Can a viable industry emerge from the hydrogen shakeout?

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As parts of the world get a bit more serious about tackling climate change, hydrogen has emerged as an important part of global decarbonisation efforts

most abundant element in the universe and a vast source of clean fuel. For investors, it is an equally rich source of hype. . Over 1,000 hydrogen projects are under way worldwide, more than 350 of which have been announced in the past year. They are expected to result in some $320bn-worth of investments by 2030. Venture capitalists and buy-out barons poured $8bn into hydrogen ventures last year, up from just over $2bn in 2020 .

The reason a clean-hydrogen industry is taking so long to get off the ground has to do with another aspect of the element’s chemistry. Because it is highly reactive, it scarcely exists on Earth in its free state and is instead bound up in molecules with other elements, chiefly carbon and oxygen .

mega-project for making green hydrogen in Normandy is all set to go but cannot secure a large-enough power-purchase agreement for renewables . This is helping viable clean-hydrogen projects come on line. In Port Arthur, Texas, Air Products, another industrial-gas firm, is turning the previously dirty hydrogen used at a big refinery run by Valero into blue hydrogen, with the captured COfed into a pipeline for sale to industrial customers. In Puertollano, an hour by train from Madrid, Iberdrola, a Spanish energy giant, runs a 20electrolyser, one of the world’s biggest machines of its kind, using power from its local solar farm.

America, for its part, is showering billions of dollars in subsidies. President Joe Biden’s administration is drawing up the final eligibility criteria for a handout of $3 per kilogram for clean hydrogen. Combined with America’s bountiful reserves of renewable energy and cheap natural gas, that means the country could become a low-carbon hydrogen production and export powerhouse.

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