Realistic roles for hydrogen in the future energy transition

6 comments

1. Key points from the study:

   * Hydrogen’s versatility means that it can power many applications; however, clean hydrogen should be strategically deployed in areas where it seems likely to have greatest potential for cost and sustainability benefits compared with alternatives such as direct electrification with clean power sources.

   * Supply, demand and supporting infrastructure must all develop simultaneously to overcome systemic barriers; yet hydrogen’s physical properties — its low energy density, flammability and propensity to leak and embrittle metals — impose challenges in terms of cost, safety and acceptance at all stages.

   * For decades, forecasts of a clean hydrogen economy have relied on rapid scale-up driving down costs. However, production costs are dominated by engineering and energy inputs and supplemented by transport, storage and usage costs; none of which seems likely to exhibit the rapid reductions seen with solar photovoltaics and batteries.

   * To contribute to decarbonization objectives, clean hydrogen must have low emissions across its entire supply chain. System-level assessments identify issues with upstream and consequential greenhouse gas emissions from clean hydrogen production, alongside broader environmental impacts. Several preconditions must be met to deliver sustainable and clean hydrogen across its full life cycle.

   * In the short term, renewable electricity could achieve greater emissions abatement if used directly to displace fossil fuels in power generation, heating or transport, instead of being used for green hydrogen production. In the longer term, hydrogen could instead facilitate renewables uptake by integrating excess generation into power systems.

   * Low-carbon hydrogen will be essential to decarbonize its existing applications such as petrochemicals and fertilizers (~2% of global CO2 emissions), or in applications in which decarbonization alternatives are prohibitively expensive, such as steelmaking, heavy transport and long-duration energy storage. Hydrogen strategies should prioritize and support these areas to achieve the greatest impact.

2. I still don’t get this fallacy of “long duration energy storage”. The capital costs for building a system which to all intents and purposes only completes a few discharge cycles yearly, simply makes each cycle prohibitively expensive.

3. Mid term it’s probably cheaper to make blue crude and methane with surplus wind and solar to de-fossilise fuel and displace mining as quickly as possible. Hydrogen can be a distraction from de-fossilisation.

4. Good paper highlighting the limited likely pathways where hydrogen might be useful and where it is not. Thanks!

   For those who don’t actually click on links, there’s a nifty chart here: [https://media.springernature.com/lw685/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1038%2Fs44359-025-00050-4/MediaObjects/44359_2025_50_Fig2_HTML.png?as=webp](https://media.springernature.com/lw685/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1038%2Fs44359-025-00050-4/MediaObjects/44359_2025_50_Fig2_HTML.png?as=webp)

   Under the category of necessary, there’s “refining”, “hydrogenation”, “fertilizer/ammonia”, and “methanol”.

   Under the category of possibly, there’s “long-haul shipping”, “long-haul aviation”, “chemical feedback”, “primary steel”, “long-duration energy storage”, and “biogras upgrading”

   Everything else goes under “unlikely” and “uncompetitive” which are more extensive. I think the naming convention for “uncompetitive” is a bit weird though, because “unlikely” is probably a result of it being unlikely to be competitive. Maybe “very unlikely” or “highly unlikely” should have been the name. Or if there’s an insistence on a single word for each category, “dubious”.

   I reckon the list is ordered by how likely that probability is and that “long-duration energy storage” and “biogas upgrading” within the “possibly” category are towards the lower probability bit of possibly and may be of reasonable usage in a fairly limited number of situations.

   I’ll point out two uses cases that were not included and currently minor but still existent that can fall under the “possibly” category.

   It might make sense for cruise ships since the water byproduct is useful in that situation though I suppose this can be under the umbrella of “long-haul shipping” but of people instead of goods. More generally, this is along the lines of what’s been used on space stations which similarly has good use for the water byproduct though writing space stations as a separate category is silly given how small of a category that currently is even compared to cruise ships.

   Also, rockets since liquid hydrogen using rockets are quite common. Rocket launches aren’t a massive use of energy compared to other categories, but it is growing, and many current and future launch systems use hydrogen via LH2 or some other form.

5. Why does hydrogen keep getting posted here? I thought it’s been clear for about 10 years that it’s not the winning technology outside of a few niche cases.

6. I confess, I didn’t read the articles, but I assume they skipped over the geologic hydrogen issue right? It’s looking like we’ll be able to drill for rather than manufacturer hydrogen, which should be much cheaper right?

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