Alberta, Canada’s energy powerhouse, accounts for the vast majority of the nation’s crude oil, natural gas, and NGL production. There is a lot of hydrogen locked up in all of those hydrocarbons and Alberta’s provincial government recently laid out a seven-part plan to expand the production and use of “blue” hydrogen — produced from natural gas via steam methane reforming with carbon capture and sequestration — as part of a broader effort to bolster its existing natural gas sector and energy transition cred. In today’s RBN blog, we explore Alberta’s proposed hydrogen strategy.
We have been expanding on the hydrogen theme in our RBN blogs for more than a year now. Since we began our initial excursion in our three-part Help! series in November 2020, we have considered the basics of the hydrogen market such as its size, end uses, and production economics. We followed that up by leveling the playing field in terms of understanding all of the energy and volume equivalent units for hydrogen (see I Did It), and have since explored various angles of this unique market, such as what is involved in the production of hydrogen (You Can Make It If You Try), low-carbon production of hydrogen (Start Me Up), and its use in transportation (Come Clean).
What has become clear from all of those blogs is that building an industry — let alone an economy — around hydrogen is going to be an immense challenge, and that a multi-faceted approach will be needed if hydrogen is to play a significant role in the energy transition. Expanding the scale of economic production of “blue” hydrogen in particular and ensuring that there is a concurrent expansion in hydrogen demand in both domestic use and potential exports will be key if it is to move beyond its current, relatively limited uses in the hydrocarbon and petrochemical industries.
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