Hydrogen production that relies on fossil gas (methane) from the North Sea could become too expensive over the next decade as green hydrogen plants become increasingly cost competitive, says a report from Carbon Tracker.
Here in Norfolk, we have a choice of investment in Green or Blue Hydrogen. As the Carbon Tracker's new report - Clean Hydrogen's Place in the Energy Transition - comments:
"Hydrogen is widely regarded as a critical fuel for the net zero transition, as it provides a means of decarbonising a raft of industrial processes. The gas can be produced either through the electrolysis of water using renewable power to create green hydrogen or through its extraction from methane, a process that produces carbon dioxide as a by product that can then be captured and stored resulting in so-called blue hydrogen.
Advocates of blue hydrogen have argued it could prove more cost-effective and scalable than green hydrogen, but the soaring cost of wholesale gas has drastically increased the cost of hydrogen produced from fossil gas. And at the same time plummeting renewables costs have continued to improve the economics of green hydrogen production."
"Though green hydrogen is not the silver bullet to the climate crisis, it offers part of the solution if used in a targeted way for specific industries and offers an attractive solution to bridging the thorny issue of energy intermittency anxiety in the power sector, alongside advanced battery technology and the use of smart grids," said Kofi Mbuk, senior cleantech analyst and author of the report.