Sure it might seem as an odd question. But looking at renewable energy sector as a whole, how far is the hydrogen compared to others?
Any noticeable innovations?
Any large difficulties?
I am curious since a client has approached me in this space and know very little of hydrogen innovation.
Thank you
I think there is a lot of progress for hydrogen in small ways but to change the world there has to be a complete value chain from one end to another and that's been absent.
There are two scenarios for hydrogen: (1) as an energy carrier, (2) as an ingredient in industrial processes.
For (1) it faces stiff competition. For instance you could have a battery electric car instead of a hydrogen car. You could ship power via wires rather than a hydrogen pipeline, you can store energy for the grid in batteries or with hydroelectric storage instead of as hydrogen. Aviation fuel is a special hard case for decarbonization but aviation, particularly in terms of fuels, is one of the slowest innovation parts of the economy. Look at how long it has taken to get the lead out of GA fuels or for US airlines to upgrade their broken radar altimeters. Hydrogen has the advantage of high energy density by mass but very low volumetric energy density so everything from aircraft to infrastructure will be redesigned, I think the industry will be much happier to use synthetic fuels based on Fischer–Tropsch chemistry than change anything, although green hydrogen will be an ingredient of green synthetic fuels.
All of that makes me skeptical about (1).
There is a lot of talk about building electrolyzers and using green hydrogen for (2). The first phase of that is is replacing hydrogen made from fossil fuels.
Hydrogen is used to make ammonia, which is used to make nitrogen fertilizer. Hydrogen is used in oil refining and other chemistry. (Note that by current ESG rules, a company like Exxon Mobil doesn't get charged for the carbon in the fuels they sell, just for the carbon released by their oil refineries and other operations. With a 'green' oil refinery they could ship the same products they do now but still claim to be net zero for better or worse. By adding green hydrogen to a refinery they can ship more product per unit of crude oil and avoid waste CO₂)
There are other processes such as steelmaking, cement making, and glassmaking that require a high-temperature flame and where electric or nuclear heat would not be an option. For those a hydrogen flame fueled by green hydrogen could be an option. For metal production in general, hydrogen can substitute for the carbon monoxide that that is used to reduce iron in blast furnaces.