Hydrogen could be the next big thing in the automotive world. In its pathway to net zero by mid-century, the International Energy Agency projects that hydrogen will account for a full 16% of road transport. Moreover, some industry insiders believe that cars powered by hydrogen, either by combusting it like gasoline or by incorporating it into a fuel cell, could even overtake the prevalence of battery-powered electric vehicles in the coming years. Others think that’s a gross overestimation. But everyone agrees that hydrogen will likely be integral to the future of the transportation sector.
Hydrogen has been touted as a promising green replacement for gasoline and diesel because, like petroleum-based fossil fuels, hydrogen can be combusted at high heat. But unlike gasoline and diesel, it emits no carbon dioxide when it burns. Instead, it just leaves behind harmless water vapor. That’s why companies have been pouring cash into finding a way to revolutionize the transportation sector – responsible for approximately one quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions at a global level – by replacing traditional fuels with green hydrogen and hydrogen fuel cells.
Last month, Toyota chair Akio Toyoda said he thinks the share of battery cars on the global market will peak at 30%, with the remaining 70% taken up by hydrogen and internal combustion engines. BMW chief executive officer Oliver Zipse is similarly bullish about the technology as one component of a cleaner transportation future. “Hydrogen is the missing piece in the jigsaw when it comes to emission-free mobility,” he said last year before offering the caveat: “One technology on its own will not be enough to enable climate-neutral mobility worldwide.”
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There are already a couple of hydrogen-powered cars on the market, both from East Asian automakers – Toyota’s Mirai and the Nexo SUV from Hyundai. However, even Toyota admits that hydrogen-powered cars have “not been successful” so far, largely because sourcing hydrogen remains a key issue, as cited by Toyota technical chief, Hiroki Nakajima in a quote to Autocar in October.
Creating hydrogen is an energy-intensive process, which means that its production is sometimes an inefficient and even counterintuitive use of energy. By some metrics, creating green hydrogen requires three times more electricity than would be needed just to power an electric vehicle directly. Elon Musk, head of leading electric vehicle company Tesla, has called automotive hydrogen technology “fool sells,” dismissing the use of energy to make hydrogen when it could more easily just charge an EV battery.
Most hydrogen used in industrial applications today is ‘gray hydrogen,’ meaning it’s produced by using fossil fuels. Blue hydrogen is produced using natural gas, making it a bit cleaner (depending on who you ask). Green hydrogen is produced using only clean energy supplies, but even that may not be a win for the climate as it is taking up key clean energy resources that may be more efficiently and strategically used in other applications. And then there’s gold hydrogen, the holy grail of naturally occurring hydrogen deposits, which has yet to be successfully developed. Long story short, there's a whole rainbow of hydrogens out there, but none of them offers a silver bullet solution for cleaning up the transportation sector.
While the jury is out on whether hydrogen-based cars will actually be able to compete with battery-powered ones, and whether they will be able to do so in a way that’s better for the environment, there is one part of the transportation sector that almost everyone agrees could and likely will be revolutionized by hydrogen. And that’s the shipping industry. Big industrial vehicles and ships are some of the biggest emitters of carbon dioxide in the sector, and they are also the hardest to electrify. In this application, diverting energy toward making hydrogen would actually make sense in the bottom line, and be a huge win for the environment as the shipping sector is considered to be one of the hardest to clean up.
By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com