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The united colors of hydrogen

Hydrogen is an invisible gas, yes. But different forms are given color codenames to help distinguish among them, essentially based on the molecule used to produce hydrogen and the source of energy. There is no universal agreement on what the colors mean, so definitions may change over time or between countries. Here’s our guide to the generally understood hydrogen rainbow:

GRAY
The most common form of hydrogen production – roughly 95 percent – is produced today from the main component of natural gas (methane) through a steam reforming process. In this case natural gas reacts with steam at high temperatures and pressures producing hydrogen gas and carbon dioxide (CO2). CO2 is released into the air, accounting for 2 percent of the world’s CO2 emissions.

BLUE

Blue hydrogen is produced by the same steam reforming process as the gray hydrogen. In this case, carbon capture and storage (CSS) is added in its production to avoid the CO2 emissions.

BLACK and BROWN
These are the most environmentally damaging forms of hydrogen because they’re created using bituminous coal (“black”) or lignite (“brown”). Gasification byproducts CO2 and carbon monoxide are released into the atmosphere.

IMAGE: Unsplash

GREEN
Made with surplus energy from renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power to split water, green hydrogen produces no harmful greenhouse-gas emissions, just hydrogen and oxygen.

PINK , PURPLE or RED
These colors denote hydrogen that is produced using nuclear power as the energy source to break the water molecule into hydrogen and oxygen.

TURQUOISE
The newest color is produced by a process called methane pyrolysis, which creates hydrogen and solid carbon. It is still experimental. If the process is powered by renewable energy and the carbon is used or permanently stored, turquoise is potentially a valuable low- or zero-emission hydrogen.

IMAGE: Unsplash

YELLOW
Yellow hydrogen is a new term to define hydrogen produced from the electrolysis of water using solely solar power as the energy source. It is a particular case of green hydrogen.

WHITE
This form of hydrogen, not very common, is naturally occurring in geological deposits, generated by the interaction of water with some metals of the rocks at high temperatures and pressures. It can be released by a process named fracking. The same name is given to the hydrogen produced as a byproduct in industrial processes.

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What’s the ETA on EVs?

In July 2022, Bloomberg analysts reported that the U.S. has now reached the “tipping point” for mass adoption of electric vehicles. According to the report, the nation has reached the magic number that signals a period when “technological preferences rapidly flip.” That magic number is just 5 percent — and 5 percent of new car sales in 2022 were electric vehicles.

IMAGE: Shutterstock
The Middle East brings its own challenges to EV adoption

Although consumer interest is high in the region — local company M Glory Holding Group in the UAE opened its electric vehicle manufacturing plant in 2022 with plans to produce 55,000 electric cars annually to meet a rising demand for green mobility — there are still numerous obstacles hindering the widespread adoption of EVs. The limited availability of EV charging stations is one concern, but more pressing is the new demand placed on power grids by at-home charging stations. Traditional power-distribution grids are not designed to handle a significant number of EVs charging in the evenings when their owners return home from work. Utilities providers will need to predict and account for this surge in demand. Read more›››

EV manufacturers also face the challenge of keeping up with demand, not just for EVs themselves but for their constituent parts. Replacement parts are expensive relative to components needed for internal combustion vehicles, especially when supply chains are not fully developed and hampered by the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic on logistics around the world. Localized procurement is the answer for the future, but companies and suppliers need time and investment to set up and serve the local market. In a relatively nascent industry, this is not a short-term solution.

Included in those replacement parts are batteries and tires. Saudi Arabia announced a U.S.$6 billion investment in a steel plate mill complex and electric vehicle battery plant in 2022 to take advantage of its geographical location at the crossroads of the producers of the necessary minerals: lithium, cobalt, manganese, nickel and graphite. But this investment also foresees the need for more batteries in the Middle Eastern EV market than anywhere else. Put simply: The sun and car batteries don’t mix well. Hot weather means higher temperatures under the hood, which accelerates corrosion inside the battery. In an electric vehicle, full of batteries, this is naturally an exponentially larger concern.

Beyond damaging them, heat also drains batteries, meaning less range available for drivers. A 2019 study by the American Automobile Association found the driving range of an EV could reduce by up to 17 percent if the temperature is constantly above 35C — which it is for almost half the year in the Gulf.

Charging the EV only adds to the heat experienced by the battery. Charging in the evening makes it easier on the cooling systems but that puts a strain on the power grids.

It’s all connected!‹‹‹ Read less

Sales for electric vehicles, commonly called EVs, are on track to double every couple of years, says Loren McDonald of EVAdoption. The industry analysis group predicts 40 million EVs on U.S. roads by 2030. In 2020, some 276 million vehicles were registered.

The industry certainly seems to believe in the proliferation of electric vehicles: Vojay Chandler, investment strategist at Morgan Stanley, says EV’s share of global auto sales is likely to grow from about 7 percent today to nearly 90 percent by 2050.

There are plenty of reasons for this. Climate change and its consequences are forcing people to consider their environmental impact. Governments across the globe are developing policies to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increasing energy efficiency wherever possible. Fuel prices are at the mercy of political instability, particularly in Europe, and governments are hesitant to introduce e-fuels.

As Nasir Salari, marketing expert at Bath Spa University, points out, despite the sluggish growth rate of electric cars, the latest report by the International Energy Agency in 2020 illustrates promising figures in major markets. The global electric car stock hit the 10 million mark, a 43 percent increase over 2019. And while China has the largest fleet with 4.5 million, Europe had the largest annual increase to reach 3.2 million. In the United Kingdom, 67,100 passenger electric cars were registered in 2020. This is promising, Salari says, but the adoption curve is still at the early stage.

IMAGE: Abjad

Salari conducted research in the U.K. looking at the factors contributing to the “sluggish growth rate.” He interviewed 336 individuals in the U.K. to assess their willingness to buy an EV. Like most analysts, he predicts a boom in the coming years, particularly with the U.K. government reaffirming its commitment to ban new petrol and diesel cars in 2030. With pressures like these, new cars will be electric, but people currently seem reluctant to dive into the electric future.

Credit: Abjad

“There are various reasons for this,” Salari tells KUST Review. “This has always been the case for new revolutionary products: the first color TV, smartphone, cameras, for example.

There have always been early adopters and then majority adopters and the people open to embracing technology in general will also be more willing to adopt an electric car. The TRI is a good indicator of this.”

Developed in 2000, the TRI (Technology Readiness Index) is a widely used scale in understanding technology adoption behavior and a powerful tool to predict the adoption of incremental and revolutionary technologies.

“Our data shows no difference between men and women in their willingness to purchase an EV or pay a higher price for the product,” Salari says. “However, the overall TRI is higher amongst men than women, and this difference is statistically significant. This shows that overall, men are more willing to embrace new technology and possess new and unique items in general. There was also no significance between age groups for their willingness to purchase, but I was surprised to see a significant difference in how much environmentalism played a part: The 50-plus age group expressed higher levels of green values than the 20-29 group.”

IMAGE: Unsplash
Bringing down charging times

One of the issues with electric vehicles is the charging time. But a team at Khalifa University is working on cutting that time down. Read more›››

On-board EV charging is generally done through two stages, says Vinod Khadkikar, who leads the project funded by Abu Dhabi’s ASPIRE. In the first stage, AC voltage is converted into DC voltage. But this DC voltage is generally higher than the EV battery voltage, so an additional DC-DC converter is needed to charge the battery. Most current commercial on-board chargers use a full-power processing converter at the DC-DC stage, which requires higher voltage and current rating of switches and diodes. This restricts the charging speed. The size, cost and efficiency of any EV charger also largely depends on the device rating and number of power processing stages.

The KU team proposes partial power processing-based topographies at the DC-DC stage that use a fraction of the power.

“Therefore, the DC-DC converter size is reduced and the charger efficiency is high (97-99 percent with hard switching). The semiconductor device rating is reduced significantly, which helps to achieve higher power density (smaller footprint/compact size). This lets the user use the same footprint size to design the charger for higher power,” Khadkikar says.‹‹‹ Read less

Interestingly, Salari found that most consumers were more concerned by the economic impact of their purchase, rather than the environmentalism aspect: They cared more about their investment than how green they were being.

“Electric vehicles are advertised as environmentally friendly and they are! And people know this, but this isn’t necessarily encouraging people to purchase them,” Salari says. “Environmentalism does not have an impact on purchasing an electric car; its functionality is more important.”

Like Salari, experts believe that demand for electric vehicles will increase as they become more affordable. Morgan Stanley predicts that continued performance improvements and reductions in the cost of batteries (which account for about 35 percent of an EV’s total cost) could lower the average EV price to $18,000 by 2025.

