The following report on Supertrends in Green Hydrogen offers guidance on the state of the art in an exciting new business sector that has been gaining traction recently due to backing from governments and supranational bodies. It offers a snapshot of the market at the time of publication, which will be revised to reflect changes and new developments in future updates of this report.
Chapter 2 provides an overview of how hydrogen has been used by humans over the past two centuries and a timeline of the technologies associated with its production and application. It concludes with a description of the status quo today, including international efforts to mitigate climate change and policy measures to foster a global hydrogen economy and decarbonize the energy system.
In Chapter 3, we look at the green hydrogen market. This section lays out the entire value chain associated with the production and use of green hydrogen, including both peripheral and key elements, and looks in depth at selected companies that are well positioned to play a fundamental role in this emerging business. For these key market players, we give detailed descriptions in terms of geographic specificity, the technologies or services offered, investors and backers, and trial projects, as well as other data.
Green hydrogen has a very broad range of applications. Chapter 4 breaks down the consumer landscape and applications of hydrogen, including as an industrial feedstock, as fuel for mobility solutions, as an energy carrier and facilitator of sector coupling, and as a means of storing intermittent renewable energy. This chapter also briefly discusses what is required to repurpose existing natural gas infrastructures for hydrogen transmission.
Chapter 5 provides a more in-depth discussion of the technologies and processes involved in making, storing, and using green hydrogen. Here, you will find a detailed description of the different types of electrolyzers (e.g., alkaline, proton exchange membrane, solid oxide) as well as the advantages and drawbacks of each. This is also where you will find information about novel technologies such as biohydrogen production and the use of Liquid Organic Hydrogen Carrier (LOHC) storage, together with more traditional storage solutions. Following a discussion of the relative merits of centralized vs. decentralized hydrogen generation, this chapter concludes with an overview of factors affecting market maturity, up-scaling, and mass commercialization.
Green hydrogen offers a number of benefits, especially with regard to climate change mitigation and environmental protection, which are presented in Chapter 6. However, while sustainability goals agreed at the international level are the main drivers of the emerging hydrogen economy, it is also seen as a potential catalyst for economic growth and job creation. Therefore, this chapter also describes how energy- and emissions-intensive industries can use green hydrogen to optimize their choices within the framework of emissions trading schemes or to hedge against fluctuations in the energy markets.
The large-scale integration of hydrogen generated with wind or solar energy does have some drawbacks, too, which are presented in Chapter 7. These are related to the physical properties of hydrogen and the infrastructural measures required to retrofit old hardware or build new assets for conveying and storing this gas, which is considerably lighter than natural gas. Taking these factors into account, we look at the possible cost trajectory of hydrogen as well as the associated storage and distribution infrastructure and present a tentative outlook as to when green hydrogen will become competitive. The answer to this question, as we show, will also depend on other factors such as lobbying from legacy industries, competition between electromobility and fuel-cell vehicles, and customer perceptions.
Finally, Chapter 8 talks about the future outlook and disruptive potential of this technology, which will increasingly also be used to decarbonize conventional sectors and affect other sectors, both upstream and downstream. It breaks down the regulatory prospects in selected geographic regions such as the EU, the US, Asia, and others. In all these areas, the integration of green hydrogen will tie in with national, regional, and global policy goals, which are described here.
We hope that this report will not only improve and deepen your understanding of a technology that has surged to public attention recently, but also serve as a useful guide and inform your own decisionmaking, making you well prepared and well positioned to take advantage of this game-changing development in the field of sustainable energy.