Hydrogen energy helps global energy governance out of the predicament

The Swedish Energy Agency submitted a proposal for a national hydrogen energy strategy late last year, and already has projects for green hydrogen energy for steelmaking
.
Gulf oil and gas exporting countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar have also formulated hydrogen energy strategies, using abundant fossil fuel reserves to produce hydrogen energy as a supplement to the main source of domestic electricity and energy exports
.
From a global perspective, the major member states of Europe and the International Energy Agency have regarded the development of hydrogen energy as a medium and long-term industrial focus, and expanded the investment and trade of hydrogen energy to ensure energy supply security while reducing carbon emissions and realizing the transition to clean energy.
transformation
.
However, suppliers need to plan to produce zero-emission green hydrogen from the very beginning of the project, otherwise developing hydrogen energy will only become a carbon reduction scam
.

Hydrogen energy is widely used in production and life, and is in line with the development trend of electrification
.
For example, hydrogen can be used in fuel cells and internal combustion engines to fuel future transportation needs, such as hydrogen-powered trucks
.
Hydrogen is also an energy-efficient source of energy in heavy industries such as steelmaking and other industrial processes
.
In addition, many countries have mixed 20% or more of hydrogen into natural gas pipelines and equipment for daily household energy use
.
Liquefied hydrogen will also play an important role in energy storage
.
Hydrogen energy has become the core of many countries to achieve net zero emission goals and energy transformation, and it is also a possible path for countries to improve their industrial capacity and increase employment
.

According to the source of production, hydrogen can be divided into green hydrogen, blue hydrogen, gray hydrogen, black hydrogen and clean hydrogen
.
Gray hydrogen is produced in the same way as blue hydrogen, but without attempting to capture the carbon dioxide produced as a by-product
.
Grey hydrogen is currently the most common form of hydrogen energy
.
Black or brown hydrogen is hydrogen made using black or brown coal and is the most environmentally harmful type of hydrogen
.
Sources say Australia has been investing in producing more brown hydrogen from lignite and exporting it to Japan via liquefaction
.
The counterpart to grey hydrogen and black hydrogen is clean hydrogen, where carbon capture and storage steps are added to the production process, similar to the concept of "clean coal"
.
Energy and climate experts pointed out that if the production of hydrogen from fossil fuels is scaled, it will not be conducive to global carbon reduction, but only the transfer of carbon emissions
.

Researchers compared the greenhouse gas emissions and economic costs of hydrogen produced using fossil fuels and renewable energy sources and found that hydrogen production from fossil fuels produces more greenhouse gas emissions than expected because the carbon capture and storage process does not remove all greenhouse gases Gases such as methane, a leaky, hard-to-capture, and potent greenhouse gas
.
In terms of energy input-output ratio, burning more fossil fuels to produce cleaner hydrogen in the process is equivalent to "the harder you work, the more you fail"
.
And to capture more than 90 percent of the CO2, the economic cost would skyrocket
.
Because as carbon dioxide concentrations drop, capture also becomes more difficult
.

China is already the world's largest hydrogen producer, producing about 33 million tons a year, mostly from fossil fuels
.
The introduction of the "Hydrogen Energy Development Plan" shows that the future direction of China's hydrogen energy strategy can only be green hydrogen
.
China already has the world's largest renewable energy power generation capacity, which provides preliminary conditions for the development of green hydrogen energy.
In the next 3 to 5 years, hydrogen energy will become the core of China to ensure energy supply security and reduce carbon emissions
.
The main pressure for the current development of green hydrogen is to reduce costs
.
Green hydrogen has almost no carbon emissions in the production process, but the current cost is still high, twice that of traditional fuels such as gasoline and diesel
.

Research in European hydrogen investing countries such as France, Germany and Sweden has shown that it is possible to supply green hydrogen at the price of blue hydrogen
.
Compared with gray hydrogen and blue hydrogen, although green hydrogen is currently more expensive, it can be quickly reduced through incentives such as subsidies and taxes
.
And the technology to make grey and blue hydrogen is now mature, and new major technological advancements are unlikely to bring down costs
.
Especially in the context of insufficient natural gas supply and rising prices, green hydrogen will be cheaper to manufacture than grey hydrogen
.
The EU hydrogen cost is expected to fall below 1.
8 euros per kilogram by 2030
.
Therefore, the new hydrogen energy projects they are investing in and developing are mainly green hydrogen, although some hydrogen consumption still comes from imported blue hydrogen and grey hydrogen
.

In fact, any energy source has its own vulnerabilities and advantages
.
Cleaner, safer and more efficient energy has always been the pursuit of mankind, but some countries are always at the forefront, and there are always some countries that still have to sacrifice local ecology and environment in exchange for basic food and clothing life
.
If human society is regarded as an indivisible system, global energy governance needs to fully guarantee the free flow of energy resources, and allocate and redistribute resources as much as possible according to the resource conditions of various regions and the needs of the international market
.

In the critical period of global energy re-distribution, only when this phased, staggered and stepped energy transition and energy governance model becomes a global consensus, can there be real hope to solve the challenge of global warming and achieve sustainable development
.
Hydrogen energy will undoubtedly play a unique role in the field of global energy governance
.

(The author Sun Xia is an associate researcher at the Institute of International Studies, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences)