Tech-savvy energy producers are currently looking for economically viable methods to create “green hydrogen” from water using renewable electricity. This technology, which can produce clean fuel for planes, ships, and trucks, could be the world’s biggest development in power generation since the 19th century. In particular, the creation of clean fuels for heavy vehicles could sharply reduce or even eliminate a major source of carbon emissions. Green hydrogen could also cut carbon pollution by providing an ingredient for fertilizers, or to refine steel, chemicals, and oil.
Electric motors can only do so much. Batteries remain too heavy for planes and too bulky for ships. Charging times limit their use in long-haul trucks, and the electrification of rail lines can be prohibitively expensive. To meet the demand for clean liquid fuel to power these vehicles, the U.S. government, philanthropists, and green-oriented businesses are investing billions of dollars to build up a green-hydrogen industry.
The largest limiting factor? The vast number of wind turbines and solar panels necessary to create the renewable energy necessary to power the process. While nuclear power provides a cheaper option, it faces political hurdles from communities in potential locations, as well as environmental groups. And the use of non-renewable energy sources could cause even more pollution than our current reliance on diesel.
At this point hydrogen energy made using fossil fuels costs 33 percent of “green hydrogen,” which is made from water. Manufacturers are just starting to turn out electrolyzers — the machines which pull hydrogen out of water — at high volume and low cost. But cheap electrolyzers are only a part of the problem; the process requires a large amount of green energy. Because at least 60 percent of the energy in any electric grid comes from fossil fuels, green-hydrogen production requires its own source of clean power if it wants to stay green. To achieve this, green hydrogen must be made at a plant possessing its own dedicated wind turbines and/or solar panels, or that follows strict rules for using newly added renewable electricity from the grid.
Federal officials are still setting rules deciding who will qualify for the billions of dollars in hydrogen-fuel infrastructure tax credits the Biden Administration authorized late last year. And the structure of a new tax break intended for manufacturers of zero-emissions hydrogen faces political hurdles amid a disagreement between environmentalists and companies over who should qualify.
With the regulatory environment in such flux, some companies pay extra to certify that, over the course of each year, recently built wind turbines and solar panels produce as much electricity as their plants use. Other developers, in lieu of vast networks of solar and wind farms, aim to refine technologies mitigating the emissions of fossil-fuel-created hydrogen by capturing and burying them.
Transportation of hydrogen fuel provides a further difficulty. To store and use it, hydrogen must be cooled below -253 degrees Celsius and compressed until the air pressure is several hundred times higher than our atmosphere. It also takes up much more space than other fuels, making it expensive to transport on ships and trucks. While the best way to move it is by pipeline, expanding that network will be time-consuming and costly. Finally, planes, ships and trucks have decades-long lifespans; current vehicles built to use fossil fuels are likely to remain in use for a long time.
Given all this, it seems clear that any green-hydrogen solution to our heavy-machinery fuel problem remains on the distant horizon. Still, companies with manufacturing or service interests relevant to the green-hydrogen creation, storage, or transportation issues described above should stay alert for political developments, regulations, and/or regional opportunities that might allow them to get in on the ground floor of what seems likely to become a politically-favored, and therefore heavily-subsidized, industry.
