gray hydrogen

None of us knows with any certainty how big a role hydrogen will ultimately play in helping the U.S. and the rest of the world decarbonize. Sure, some true believers are convinced H2 is the next big thing, but even they must acknowledge the economic and other challenges associated with scaling up the production of “green” or “blue” hydrogen. Do we really want to devote the energy from thousands of wind turbines or many square miles of solar panels to produce relatively small volumes of green H2 from water via electrolysis? And is blue hydrogen — produced by breaking natural gas into hydrogen and carbon dioxide, then capturing and sequestering the CO2 — really a solution considering efficiency losses and the fact that only about 50% of the CO2 from steam methane reforming (SMR) units is actually snared? Which brings us to Air Products & Chemicals’ newly announced final investment decision (FID) on a $4.5 billion complex in Louisiana that will use a proprietary process — and not SMR — to produce what you might call deep-blue hydrogen and capture and sequester 95% of the resulting CO2. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss the project and its implications.

A couple of weeks ago, Shell announced a large-scale carbon capture and sequestration initiative at its Scotford refinery complex near Edmonton, AB. It’s one of the largest recent efforts to marry hydrogen production with CCS — an increasingly popular solution informally referred to as “blue” hydrogen. Shell is not alone. Across North America, the idea of capturing carbon dioxide to clean up our collective act is quickly gaining momentum and support. Whether we’re talking about refineries, ammonia plants, steam crackers, ethanol plants, or any other carbon-generating industrial process, capturing the CO2 — making the process “blue” — is seen by many as a way to make significant progress toward climate goals without over-burdening governments or consumers with the sky-high costs associated with some of the more technically challenging energy transition technologies. Today, we discuss the energy industry’s embrace of carbon capture solutions and how it could shape our energy future.

With all the hype about hydrogen you hear these days, you’d think the gas was just discovered yesterday. But, of course, it’s been around for a while — like back to the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago. It does a nice job powering the sun and, when combined with oxygen, provides another building block of life on our planet: water. And that’s not all. For decades, a lot of hydrogen has been used as industrial feedstock to produce low-sulfur refined products, ammonia, methanol, and other useful stuff. However, this hydrogen production isn’t “green,” the color code for the highly exalted hydrogen produced from zero-carbon sources. No, most of the hydrogen used today goes by the drab hue of “gray” and is generally ignored by the carbon-neutral buzz that permeates the decarbonization dialogue. It shouldn’t be disregarded, though. Over 13 Bcf/d of this gray hydrogen is produced on purpose or as a byproduct each day, more than the volumetric equivalent of all Permian natural gas production. And if the carbon dioxide produced along with that hydrogen is stored permanently underground, then gray hydrogen magically becomes “blue” — almost as good as green. Today, we begin an exploration of the gray hydrogen market, and how it has the potential to impact decarbonization goals far more than green hydrogen over the next decade.

In the world of public equities, nothing speaks relevance like a PowerPoint slide in the earnings call and conference decks that companies put together for analysts and investors. If a topic’s not important, then it probably didn’t “make the deck” — or even the appendix, for that matter. As consultants, we at RBN are familiar with this concept and we’ve been watching for some time to see just how long it would take hydrogen, one of our favorite recent subjects, to make its way into the slide-deck line-ups at some of the largest energy companies. Well, that time has arrived, with two energy stalwarts prominently featuring 2021’s darling subject over the last few days. However, with a new topic comes a need to put things in context. No problem, we are here to help on that. Today, we continue our series on H2 with a look at some recent hydrogen-focused slides from ExxonMobil and Enterprise Products Partners.