Hydrogen

Hydrogen in the Energy Transition

RMI has been analyzing hydrogen’s role in a clean, resilient energy system for more than two decades. When produced cleanly, hydrogen can be a powerful decarbonization tool for sectors in urgent need of additional measures beyond direct electrification and efficiency. It can also offer a crucial pathway for energy security.

Hydrogen can be used as both a fuel, a chemical feedstock, and a catalyst, replacing fossil fuels such as coal, fossil gas, and oil in heavy industry and long-haul transport. But hydrogen is “clean” only if carbon emissions and leakage from its production, storage, distribution, and use are low. A well-regulated clean hydrogen economy based on transparent emissions accounting and certification is needed to ensure hydrogen’s climate benefit outweighs potential negative impacts. In the near-term, decision-makers will also need to make sure hydrogen is channeled to the highest-impact uses.  With this transparency and deliberate prioritization in place, communities, companies, and governments can focus on accelerating the deployment of clean hydrogen to tackle some of the world’s thorniest decarbonization challenges. For a deeper dive into RMI’s position on hydrogen, check out this article.

From Innovation to Deployment

Currently, low-emissions hydrogen is expensive and not widely available. Several factors will help make or have already made clean hydrogen a cost-competitive replacement for fossil fuels in crucial industries. We believe hydrogen is reaching a series of tipping points in production and demand, which will create large opportunities for those who lead in the transition.

To enable hydrogen adoption at the rate we need to reach our climate goals, RMI is helping create an enabling environment for this new clean energy source. RMI’s global climate tech accelerator Third Derivative nurtures and connects innovative hydrogen startups with subject matter experts offering crucial technology, market, and policy insights. RMI’s Green Hydrogen Catapult, a coalition of ambitious companies deploying clean hydrogen in the most emissions-intensive industries, is providing a platform for market education, demand aggregation, and direct support for first-mover projects.

We are starting to see the results. While just a few years ago the largest hydrogen facility under construction was 20 megawatts (MW) in capacity; today, projects ten times that size are under development, many led by Catapult members.

Making Low-Emissions Hydrogen a Responsible, Resilient Solution

The development and deployment of low-emissions hydrogen require systems-level thinking. Making hydrogen necessitates large amounts of energy and significant capital expenditure to build out its value chain. Addressing both considerations requires the mobilization and coordination of a vast range of actors: public and private, local and national, incumbents and disruptors. Clean hydrogen’s value to the energy transition is inseparable from decisions made by the industries that supply it, the communities that host it, and the companies that will use it.

Getting low-emissions hydrogen to the industries that need it to decarbonize will require infrastructure. These assets take time to develop and have a long operational life, meaning decisions taken today will commit us to pathways that stretch past 2050. RMI is working on the challenge of optimizing and planning pipes and wires that could deliver the lowest cost, lowest carbon hydrogen by engaging all stakeholders and building consensus on what the critical challenges are and what we can do to address them.

Clean hydrogen development must learn from the energy systems of the past and ensure that communities where projects are sited are integrated in planning and receive the benefits that they deem most valuable. To center community voices in project design, RMI is working with hydrogen project developers and local communities towards meaningful two-way engagement and responsive benefits, with a special focus on remediating historic underinvestment and legacy pollution in low-income and BIPOC communities.

Hydrogen’s Role in Industrial Decarbonization

Crucial parts of our economy will be difficult to electrify due to cost and technological limitations. Hard-to-electrify industries can and should reduce their emissions through smart design, circularity, behavioral change, and increasing energy efficiency. But if we are to reach net zero, these sectors must be decarbonized immediately by additional means.

Through our years of deep techno-economic analysis and collaboration with industry-first movers, we believe low-emissions hydrogen and its derivatives are scalable for use in industry. It should be used to quickly displace the coking coal and natural gas in industries without alternatives and where there is the highest emissions abatement potential, namely in the steel, aviation, shipping, and fertilizer sectors. RMI is educating and bringing together industrial consumers in these sectors to spur hydrogen adoption and catalyze supply chains to achieve deep decarbonization.

Hydrogen Policy

Policymakers are crucial to ensuring hydrogen efforts are concentrated in the highest-impact sectors with the most benefit for our climate and communities. Policy support for low-emissions hydrogen is essential to bringing confidence to the nascent market, helping to lower the initial costs of building new projects, and mitigating risk for companies procuring this new clean energy source. RMI is helping policymakers achieve these disparate goals by providing comprehensive and impartial analysis to decision makers and convening stakeholders for collective action.