S & P | Hydrogen: New Ambitions and Challenges
The global vision
Hydrogen is an important feedstock for the oil refining and chemical industries, primarily supplying local needs. Manufacturing hydrogen today accounts for about 2% of the world’s energy consumption. It is essentially an industrial gas, the majority of which is made from fossil fuels (natural gas, and to a lesser extent, coal) in a highly carbon-intensive “steam reforming” process. Some hydrogen is a by-product of oil refining and chemical processes and can be fed back for the benefit of other processes in the plants where it is sourced. However, there is a clear vision to transform this into an industry that delivers energy to a wide variety of uses. Technologies to decarbonize the making of hydrogen could transform it into a vector for delivery of low-carbon energy to its new customers. Chart 1 shows the ambitious scale of this transformation, as hydrogen moves from being mainly an industrial gas to becoming a low-carbon energy carrier. In almost every corner of the globe, there is an emerging overlap of business interests and political ambitions that strongly favors this development of hydrogen and hydrogen derivatives as a carrier of low-carbon energy
