Help!

When it comes to hydrogen, it’s fair to say that hard data on what it costs to produce the fuel is difficult to come by, particularly for “green” hydrogen. If you’ve followed our current work on the fuel, we hope you know at least a few more facts than the average person on the street, though we must admit we’ve really just been scratching the surface so far. Diving deeper into the nitty gritty of hydrogen production costs and economics is not for the faint of heart, but it’s necessary, unless you are of the mind to dismiss the fuel altogether. (We are not.) While it’s very early days for many production pathways to hydrogen, especially green hydrogen, time will tell if the costs to produce it follow a downward trend similar to those for producing hydrocarbons from shale or remain at levels so high the current hydrogen bubble bursts like others before it. We’re optimistic the former may pan out, and in today’s blog we continue our series on hydrogen with a look at the factors impacting production costs.

Based on the response we received to our first-ever hydrogen blog last fall, it’s fair to say we didn’t waste this space on a fringe subject. To be honest, the level of interest in hydrogen far exceeded our expectations, and suggested that we might have even been a little bit late to the party — but fashionably so, if you ask us. In the weeks since then, we’ve spent a fair amount of time distilling the tremendous amount of news flow and reading material that was either sent our way or popped up in the daily news feeds. You could go a lot of different directions with hydrogen and it’s still very easy, in our view, to get lost in the forest of green energy technology. So, as we are wont to do, we have stuck to our simple approach of tackling this fuel just like we do with hydrocarbons, and we are first turning our attention upstream. Today, we continue our series on hydrogen with a look at the top production methods for the fuel.

Everywhere you look these days, someone is talking about hydrogen and, if you’re not well-versed in emerging technologies aimed at reducing carbon, you may not know what any of it means. A quick internet search isn’t much help either, as you will likely get lost quickly in discussions of fuel cell efficiency and electrolysis technology developments, not to mention the various “colors” of hydrogen and the myriad of ways it can be stored and transported. Don’t bother turning to your traditional green energy gurus either, as hydrogen is just one of many competing approaches to reducing the world’s carbon footprint, and electric vehicle folks like Elon Musk aren’t big fans. All the same, hydrogen news and investment plans seem to proliferate daily, and understanding this fuel — which, by the way, is not new to the energy space — seems prudent. At least that’s our view, which is why we today start a series to help us hydrocarbon experts unravel the mysteries behind the recent hydrogen ruckus.