For Many, Hydrogen Is the Fuel of the Future. New Research Raises Doubts
Industry has been promoting hydrogen as a reliable, next-generation fuel to power cars, heat homes and generate electricity. It may, in fact, be worse for the climate than previously thought.
Fueling a Toyota hydrogen vehicle in Fountain Valley, Calif.
It is seen by many as the clean energy of the future. Billions of dollars from the bipartisan infrastructure bill have been teed up to fund it.
But a new peer-reviewed study on the climate effects of hydrogen, the most abundant substance in the universe, casts doubt on its role in tackling the greenhouse gas emissions that are the driver of catastrophic global warming.
The main stumbling block: Most hydrogen used today is extracted from natural gas in a process that requires a lot of energy and emits vast amounts of carbon dioxide. Producing natural gas also releases methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas.
And while the natural gas industry has proposed capturing that carbon dioxide — creating what it promotes as emissions-free, “blue” hydrogen — even that fuel still emits more across its entire supply chain than simply burning natural gas, according to the paper, published Thursday in the Energy Science & Engineering journal by researchers from Cornell and Stanford Universities.
“To call it a zero-emissions fuel is totally wrong,” said Robert W. Howarth, a biogeochemist and ecosystem scientist at Cornell and the study’s lead author. “What we found is that it’s not even a low-emissions fuel, either.”
To arrive at their conclusion, Dr. Howarth and Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford and director of its Atmosphere/Energy program, examined the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of blue hydrogen. They accounted for both carbon dioxide emissions and the methane that leaks from wells and other equipment during natural gas production.
The researchers assumed that 3.5 percent of the gas drilled from the ground leaks into the atmosphere, an assumption that draws on mounting research that has found that drilling for natural gas emits far more methane than previously known.
They also took into account the natural gas required to power the carbon capture technology. In all, they found that the greenhouse gas footprint of blue hydrogen was more than 20 percent greater than burning natural gas or coal for heat. (Running the analysis at a far lower gas leak rate of 1.54 percent only reduced emissions slightly, and emissions from blue hydrogen still remained higher than from simply burning natural gas.)
Such findings could alter the calculus for hydrogen. Over the past few years, the natural gas industry has begun heavily promoting hydrogen as a reliable, next-generation fuel to be used to power cars, heat homes and burn in power plants.
In the United States, Europe and elsewhere, the industry has also pointed to hydrogen as justification for continuing to build gas infrastructure like pipelines, saying that pipes that carry natural gas could in the future carry a cleaner blend of natural gas and hydrogen.
A Royal Dutch Shell hydrogen production plant in Wesseling, Germany.
While many experts agree that hydrogen could eventually play a role in energy storage or powering certain types of transportation — such as aircraft or long-haul trucks, where switching to battery-electric power may be challenging — there is an emerging consensus that a wider hydrogen economy that relies on natural gas could be damaging to the climate. (At current costs, it would also be very expensive.)
The latest study added to the evidence, said Drew Shindell, a professor of earth science at Duke University. Dr. Shindell was the lead author of a United Nations report published this year that found that slashing emissions of methane, the main component of natural gas, is far more vital in tackling global warming than previously thought. In a new report published this week, the U.N. warned that essentially all of the rise in global average temperatures since the 19th century has been driven by the burning of fossil fuels.
The hydrogen study showed that “the potential to keep using fossil fuels with something extra added on as a potential climate solution is neither fully accounting for emissions, nor making realistic assumptions” about future costs, he said in an email.
The Hydrogen Council, an industry group founded in 2017 that includes BP, Shell, and other big oil and gas companies, did not provide immediate comment. A McKinsey & Company report co-authored with industry estimated that the hydrogen economy could generate $140 billion in annual revenue by 2030 and support 700,000 jobs. The study also projected that hydrogen could meet 14 percent of total American energy demand by 2050. BP declined to comment.