Salari says it also depends on consumer incentives: “People aren’t running out to buy electric vehicles because they’re good for the environment. They’re hesitating because they’re expensive but they’re in favor because their running costs are much cheaper. Regular drivers are more open to adopting EVs because of fuel costs, so it all depends on how you market your product. Enviro isn’t doing it: Shift your marketing to the economic benefits.

Prices will be lower in the future — that’s how innovation works. The first time a product launches, it’s not a cheap product, but as it becomes a mainstream offering, it will become more affordable. The market is still in its infancy. To grow it, we need more early adopters and government incentives are one way to drive adoption.

– Nasir Salari, Marketing Expert at Bath Spa University

Tax credits and improved infrastructure are the way forward then. The U.K. is certainly investing in its electric vehicle readiness: Lampposts across London are being fitted with sensors and EV charging points to reduce emissions and cut congestion, and parking is even free in the capital for EV drivers. New-build houses come with electric vehicle charging stations as standard and many are fitted with solar panels to power this.

As charging infrastructure gets more support, subsidies and incentives become more robust, and governments enforce more petrol-banning policies, electric car sales will continue to rise.

“It’s happening,” Salari tells KUST Review. “It may not be where we expected it to be by now, but it’s happening.”

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We’ve captured carbon. Now what?

Before the industrial revolution the world removed carbon from the air all by itself. With global carbon emissions breaking records in 2022 and potential risks of storing carbon underground, however, companies are getting creative and repurposing captured carbon in unexpected ways.

The Paris Agreement in 2015 had countries all over the world commit to take part in the race to net-zero emissions. Those countries are working toward the agreement’s renewable-energy goals, but more can be done to control greenhouse gases. One solution is carbon capture.

Natural or human-made

Carbon capture is the process of retrieving carbon emissions from the air and storing them. The process can be natural or manmade.

Natural carbon capture and storage is achieved by elements of the planet’s ecosystems. Trees, for example, are an effective carbon-capture and storage mechanism: Their leaves absorb carbon dioxide from the air through photosynthesis. But if trees are cut and burned for firewood — or even if the tree dies naturally — stored carbon is released back into the atmosphere.

The largest source of natural carbon capture is the world’s oceans. The United Nations estimates that the oceans soak up about 25 percent of all greenhouse-gas emissions and 90 percent of the surplus heat those emissions cause.

This natural carbon-capture process is called the carbon cycle. The problem is the world’s ecosystems can’t keep up with the greenhouse gases that are being produced by humans.

Enter man-made carbon capture.

Carbon-capture processes are designed to remove carbon from industrial waste or from the air outside. Carbon-capture plants typically have walls of giant fans, sucking in air. They remove the carbon from the air, convert it to liquid, store it underground or use it to inject into oil fields to simplify oil extraction. But there are challenges with carbon capture.

These large plants require a lot of energy in the form of materials to build the facilities and the energy to run them. Additionally, once the carbon dioxide is stored, there are risks. The carbon dioxide could leak out of the stored areas, polluting water sources and eventually reaching the surface — once again polluting the air.

Reasons for concern

There is also concern that pressure from injecting the carbon underground could cause seismic activity and controversy over whether carbon capture and storage might embolden fossil-fuel use. The 2022 report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis says, “Captured carbon has mostly been used for enhanced oil recovery” and “enhancing oil production is not a climate solution.”

While easing oil removal is the most common use of captured carbon, some companies are getting creative and managing carbon in other unusual ways.

Many large companies purchase carbon offsets to reduce their footprints. But individuals can purchase them as well. One company selling to individuals is Climeworks, a Swiss-based carbon-removal company that captures 900 tons of carbon annually. Buyers can even offer this as a “green gift” in the name of someone else. Climeworks also produces the bubbles for carbonated beverages for such clients as Coca-Cola.

Also getting off the ground is E-Jet fuel from carbon-capture company Twelve. The company says this fuel lowers greenhouse-gas emission of traditional fuels by 80 percent. Twelve entered into a memorandum of understanding with Alaska Air Group and Microsoft to work toward testing the fuel on a commercial flight.

Taking Off

In an announcement of the partnership, Nicholas Flanders, co-founder and CEO of Twelve said, “By producing our drop-in E-Jet fuel from captured CO2, we can rapidly and efficiently close the carbon cycle and allow businesses to sustainably use emissions to power their own business travel.” No date for the testing of the commercial flight has been announced. Air Transport Action Group reports that aviation makes up 12 percent of emissions from all transport sources.

