During the premier gathering for the global hydrogen community in the Americas region at the #H2Americas2023 Summit & Exhibition, we spoke to global and regional #hydrogen and #energy leaders about the future outlook for the hydrogen industry, including an interview with Dr Steven Hamburg Chief Scientist & Senior Vice President from the Environmental Defence Fund.
“Well we’re working on trying to make sure that we understand the implications of using hydrogen as a decarbonization tool, it has a lot of potential but it also has a lot of downside risks, and we need to get a balance and understand that and historically the hydrogen industry and hydrogen efforts have not included a full examination of all of those issues to ensure that in fact we meet its potential and don’t end up falling far short.
So we have to think about the fact that hydrogen, how it’s produced really matters, so if we’re producing blue hydrogen we have to worry about upstream methane emissions because methane is a potent greenhouse gas and much of the natural gas which is methane that’s produced is currently associated with a fairly significant amount of methane loss before you ever get to use it. If we’re going to use green hydrogen, we have to think about where those electrons come from, we don’t have an excess of electrons so are we borrowing electrons from some other effort and in turn what’s the net effect of that? And then lastly we have to worry about the hydrogen losses from the supply chain, because hydrogen is a potent indirect greenhouse gas and if we’re not managing it well and hydrogen is the smallest molecule and very slippery as we refer to it, so it’s easily lost. If we lose a lot of hydrogen we’re undercutting the value of shifting to hydrogen and meeting the decarbonization goals that we all have.
Well we’re currently starting an effort working with industry to make measurements across the existing hydrogen value chain so we really can understand the scale of the hydrogen emissions problem and then look for solutions, we have to get it right, but we can’t do that until we understand what the nature of the problem is, and currently nobody understand how much hydrogen is being emitted.
Well the fact that we’re going to go out in the field with the first instruments ever available to make those measurements in existing infrastructure in collaboration with a series of different industry partners, we’ll find out what the current situation is which will give a lot of information to industry, to regulators, to be able to do it better, that’s exciting, that’s what needs to happen, we’re starting to literally do that at the beginning of the next year in 2024.”
Join us at #H2Americas2024
Co-hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy, join global and regional #hydrogen and #energy leaders at #H2Americas2024 Summit & Exhibition taking place 11-12 June 2024 in Washington D.C. The event welcomes 4000 industry professionals, 200+ Speakers, 100+ Exhibitors and 40+ sponsors to share the latest news, establish key connections and sign business deals to accelerate the deployment of the hydrogen economy. Register your place among hydrogen pioneers.
