Sustainable Mobility: Renewable Hydrogen in the Transport Sector

The transportation sector is the second-largest source of CO₂ emissions, after electricity and heat generation, accounting for about 25 percent of global emissions.¹ However, it is also one of the most challenging to decarbonize due to its distributed nature and the advantages of fossil fuels in terms of high energy densities, ease of transportation, and storage. Moreover, the degree of difficulty in decarbonizing varies significantly across the sector, making the challenge even more daunting.

So far, emissions reduction strategies have focused on improving vehicle and system-wide efficiencies, mode switching, and electrification. The latter is proving relatively easy for …

Decarbonizing end-use sectors: Practical insights on green hydrogen

The IRENA Coalition for Action brings together leading renewable energy players from around the world with the common goal of advancing the uptake of renewable energy. The Coalition facilitates global dialogue between public and private sectors to develop actions that increase the share of renewables in the global energy mix and accelerate energy transitions.

Green hydrogen – hydrogen produced from renewable energy – can provide the critical link between renewable electricity generation and hard-to-abate sectors such as industry and heavy transport. Featuring several case studies on pioneering green hydrogen projects and first-hand interviews, this white paper by the Coalition provides …

Clean Energy Innovation Roundtable Series – Session V: Hydrogen Renaissance?

On May 20, the Aspen Institute Energy & Environment Program virtually convened the fifth in its 2021 series of Clean Energy Innovation Roundtables. This convening brought together experts to discuss the categories of decarbonized hydrogen, uses for it, and the opportunities for and barriers to its deployment. This summary captures some of the key topics of discussion.…

Green Hydrogen Supply: A Guide to Policy Making

Green hydrogen is a viable solution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and transitioning away from fossil fuels for “hard-to-abate” sectors. The supply chain for hydrogen is not yet fully developed. Several barriers, such as the high cost of green hydrogen compared to non-renewable alternatives and the lack of dedicated infrastructure, are still impeding hydrogen’s full contribution to the energy transition.

This report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) aims to provide a basis for understanding these challenges and the solutions available. It highlights the range of policy options available, complemented by country examples.

Policies presented in this report include …

The Green Hydrogen Revolution: Hydropower’s Transformative Role

Interest in hydrogen has risen markedly over the last two years. Governments have announced national roadmaps and strategies to scale-up hydrogen, with increasing recognition of its potential to replace fossil fuels in ‘hard-to-abate’ areas of the economy, such as in heavy industry and transport. Green hydrogen (H2), produced using decarbonized electricity and water through a process called electrolysis, is a particularly attractive option and set to grow significantly in the transition to a net-zero future.
As this paper will outline, ambitious growth in green H2 will significantly increase global demand for clean electricity. Coupling green H2 with renewable power offers …

The Geopolitics of Renewable Hydrogen

The transition to a low-carbon energy system will likely shake up the geopolitical status quo that has governed global energy systems for over a century. Policymakers need to rethink the role their country could play in a new energy world.

Renewables are widely perceived as an opportunity to shatter the hegemony of fossil fuel-rich states and democratize the energy landscape. Virtually all countries have access to some renewable energy resources (especially solar and wind power) and could thus substitute foreign supply with local resources. Our research shows, however, that the role countries are likely to assume in decarbonized energy systems …

Making the Hydrogen Economy Possible: Accelerating Clean Hydrogen in an Electrified Economy

In its new report Making the Hydrogen Economy Possible: Accelerating clean hydrogen in an electrified economy, the ETC outlines the role of clean hydrogen in achieving a highly electrified net-zero economy. The report sets out how a combination of private-sector collaboration and policy support can drive the initial ramp up of clean hydrogen production and use to reach 50 million tonnes by 2030.

Clean hydrogen will play a complementary role to decarbonize sectors where direct electrification is likely to be technologically very challenging or prohibitively expensive, such as in steel production and long-distance shipping. The report highlights how critical rapid …

Blue Hydrogen

The urgency of reaching net-zero emissions requires a rapid acceleration in the deployment of all emissions reducing technologies. Near-zero emissions hydrogen (clean hydrogen) has the potential to make a significant contribution to emissions reduction in the power generation, transportation, and industrial sectors.

As part of the Circular Carbon Economy: Keystone to Global Sustainability series with the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University SIPA, this report explores the potential contribution of blue hydrogen to climate mitigation.

The report looks at:

Cost drivers for renewable hydrogen and hydrogen produced with fossil fuels and CCS; Resource requirements and cost reduction opportunities

Pipeline Transportation of Hydrogen: Regulation, Research, and Policy

Some in Congress have proposed hydrogen as an environmentally superior alternative to conventional fossil fuels for vehicles and power generation, among other applications. Delivering hydrogen to scattered facilities—such as power plants, industrial sites, and fuel distribution hubs—would require an expansive hydrogen pipeline network. Accordingly, the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis 2020 majority staff report recommended that Congress draft legislation to facilitate the development of hydrogen infrastructure, and that federal agencies create an associated plan and change their regulatory framework to support it. The House Appropriations Committee report on the Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill, 2021 (H.Rept. 116-449) …

Role of Hydrogen in a Low-Carbon Electric Power System: A Case Study

The European Union set a 2050 decarbonization target in the Paris Agreement to reduce carbon emissions by 90–95% relative to 1990 emission levels. The path toward achieving those deep decarbonization targets can take various shapes but will surely include a portfolio of economy-wide low-carbon energy technologies/options. The growth of the intermittent renewable power sources in the grid mix has helped reduce the carbon footprint of the electric power sector. Under the need for decarbonizing the electric power sector, we simulated a low-carbon power system. We investigated the role of hydrogen for future electric power systems under current cost projections. The …