Investing in hydrogen
Development of strategies or plans to produce or use hydrogen
“Maritime Hydrogen Fuel Cell unit” by SandiaLabs is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Many companies and governments are looking to hydrogen as a replacement energy source for fossil fuels. This is, at the surface level, an adaptive coping strategy with the potential to be transformative depending on eventual uptake of hydrogen in the energy mix. Actors are investing in hydrogen in two ways. First, some national and regional governments are developing strategies and plans to develop hydrogen economies. This anticipates that there will be high demand for hydrogen as transitions progress. Second, some companies that have high energy needs (e.g. steel companies) are looking to convert their operations to use hydrogen as an energy source.
The extent to which a switch to hydrogen is truly an adaptive or transformative strategy depends on what hydrogen is made from. Hydrogen is not an energy source but rather a carrier of energy. At present, much hydrogen is made from natural gas and not from renewable energy. If hydrogen uptake is strong but continues to be made largely from natural gas, this will still be a carbon-intensive activity and investments in hydrogen will effectively be resistance activities.
Further reading
European Commission on hydrogen.
Funding
The CINTRAN project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 884539. The sole responsibility for the content of this website lies with the authors and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of CINEA or other EU agencies or bodies.