In Washington, the latest bipartisan infrastructure package devotes $8 billion to creating regional hydrogen hubs, a provision originally introduced as part of a separate bill by Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, a major natural gas producing region. Among companies that lobbied for investment in hydrogen were NextEra Energy, which has proposed a solar-powered hydrogen pilot plant in Florida.
Some other Democrats, like Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, have pushed back against the idea, calling it an “empty promise.” Environmental groups have also criticized the spending. “It’s not a climate action,” said Jim Walsh, a senior energy policy analyst at Food & Water Watch, a Washington-based nonprofit group. “It’s this is a fossil fuel subsidy with Congress acting like they’re doing something on climate, while propping up the next chapter of the fossil fuel industry.”
Jack Brouwer, director of the National Fuel Cell Research Center at the University of California, Irvine, said that hydrogen would ultimately need to be made using renewable energy to produce what the industry calls green hydrogen, which uses renewable energy to split water into its constituent parts, hydrogen and oxygen. That, he said, would eliminate the fossil and the methane leaks.
Hydrogen made from fossil fuels could still act as a transition fuel but would ultimately be “a small contributor to the overall sustainable hydrogen economy,” he said. “First we use blue, then we make it all green,” he said.
Today, very little hydrogen is green, because the process involved — electrolyzing water to separate hydrogen atoms from oxygen — is hugely energy intensive. In most places, there simply isn’t enough renewable energy to produce vast amounts of green hydrogen. (Although if the world does start to produce excess renewable energy, converting it to hydrogen would be one way to store it.)
A natural gas flare in North Dakota.
For the foreseeable future, most hydrogen fuel will very likely be made from natural gas through an energy-intensive and polluting method called the steam reforming process, which uses steam, high heat and pressure to break down the methane into hydrogen and carbon monoxide.
Blue hydrogen uses the same process but applies carbon capture and storage technology, which involves capturing carbon dioxide before it is released into the atmosphere and then pumping it underground in an effort to lock it away. But that still doesn’t account for the natural gas that generates the hydrogen, powers the steam reforming process and runs the CO2 capture. “Those are substantial,” Dr. Howarth of Cornell said.
Amy Townsend-Small, an associate professor in environmental science at the University of Cincinnati and an expert on methane emissions, said more scientists were starting to examine some of the industry claims around hydrogen, in the same way they had scrutinized the climate effects of natural gas production. “I think this research is going drive the conversation forward,” she said.
Plans to produce and use hydrogen are moving ahead. National Grid, together with Stony Brook University and New York State, is studying integrating hydrogen into its existing gas infrastructure, though the project seeks to produce hydrogen using renewable energy.
Entergy believed hydrogen was “part of creating a long-term carbon-free future,” complementing renewables like wind or solar, which generate power only intermittently, said Jerry Nappi, a spokesman for the utility. “Hydrogen is an important technology that will allow utilities to adopt much greater levels of renewables,” he said.
National Grid referred to its net zero plan, which says hydrogen will play a major role in the next few decades and that producing hydrogen from renewable energy was the linchpin.
New York State was “exploring all technologies” including hydrogen in support of its climate goals, said Kate T. Muller, a spokeswoman for the state’s Energy Research and Development Authority. Still, its researchers would “review and consider the blue hydrogen paper,” she said.
The Potential of Hydrogen Energy
Hydrogen can support a clean, secure and affordable energy future thanks to its inherent versatility and growing global support.
Hydrogen offers ways to decarbonize a range of sectors and can produce, store, move and use energy in different ways. This is in contrast to fossil fuels, which are limited in their use and emit the bulk of today’s greenhouse gas emissions.
“Today, we use electricity to keep the lights on, gasoline or petrol in our cars and diesel fuel and natural gas often to heat. All of these applications in energy can be delivered by hydrogen and hydrogen is carbon-free. And that's why it's so critical for our climate goals to start to move to this carbon-free energy carrier called hydrogen,” according to Daryl Wilson, Executive Director at the Hydrogen Council.
