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COMMENT
The hydrogen revolution is real and it will change the world
The Paris Agreement forced countries to get creative with their energy sources and methods
AMBROSE EVANS-PRITCHARD
11 March 2021 • 6:00am
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Hydrogen is the clean energy of the future, and always will be, or so runs the old joke. After three false starts in 50 years, one slips easily into cynicism about the EU’s pietistic green targets and voguish talk of the post-fossil hydrogen economy.
But cynics are not always right. The message from hard-headed industrialists at this year’s “energy Davos” surprised even those who keep up with this fast-moving technology. The switch to hydrogen is a fact on the ground; it is accelerating fast; it is heading for much lower costs than sceptics suppose; and future scale is vast.
Along the way, the oil “supermajors” are reinventing themselves for net-zero life, finding a green raison d’être by deploying their engineering and offshore know-how to lock carbon underground and unlock hydrogen above ground. They are no longer the perennial climate villains depicted by the green Taliban. Subtler moral judgment is required.
Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states are also reinventing themselves, aiming to become mass global exporters of zero-carbon fuels for ships, aircraft, or Asian power plants. Abu Dhabi is already developing desert solar power for $1.35 per megawatt hour, tantamount to free energy. This will be converted into hydrogen by Siemens through electrolysis to make clean synthetic jet fuel. Carbon-free air travel is in sight.
Seifi Ghasemi heads the US conglomerate Air Products, the world’s biggest commercial producer of hydrogen. He manufactures mostly dirty “grey hydrogen” from fossils for refineries, industrial uses, or to make ammonia for fertilizers.
Ghasemi is hardly a green romantic. Aged 76, he knows his hydrogen and has seen it all. His conclusion is that this cycle is different from past episodes. Net-zero targets and the Sino-Western hydrogen race have changed the political landscape, and with it the cost calculus. So have rising carbon prices. EU emissions contracts have doubled since October to nearly €42 a tonne. This really bites.
Air Products is going for broke on clean hydrogen, not just the “blue” variant made from natural gas with carbon capture, but also pure “green” hydrogen from renewables. “We are putting in $10bn of our own money,” he told the IHS CeraWeek forum.
First in line is a colossal venture at Saudi Arabia’s NEOM project harnessing wind and solar from the Gulf of Aqaba to generate four gigawatts of power. This will be turned into green ammonia, a form of liquid hydrogen that can be shipped in tankers. Saudi Arabia has already dispatched its first trial load of ammonia to Japan for use in a power plant.
First ever excavator powered by hydrogen, unveiled by JCB in July 2020
“The way we see the future, in 20 to 40 years from now, all the energ
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