After returning home from a green, commercial flight, weary travelers might do some green laundry with laundry capsules made from captured carbon.

In 2010, Unilever, which produces over 400 household brands such as Omo, Ben and Jerry’s and Dove, began a decades-long commitment to halve its environmental impact by 2030. One of the ingredients used to make foam in Omo (Persil) laundry capsules is fossil fuels. But on World Earth Day in 2021, Unilever launched a limited-edition capsule that used captured carbon instead of fossil fuels in a new process that makes the capsule 82 percent less carbon intensive. Unilever aims to achieve net zero emissions from its product line by 2039.

Even with the volume of removal, storage and creative ways carbon is being repurposed, carbon neutrality remains out of reach. The 2021 Global Status of Carbon Capture and Storage Report estimates that in order to reach mid-century goals, the number of carbon-capture facilities would have to increase by 100 times. There are currently 27.

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Growing a hydrogen economy

The hydrogen economy, it seems, has forever been on the way. But is the time finally here?

The term was coined by John Bockris in a 1970 speech at the General Motors Technical Center to refer to an infrastructure for delivering hydrogen energy to economic sectors that are hard to decarbonize, such as oil refining and manufacturing steel and cement, as well as fueling long-haul transportation on the ground and in the air.

The appeal of hydrogen as a way to decarbonize these industries is apparent: Hydrogen is renewable; it’s easy on the power grid, produced and stored during times of excess of renewable energy and readily available during peak demand; it can reduce pollution (it generates only heat and water when burned); it can be produced locally from a range of materials; and by 2050 it could provide jobs for up to 30 million people with revenues of U.S.$2.5 trillion a year, according to a report from global management consultant McKinsey.

IMAGE: Unsplash
Productions hubs are key

Establishing hydrogen oases, also called hubs, clusters or valleys, is perhaps the most essential aspect of the UAE hydrogen strategy, says Steve Griffiths, senior vice president of Research and Development at Khalifa University. But balancing supply and demand through production clusters is the most significant challenge in scaling hydrogen, Griffiths says. Read more›››

“Clusters allow for clean hydrogen production to be matched with industrial hydrogen off-takers with minimal need for hydrogen storage and transport, both of which can substantially increase the cost of hydrogen for final use,” he says. “Technologies that are proven, or nearly proven, can be deployed into clusters immediately while research and development efforts continue to improve technologies across the hydrogen value chain.”

Griffiths says he expects the top industries using clean hydrogen through 2030 will be refining, chemicals, iron and steel and, in the UAE, aluminum. “Beyond 2030, continued research and development will enable hydrogen to be commercially viable for extended applications, particularly sustainable aviation fuels and maritime shipping fuels,” Griffiths says.

Research and development activities at Khalifa University may also support the overseas export of hydrogen by ammonia and other, more novel, vectors, he says.

“We established the Research and Innovation Center on CO2 and Hydrogen at Khalifa University to make such future innovations possible. That is, we pursue the cutting edge of hydrogen research while supporting development and implementation projects with partners like ADNOC and Emirates Steel Arkan,” Griffiths says.‹‹‹ Read less

But not much has happened to move the technology toward its long-imagined place as a major player in the world’s energy-transition process. That is, until the past five years or so.

“Hydrogen has been produced for a long time for its use in refineries and fertilizers, and technology has evolved to improve the efficiency of them,” explains Lourdes Vega, director of the Research and Innovation Center on CO2 and Hydrogen (RICH Center) at Khalifa University. “What is different now is the interest for using hydrogen as a long term energy storage technology, combined with renewable energy, and for its use to decarbonize hard to abate sectors. This can be accomplished with low carbon hydrogen or green hydrogen and this is where the technology needs to be improved to reduce its cost.”

As countries, businesses and organizations seek to reach the Paris Agreement target of 1.5 C global warming, attention has turned again to the hydrogen-economy model to solve the problems that so far keep the hydrogen economy at bay: finding a reliable way to balance affordability with low greenhouse-gas emissions into the atmosphere.

Hydrogen is an important factor in most strategies devised by at least 75 countries that are seeking to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, according to a paper from academics at the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Additionally, hydrogen has been identified by the International Renewable Energy Agency as one of six technological avenues to achieve net-zero by 2050.