Hydrogen not only contains almost three times the amount of energy by weight than gasoline1, but also only emits water when burned and is a completely carbon-free energy carrier. Additionally, it could enable renewables to provide an even greater contribution to the climate targets.2
The Paris Agreement, for example, is an international and legally binding treaty on climate change with the overarching goal to limit global warming to “well below 2, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels.”3 That’s an ambitious target, but one adopted by 196 Parties at Conference of the Parties (COP) 21 in Paris, on 12 December 2015.
“Hydrogen is absolutely critical to the realization of our decarbonization goals as set out in the Paris Agreement,” Wilson explained. “We need hydrogen from the standpoint of moving our energy around in the new energy economy.”
Hydrogen can be used widely, across multiple markets and energy solutions. Hydrogen fuel cells, for example, are one well-known solution. They generate electricity through an electrochemical reaction, in a similar way to traditional batteries. But hydrogen fuel cells do not need to be periodically recharged like batteries, continuing to produce electricity when a fuel source is provided.
Fuel cells are already used to power public transport vehicles, with ongoing research into the widespread use of hydrogen “across the whole spectrum of transport applications,” according to Wilson, including the marine and aviation sectors.
Hydrogen can also be transported as a gas by pipelines or in liquid form by ships. Once it reaches its destination, it can then be transformed into electricity.
Hydrogen can also address the grid-balancing issues associated with renewables like solar and wind, where availability is not always well matched to demand. “As we introduce more renewable energy into our energy systems, we have a problem in that they fluctuate in their output,” Wilson explained. “It's very critical that we have a means of storing that energy so that we can use it when and where we want to.”
The storage and stability capabilities provided by hydrogen make it an ideal solution for backup power systems and other off-grid and remote applications, providing data center resilience and emergency fuel supplies, for example. “We use diesel now. But hydrogen does have the ability to run through power outages for a prolonged period of time.”
These are just a handful of examples. The potential of hydrogen is limitless. The Hydrogen Insights Report from the Hydrogen Council recently profiled 228 global projects with a value of $345 billion USD.4 “Hydrogen will, in fact, be a sustainable, clean power source for many generations to come. We're in the early phase now, but we're seeing a very rapid scale-up,” Wilson added.
Historically, cost issues have hampered hydrogen energy adoption but this is a short term issue. As the hydrogen industry scales into larger applications, those charges will come down, in a similar manner to the cost reductions realized in the wind and solar sectors. “The cost of those vectors has come down dramatically. The same is going to happen with hydrogen,” Wilson said, “as more projects are reported, the costs are coming down and that historical impediment is gradually going away.”
Hydrogen isn’t a one-step solution to the climate crisis. It’s a part of the multi-faceted solutions. But hydrogen can aid the wider adoption of alternative fuel sources, including renewables, and move us one step closer net-zero emissions.
Could hydrogen be our solution to climate change?
Energy demand is expected to increase by as much as 50 per cent over the next 30 years, but energy companies and policymakers have widely different visions of that future, says Professor John W Ballantine.
The Hydrogen Energy Supply Chain (HESC) coal-to-hydrogen plant is pictured in Loy Yang, Victoria, Australia, March 12, 2021
WALTHAM, Massachusetts: Tehran, 1943: Joseph Stalin, Franklin D Roosevelt and Winston Churchill – hosted by the young Shah Reza Pahlavi – agree on plans for the two-front attack on Hitler while sketching out the east-west division of Europe.
Holding the meeting in Iran, with separate consultations with the shah, was no mistake. Gulf oil was a critical resource to the Allied war effort. Oil has flowed under the surface of political conflicts ever since.
Fast forward to today, and political antagonists and energy players are again forging a messy path forward, this time focused on long-term energy transitions as disparate countries try to slow and eventually stop climate change.
The 2015 Paris Agreement was a groundbreaking diplomatic effort – 196 countries committed to prevent average temperatures from rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius, with an aim of less than 1.5 degrees Celcius.
To meet that goal, scientists argue that fossil fuel use will have to reach net zero emissions by mid-century.
The genius of the Paris climate accord was getting all the major parties to agree – particularly major greenhouse gas emitters including Russia, China, India, Brazil and members of OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.
Now, the challenge is implementing the multiplicity of solutions needed to bend the global warming curve.
The Paris Agreement is not a treaty – countries set their own targets and determine their own strategies for meeting them. Each signatory has its own politics, economic structure, energy resources and climate exposure.
The commitments from countries are still falling short as President Joe Biden hosted a virtual climate summit with international leaders on Earth Day, Apr 22, and carried out the hard diplomatic work with Russia, China and other countries to develop implementable solutions.
As an energy economist, I am familiar with countries’ evolving responses to climate change and companies’ shifting investments and different visions of the future. One technology attracting attention from groups on all sides is hydrogen.
DIFFERENT VISIONS OF ENERGY’S FUTURE
As the world’s population and economies grow, energy demand is expected to increase by as much as 50 per cent over the next 30 years, so making the right long-term investments is crucial.
People stand in front the fountain at Omonia square, which is illuminated with green light, in Athens, Greece, on Saturday, Dec. 12, 2020, to mark the 5th anniversary of the Paris climate accord.
Energy companies and policymakers have widely different visions of that future. Their long-term scenarios show that most expect fossil fuel demand to remain steady for decades and possibly decline. However, many are also increasing their investments in cleaner technologies.
The International Energy Agency – which countries often look to for future scenarios, but which has a history of underestimating demand and clean energy – forecasts that renewable energy will meet about one-third of the global energy demand by 2040 in its most optimistic scenario.
That would be in a world with higher carbon taxes and more wind power, solar power, electric vehicles, carbon capture and storage. Greener technologies may come close to keeping warming under degrees Celcius, but not quite.
FOSSIL FUEL REMAINS
Exxon, on the other hand, forecasts a path dependent on a fossil fuel-based economy, with slower transitions to electric vehicles, steady demand for oil and gas, and a warmer world.
Exxon is also investing in carbon capture and storage and hydrogen, but it believes oil and gas will provide half the global energy supply in 2040 and renewable energy will be less than one-fifth.
FILE PHOTO: A view of the Exxon Mobil refinery in Baytown, Texas September 15, 2008. REUTERS/Jessica Rinaldi/File Photo/File Photo
OPEC, whose members are among the most exposed to climate change and dependent upon oil and gas, also sees oil and gas dominating in the future.
Nonetheless, several Gulf nations are also investing heavily in alternative technologies – including nuclear, solar, wind and hydrogen – and trying to transition away from oil.
BP proposes a more focused shift toward cleaner energy. Its “rapid scenario” forecasts flat energy demand and a more dramatic swing to renewables combined with a growing hydrogen economy.
The company expects its own renewable energy to go from 2.5 gigawatts (GW) in 2019 to 50 GW by 2030, and its oil production to fall by 40 per cent. Others are also exploring hydrogen’s potential. Much as with utilities’ shift from coal to natural gas, hydrogen may ease the transition to cleaner energy with enough investment.
Since this fuel is getting so much industry attention, let’s look more closely at its potential.
HYDROGEN AS A CLIMATE SOLUTION
Hydrogen has the potential to fuel cars, buses and airplanes, heat buildings and serve as a base energy source to balance wind and solar power in our grids.
A Hyundai Motor's Nexo hydrogen car is fuelled at a hydrogen station in Seoul, South Korea, August 13, 2019. Picture taken August 13, 2019. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji
Germany sees it as a potential substitute for hard-coal coke in making steel. It also offers energy companies a future market using processes they know. It can be liquefied, stored, and transported through existing pipelines and LNG ships, with some modifications.
So far, however, hydrogen is not widely used as a clean-energy solution.
First, it requires a upfront investment – including carbon capture capacity, pipeline modifications, industrial boilers for heat rather than gas, and fuel cells for transportation – plus policies that support the transition.
Second, for hydrogen to be “green,” the electricity grid has to have zero emissions. Most of today’s hydrogen is made from natural gas and is known as “grey hydrogen.”
