A €100bn hydrogen industry? Challenges for the European Green Hydrogen Acceleration Centre
Full of promise, but equally full of challenges, green hydrogen is a unique example of a renewable power source that has not yet been fully developed. A new European project aims to generate half a million jobs and establish green hydrogen as a €100bn industry by 2050, raising the question of whether it can overcome the challenges faced by green hydrogen for a generation?
Alongside traditional green energy sources, such as solar and wind power, so-called “green” hydrogen has emerged as a potential renewable fuel source for the future. This refers to hydrogen produced by electrolysis, the process by which water is split into hydrogen and oxygen, where the electrical force is provided by renewable power sources.
While this source of hydrogen gas is almost entirely emission-free, the need to build expensive electrolysers, and incorporate green hydrogen facilities into existing renewable power infrastructure, has made the process unsustainably expensive and logistically complex to the point of redundancy. Figures from the International Energy Agency (IEA) found that the cost of producing green hydrogen could reach $3 to $7.50 per kilogram more than three times the cost of “grey” hydrogen, which is produced using natural gas, and a report from Wood Mackenzie found that green hydrogen was only responsible for 0.1% of the world’s annual hydrogen production.
Despite these challenges, a new European initiative could help green hydrogen reach its vast energy potential. The European Green Hydrogen Acceleration Centre (EGHAC), unveiled last year by renewable energy investment hub EIT InnoEnergy, aims to accelerate technological and infrastructure developments in green hydrogen, to create half a million new jobs in an industry that will be worth €100bn by 2025.
But will financial muscle and lofty ambitions alone be enough to overcome the myriad challenges facing the green hydrogen industry? With obstacles ranging from a lack of technological development to an unwillingness to invest, it remains to be seen if the EGHAC can address the challenges that have plagued green hydrogen for decades.
Source: power-technology