‘HUGE GROWTH STORY’

Among countries expressing an interest in hydrogen: A U.K. House of Commons committee issued a report in December 2022 on the future of hydrogen in the country. The report concluded that although hydrogen couldn’t be considered a panacea to the U.K.’s energy issues, it would certainly play a major role in sectors of the economy, becoming a “huge growth story” over the next 30 years.

Areas identified as best suited for hydrogen include those that are hard to electrify, such as parts of the rail network or heavy transportation and uses that don’t require extensive refueling networks, such as local bus services. The benefit to bus services, Vega says, is that vehicles can operate longer than those powered by electric batteries.

The sectors most likely to benefit from hydrogen (aside from such traditional areas as refineries, chemicals and fertilizers) are metallurgy, cement and heavy transportation, Vega says. “In addition, hydrogen can be used in the heat and power sector, replacing natural gas, with a huge potential market.” Furthermore, green hydrogen can be used, combined with CO2, to produce synthetic fuels such as methane or methanol, usually called e-methane or e-methanol.

And the United States in 2021 announced that the first program in its Energy Earthshots Initiative, aiming to accelerate advances in clean-energy technology, would focus on hydrogen. The Hydrogen Shot’s goal is to reduce the price of hydrogen by 80 percent to U.S.$1 per kilogram in a decade.

IMAGE: Freepik/Unsplash
A gift from the sea

Green hydrogen is the “cleanest” form of hydrogen, using renewable energy sources to split water into hydrogen and oxygen without any greenhouse-gas emissions. And a group of Australian researchers in early 2023 said they created it from seawater without expensive pre-treatment processes or catalysts. Read more›››

“We have split natural seawater into oxygen and hydrogen with nearly 100 percent efficiency, to produce green hydrogen by electrolysis, using a non-precious and cheap catalyst in a commercial electrolyzer,” University of Adelaide’s Shizhang Qiao says via the university’s newsroom.

The team used seawater as a feedstock without any expensive pre-treatments processes such as reverse osmosis, purification or alkalization, Qiao says. The team in its paper for Nature Energy points to seawater as an “almost infinite resource” for hydrogen generation.

Researchers at Khalifa University led by Faisal Al Marzooqi and TieJun Zhang are also working on techniques to generate hydrogen from industrial wastewater contaminated by heavy metals, wastewater from industrial and domestic laundries and seawater using solar energy.

It’s just a beginning, Al Marzooki cautions. “This research is at its very early stages,” he says. “It may take some time between five to 10 years, if enough resources are given to this area.” ‹‹‹ Read less

That price, as with everything, is critical.

The cost in money — and carbon produced — depends on how that hydrogen is made. (See: “Colors of Hydrogen.”) Greener forms are more expensive and therefore represent a small percentage of total hydrogen currently produced. In fact, most hydrogen produced today is made using fossil fuels (methane) and with no CO2 emissions controls; this “gray hydrogen” accounts for 2 percent of the world’s CO2 emissions. And the International Energy Agency predicts fossil fuels will remain the primary source of hydrogen for the United States, Europe and Japan through 2050.

Vega, however, has a more optimistic view, seeing sectors transition from gray to more blue and blue and green as technologies advance and costs come down.

UAE HAS PLANS

Fossil fuels are key to the UAE’s plans, announced in January 2022, to control 25 percent of the world’s hydrogen market using natural gas with CO2 capture (blue hydrogen) and green hydrogen. The nation’s Hydrogen Leadership Initiative pursues a research-and-development collaboration across industries, according to the Emirates News Agency, the UAE’s official news service. Targeted markets include Japan, South Korea, Germany and India. Emirates Global Aluminium, one of the largest companies in the UAE, joined the initiative in September 2022.

“The UAE sees hydrogen as a promising fuel for the future to achieve carbon neutrality and the UAE Net Zero by 2050 Strategic Initiative. Such partnerships will help accelerate the transition to clean and renewable energy,” UAE Minister of Energy and Infrastructure HE Suhail bin Mohammed Al Mazrouei says.

