen released – because water, so H2O, is made up of two hydrogen but only one oxygen atom. "There are two ways to unlock energy from the hydrogen that's coming out here. Firstly, it's flammable, so you could just burn it. And secondly, you could use it to power what's called a fuel cell." These essentially work like a battery running on hydrogen and oxygen. They react to supply electricity that could, for example, power a car. The only by-products are heat and water. And all this is not really news. The fuel cell was invented back in the 1800s. Later, in the same century, a guy in Denmark called Poul la Cour was already using windmills to power electrolysis, that supplied hydrogen for his school's gas lamps. And in the 1960s, General Motors built a fuel cell powered van that ran on hydrogen. Today, almost all the hydrogen we produce is used to make other things like fertilizer or petroleum. But it's never made it big as a fuel. It's just always been easier and cheaper to directly burn fossil fuels instead. But that is changing. As the world is slowly waking up to the climate crisis, companies and entire countries are committing to not only reduce emissions, but to reach… "Net zero." "Net zero." "Zero emission." "Net zero." This is Meredith Annex. She's the lead hydrogen analyst at BloombergNEF, a market research firm. "With net zero, everyone has to do something. And that means that you need solutions for areas where electricity is going to struggle to provide the solution. And that's where we see the sweet spot for hydrogen." Take the steel industry. It uses lots of energy and is responsible for around eight percent of global CO2 emissions. It was long thought that only fossil fuels could power the chemical reactions needed to turn iron ore into steel. But hydrogen can get the job done as well – while also being clean-burning, so only leaving behind water. Swedish company SSAB said it produced the first fossil-free steel in 2021. Other steelmakers are working on similar technologies which they claim will be market-ready as soon as the middle of the decade. And then we can use hydrogen to clean up heavy transport. A study showed that pretty much all container ships going from China to the US could run on hydrogen fuel cells. They might only have to reduce cargo space
by some five percent or add a refuelling stop. While there are no hydrogen-powered ships
traversing the oceans yet, there are some promising pilot projects. The same goes for aviation. In 2020, the first commercial-size hydrogen-powered plane took off. And major aircraft manufacturer Airbus is working on three hydrogen models that it says might be ready to deploy as soon as 2035. Long-haul flights will probably be a challenge. But a new study estimates that even running short- and medium-haul flights on hydrogen could cut aviation emissions by up to a third. This very simple element can actually
solve a very complicated problem. It can help cut emissions in some of our most polluting sectors. So we're going to need a lot more of the stuff. "And this is where this whole thing gets a little bit tricky. Because not all hydrogen is created equal. In fact, there's a whole rainbow of different ways to make the stuff." The vast majority, almost 90 percent of all hydrogen that's produced today, is what's called gray hydrogen made from fossil fuels, mainly natural gas. Making the "fuel of the future" that's supposedly SO green, is actually a pretty dirty business. If we want to use hydrogen as a clean fuel, we first need to clean up its production. And there are two main ways to go about this, the first one being blue hydrogen. "When we're talking about blue hydrogen, we're referring to fossil fuels with carbon capture and storage." This means we still make hydrogen from natural gas in a process called steam methane reforming. That does produce CO2. But instead of letting these emissions escape into the atmosphere, producers claim they can catch them and then store them underground or turn them into materials we can use for other purposes. "Sound pretty great, right? And it would be... if it worked. "Blue hydrogen actually has a very, very large greenhouse gas footprint." This is Robert Howarth who co-authored a study that made quite a splash in the energy world. "Turns out that the greenhouse gas footprint of the blue hydrogen is worse than if you simply burned the natural gas directly for fuel instead. Nothing, nothing low emissions about it at all." The oil and gas industry often promises to be able to remove around 90 percent of emissions when making blue hydrogen. But the reality looks different. Human rights NGO Global Witness
calculated that this blue hydrogen facility in Canada run by Shell only manages to catch around half of the emissions it creates. And this gets even worse when you take into account leaks along the supply chain, while
the gas is processed and transported. These release methane into the atmosphere, a greenhouse gas that in the short term is more than 80 times more powerful in warming the planet than CO2. But despite this, blue hydrogen made its way into the official hydrogen strategies of major economies, like the UK, the US, Japan and the European Union. Reports show that there were some pretty serious lobbying efforts behind that. "It's a direct strategy of the oil and gas industry, quite frankly. The science doesn't support it. It's pure marketing. The goal, let's be frank, is to keep selling fossil fuels to the world while pretending it's going to get better." We wanted to hear what the oil and gas industry had to say about this. So we put these criticisms to the Hydrogen Council, an industry group, which counts fossil fuel giants like BP, Shell and Saudi Aramco among its steering members. Unfortunately, they said they didn't find the time to respond. "I think blue hydrogen is a mistake that will cost us a lot in the future." This is Chris Jackson, who founded Protium, a UK company that focuses on green hydrogen. "But I don't believe that the way we resolve that is by arguing about it. I think it's about building better projects and better technologies, and that's what we want to do with green hydrogen." To make green hydrogen, you simply use renewable energy from sources like wind or solar to
power an electrolysis. On a much, much larger scale than this, of course. This produces no emissions, so you end up with truly clean hydrogen. "Today, only a tiny fraction of hydrogen is green and it's actually still pretty expensive compared to the other forms. But that's set to change – for two reasons. One: "Electrolyzers are getting cheaper because we're moving to larger projects with more upscaled manufacturing. So, that's the biggest thing." And two: prices for renewables have fallen consistently – and continue to do so. BloombergNEF predicts that green hydrogen will be cheaper than blue hydrogen by around 2030 and cheaper than grey hydrogen by 2050. "So, is that it? Problem solved? We'll just make tons and tons of green hydrogen and run our entire economies on it. Well, unfortunately it's not that simple." One big challenge that remains is hydrogen's relatively low energy density. You need about three times more space to store the same amount of punch compared to natural gas. So, we’ll likely have to build a lot of new storage facilities, depending on how much hydrogen we'll actually need. And how much that's going to be is a tricky question. "Renewable electricity is still a scarce, precious resource and we should use it as effectively and as efficiently as we can, and hydrogen may not be the best way to do that." "Hydrogen can be used for everything, but that doesn't mean it should. So the future is finding the balance between what we use [for] battery and what we use for hydrogen." Passenger cars are a great example for this. They can run on hydrogen fuel cells. But turning electricity into hydrogen, transporting it to refuelling stations, pumping it into a fuel cell to then convert it back to electricity is just not very efficient. About 60% of the energy you put in gets lost along the way. Alternatively, you could just use the same energy to directly charge a lithium-ion-battery that powers an electric motor. Here, only 20% of the energy gets lost. With trucks, it's a slightly different story. It was long believed that batteries weren't going to work here. To move heavy trucks, you'd need loads of them which take up valuable cargo space. And long charging times aren't really great for business either. But it seems this technology race isn't over yet. Batteries are becoming more powerful
and charging times are going down. So much so that this recent study points towards battery-electric trucks dominating the market in the future. Hydrogen is by no means the silver bullet that will help with everything. But it does make sense in some cases. So where do we go from here? "We're really at the point at which now a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of momentum has been built around hydrogen. And in 2022 and through to 2026 are really the years where we now need to demonstrate that momentum is converting into real assets and real production of green hydrogen." And in that regard, green hydrogen has long had a chicken-and-egg problem. How do you grow supply when demand isn't growing? And vice versa. But as governments around the world start investing, this might start to change. It's predicted that hydrogen could supply up to 20 percent of our energy needs by 2050 – up from pretty much zero today. But that's just the most optimistic scenario. "All of that needs to play out this decade. And if we don't see that this decade, then we're really going to be struggling to hit climate goals overall." So now is the time for hydrogen to prove that it can really get as big as its hype. "Now what do you think? Is hydrogen the fuel of the future – or should we focus on other alternatives instead? Let us know in the comments and hit subscribe for more videos on the climate and the environment. We have a new one for you every Friday."
They mention Swedish company SSAB that produce hydrogen entirely from wind power but they also claim hydrogen can't be produced without power made from fossil fuels.
Video makes some great points but miss the goal by alot imo.