Hydrogen is Coming

This week, Barclays released a future of the energy economy presentation and there was a big section on hydrogen. And WOW, there is big growth expected for hydrogen. Based on the below chart you can see that the growth is expected in heating and industrial use cases (including steel) and long haul transport / mobility (trucks, trains, buses).

These are also areas where our current “fluid” fuels are more prevalent vs the electrification trend as there is already infrastructure (pipelines, tanks, etc.) in place.

And the report does a good job describing the different generation sources for how hydrogen can be produced:

• Green hydrogen: Hydrogen generated from renewable sources, mainly through electrolysis.
• Brown hydrogen: Used generically to refer to conventional production using fossil fuels by steam methane reforming, without reduced emissions via the use of carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS).
• Blue hydrogen: Steam methane reforming with CO2 emissions reduced by CCUS.
• Black hydrogen: Coal-based hydrogen
• Grey hydrogen: Natural-gas-based hydrogen.
• Pink hydrogen: Nuclear-based hydrogen

A trend to watch. The combination of low-cost renewable power to create hydrogen could go a long way to drive impact and big business.