By 2031, according to the Ministry of Energy & Infrastructure’s UAE Energy Strategy 2050, updated in July 2023, the country plans to:

  • Develop a resilient hydrogen supply chain to support the growth of the local industry
  • Consolidate the UAE’s role as a leading global producer and supplier of low-carbon hydrogen
  • Promote innovation in industrial zones in the UAE
  • And establish a robust hydrogen economy that can support the country’s nationwide decarbonization efforts

Meanwhile, UAE Undersecretary for Energy and Petroleum Affairs H.E. Sharif Al Olama tells Reuters that the country plans to produce 1.4 million tons of hydrogen annually by 2031.

Of that number, UAE clean energy company Masdar is expected to produce 1 million tons of green hydrogen by 2031. The remaining 0.4 million tons will be blue hydrogen, produced using natural gas accompanied by CO2 capture and storage.

IMAGE: Unsplash
Decarbonizing diesel engines

Heavy industry emits about 6 billion tons of CO2 a year, about a sixth of the world’s total output. But a diesel-hydrogen engine from Australia nicknamed “baby number two” could help bring that number down. Read more›››

Engineers at the University of New South Wales say they’ve modified a conventional diesel engine to work on hydrogen and a small amount of diesel, reducing C02 emissions by more than 85 percent.

The key, Shawn Kook tells BBC.com, is to introduce the hydrogen into the fuel mix at the right moment. Otherwise, “it will create something that is explosive that will burn out the whole system.”

The team says diesel trucks and equipment in such industries as mining and agriculture could be retrofitted with the technology relatively quickly.‹‹‹ Read less

Al Olama tells the news agency that the 2031 goals include two “hydrogen oases” or production hubs, located in Ruwais and the Khalifa Industrial Zone Abu Dhabi (KIZAD). There will be five hubs by 2050, he says. This follows the Paris Mission Innovation on Clean Hydrogen’s suggestions to promote hydrogen valleys.

The UAE’s plans for at least a partial fossil-fuels-based hydrogen future seem to align with the low-carbon hydrogen developments that Daryl Wilson, executive director of Belgium-based advisory board the Hydrogen Council, says he expects to see across the globe.

“By low-carbon (hydrogen), we mean fossil-fuel-derived hydrogen with carbon capture and storage. Low-carbon hydrogen will be faster, cheaper and quicker to scale than renewable sources in regions such as North Africa,” says Wilson, whose group is made up of 132 energy, transport, industry and investment companies with an interest in building the hydrogen economy.

BUILDING AN INFRASTRUCTURE

Infrastructure for the hydrogen economy, however, is still in its early stages, Wilson says, adding that disruptions in energy markets brought by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have accelerated regional connection from North Africa to Europe.

“Already pipeline corridors have been proposed with an EU backbone, and routes through the Iberian Peninsula and north through Italy. Port terminal infrastructure is under development as we contemplate moving large quantities of hydrogen and its derivatives from sources in Australia to Japan and Korea,” he tells KUST Review.

Vega, however, sees the changes coming more as a result of accelerating consciousness about the need for independent energy sources that can be produced using local resources in a sustainable manner.

But while materials may be new, the infrastructure will be similar to what the energy industry has used in the past. And that’s good news, says the Hydrogen Council’s Wilson.

The policies should apply on a more global level to truly develop and implement the hydrogen economy. Clear policies will help investors and hence, industry to move.

Lourdes Vega

“Ammonia, e-kerosene and methanol will make a contribution as carriers with seaborne trade. From a technical point of view, there are many points of commonality with natural-gas-pipeline development, (liquefied natural gas) cryogenic transport and bulk carrier development for the sea,” Wilson says. “The scale in hydrogen is new ground, but the underlying engineering is not new to industry.”

Well, yes and no, says KU’s Vega.

“Hydrogen and natural gas are both known to industry, but they are not exactly the same, neither the technologies and infrastructure to produce, transportation and storage,” she says.

Governments, however, play a critical role in developing the hydrogen future, Wilson says, “funding the green premium during the transition, providing a clear stable policy regime to support long-term investment decisions, and developing the tradable standards platforms.”

Development goes even beyond individual countries, Vega adds. “The policies should apply on a more global level to truly develop and implement the hydrogen economy. Clear policies will help investors and hence, industry to move.”

And when that hydrogen future finally arrives, it might not be visible to members of the public, who may ride on hydrogen-fueled buses oblivious to the infrastructure that supports them. But “they will experience the benefit of long-term stable cost and security of supply from local renewable energy sources – a very different feeling than the vulnerable uncertainty of our current sources of fossil-fuel energy,” Wilson says.