The Future of Clean Hydrogen in the United States: Views from Industry, Market Innovators, and Investors

The Future of Clean Hydrogen in the United States: View from Industry, Market Innovators, and Investors is the first report in the series From Kilograms to Gigatons: Pathways for Hydrogen Market Formation in the United States that aims to develop a comprehensive analysis of policy opportunities for further hydrogen development in the United States. Based on over seventy interviews with leaders across the hydrogen value chain, this report details the current state of the hydrogen market in the United States.…

Ohio River Valley Hydrogen and CCS Hub Market Formation

On July 12th, 2021, the Labor Energy Partnership held a virtual workshop on hydrogen and carbon capture and storage (CCS) in the Ohio River Valley. The workshop, one in a series on decarbonizing the economy, convened leaders from government, labor, and industry for a robust discussion on the value of hydrogen and CCS market formation to the local economy and global energy transition and what is needed from government, labor, and industry to facilitate its development.…

Clean Hydrogen: A Versatile Tool for Decarbonization

As Congress considers policy support for hydrogen technologies, it is essential to understand the distinction between how we use hydrogen today and the role of hydrogen in a decarbonized US economy. Hydrogen currently plays a crucial function in our economy, primarily as an industrial feedstock. Nearly all of today’s supply is from steam methane reformation, an emissions-intensive form of hydrogen production made from natural gas. Retrofitting these facilities with carbon capture is important for near-term carbon emissions reductions. Carbon capture is a cost-effective and commercial technology that can abate nearly 40 million metric tons (MMt) of CO₂ emissions per …

Five Reasons to Be Concerned About Green Hydrogen

Green hydrogen has generated a lot of interest as a zero-carbon or low-carbon fuel. Its ability to be injected into existing natural gas infrastructure has led to several large oil and gas companies promoting its use to preserve their existing pipeline assets while lowering emissions. However, despite all the hype surrounding green hydrogen, Clean Energy Group has found that there are several reasons to be concerned about its use, particularly in power plants. While hydrogen might have a valid role to play in deep decarbonization of the heavy transport or industrial sectors, runaway plans to use it extensively in the …

Reclaiming Hydrogen for a Renewable Future: Distinguishing Fossil Fuel Industry Spin from Zero-Emission Solutions

The fossil fuel industry has helped generate enormous interest around hydrogen, making it difficult for policymakers to tell how much they can rely on hydrogen to meet climate goals. Too often, companies that profit from our reliance on fossil fuels invoke the vague promise of “clean,” “renewable,” or “green” hydrogen to derail action today. To avoid this trap, policymakers must scrutinize claims about hydrogen and think critically about where it can be a meaningful part of real climate solutions. To reclaim hydrogen for a renewable future, policymakers should explore opportunities to produce hydrogen from renewable electricity and use it to …

Green Hydrogen in a Circular Carbon Economy: Opportunities and Limits

As global warming mitigation and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions reduction become increasingly urgent to counter climate change, many nations have announced net-zero emission targets as a commitment to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Low-carbon hydrogen has received renewed attention under these decarbonization frameworks as a potential low-carbon fuel and feedstock, especially for hard-to-abate sectors such as heavy-duty transportation (trucks, shipping) and heavy industries (e.g., steel, chemicals). Green hydrogen in particular, defined as hydrogen produced from water electrolysis with zero-carbon electricity, could have significant potential in helping countries transition their economies to meet climate goals. Today, green hydrogen production faces …

Hydrogen Deployment at Scale: The Infrastructure Challenge

Clean hydrogen is experiencing unprecedented momentum as confidence in its ability to accelerate decarbonization efforts across multiple sectors is rising. New projects are announced almost every week. For example, an international developer, Intercontinental Energy, plans to build a plant in Oman that will produce almost 2 million tons of clean hydrogen and 10 million tons of clean ammonia.¹ Dozens of other large-scale projects and several hundred smaller ones are already in the planning stage. Similarly, on the demand side, hydrogen is gaining support from customers. Prominent off-takers such as oil majors like Shell and bp, steelmakers like ThyssenKrupp, and …

How Green is Blue Hydrogen?

Hydrogen is often viewed as an important energy carrier in a future decarbonized world. Currently, most hydrogen is produced by steam reforming of methane in natural gas (“gray hydrogen”), with high carbon dioxide emissions. Increasingly, many propose using carbon capture and storage to reduce these emissions, producing so-called “blue hydrogen,” frequently promoted as low emissions. We undertake the first effort in a peer-reviewed paper to examine the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions of blue hydrogen accounting for emissions of both carbon dioxide and unburned fugitive methane. Far from being low carbon, greenhouse gas emissions from the production of blue …

The Role of Clean Hydrogen for a Sustainable Mobility

Hydrogen and energy have a long-shared history. Although there have been false starts in the past, this time around, hydrogen is capturing unprecedented political and business momentum as a versatile and sustainable energy carrier that could be the missing piece in the carbon-free energy puzzle. Clean hydrogen produced from zero-carbon energy sources, such as renewable (green hydrogen) and nuclear power (pink hydrogen),¹ appears ever more likely to play a prominent role in the global transition to a low-carbon economy.²

As governments and corporations become increasingly committed to addressing climate change and reducing emissions, they are placing greater emphasis …

The Advanced Carbon Economy: A Sustainable Hydrogen Pathway

Lowering the carbon footprint of energy use is at the core of discussions on energy transitions and hydrogen has become a part of that dialogue. Decarbonization efforts and commitments from governments and industries are rising due to global climate and sustainability targets, and many are exploring and adapting innovative technologies and business models with the goal of zero-carbon or low-carbon energy and carbon utilization strategies. As the challenges and complexities of the energy transition evolve, industry is also transitioning to a new age of human development, one where the environmental and societal consequences must now be balanced with economic ambitions.…