It is produced using high-temperature steam to split hydrogen from carbon atoms into methane. Unless the separated carbon dioxide is stored or used, grey hydrogen results in the same amount of climate-warming CO2 as natural gas.
“Blue hydrogen” uses the same process but captures the carbon dioxide and stores it so only around 10 per cent of the CO2 is released into the atmosphere.
“Green hydrogen” is produced using renewable electricity and electrolysis, but it is twice as expensive as blue and dependent on the cost of electricity and available water.
NATURAL GAS IN THE MIX
Many electric utilities and energy companies, including Shell, BP and Saudi Aramco, are actively exploring a transition to a hydrogen-mixed economy, with a focus on blue hydrogen as an interim step.
Energy Observer Hydrogen Boat
Europe, with its dependence on imported natural gas and higher electricity costs, is setting ambitious net-zero energy targets that will incorporate a mix of blue and green hydrogen coupled with wind, solar, nuclear and an integrated energy grid.
China, the world’s largest energy user and greenhouse gas emitter, is instead investing heavily in natural gas – which has about half the carbon dioxide emissions of coal – along with carbon capture and storage and a growing mix of solar and wind power.
Russia, the second-largest natural gas producer after the US, is expanding its gas production and exports to Asia. Some of that gas may end up as blue hydrogen.
Ramping up blue and green hydrogen as clean-energy solutions will require substantial investments and long-term modifications to energy infrastructure. In my view, it is not the magic bullet, but it may be an important step.
Of course, technology investments cannot assume away the messy politics of the world. People and leaders around the globe still have differing views on the urgency of the climate crisis and need for greener energy investments.
Perhaps the leaders gathered will find some common ground as seas rise and temperatures break records. What is critical for meeting the Paris goals is that countries invest now in a cleaner future.
Hydrogen will never be a full solution to our green energy problems
Hydrogen might help buses run but it’s not the ultimate fuel of the future
Replacing fossil fuels with hydrogen fuel could help us reduce greenhouse gas emissions from tricky areas such as heavy goods vehicles. But electrifying our energy supply is the best way to green it, and hydrogen only has a secondary – and perhaps temporary – role to play.
So says a report from the Committee on Climate Change, the expert body that advises the UK on how to meet its climate targets.
“Hydrogen gives an option to help us decarbonise those really difficult bits of the energy system that otherwise we would really struggle to do, because we can’t electrify everything,” says David Joffe, one of the authors of the report.
The report is a blow to the UK’s gas industry, which is promoting the idea that the natural gas widely used for heating homes in many countries should entirely be replaced by hydrogen – made from natural gas. The idea is to capture and store the carbon produced by this process.
But many efforts to make carbon-capture-and-storage cheap and practical have foundered. And the report says that even if it could be done it would not eliminate all emissions, and that the resulting gas would be more expensive than natural gas.
Very selectively
Instead, it concludes that hydrogen should be used very selectively, such as for heating only on the coldest days, for some industrial processes and for replacing diesel in large vehicles.
“This report explains that hydrogen is not the silver bullet it is often claimed to be by the gas industry,” says Richard Lowes of the University of Exeter in the UK, who studies energy policy.
In theory, hydrogen could play a very big role in phasing out fossil fuels, as it produces no CO2 when it is burned. The problem is producing it on the scale required.
The cleanest way is to use electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. But electrolysis is expensive and inefficient. If hydrogen made from electrolysis was used for heating homes, say, you would end up with just 62 per cent as much heat energy as the electrical energy you started with.
If electricity is instead used to a drive heat pump, you end up with 280 to 410 per cent more heat energy than the electricity consumed, because heat pumps use the electrical energy to extract the heat energy already present in the air or ground near a building.
Unmanageable
So it would require building an enormous amount of renewable energy capacity by 2050 to produce enough hydrogen by electrolysis to heat homes, says Joffe. “It has unmanageable implications.”
There are some other practical problems with hydrogen, too, the report notes. For instance, it is more likely to leak because the molecules are smaller, and it produces air pollution in the form of nitrous oxides when burned.
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