As renewable energy sources like wind and solar ramp up, they can be used to sustainably generate hydrogen fuel.
As renewable energy sources like wind and solar ramp up, they can be used to sustainably generate hydrogen fuel. But implementing such a strategy on a large scale requires land and water dedicated to this purpose.
Recent research in Nature Communications led by Carnegie’s Lorenzo Rosa and visiting scholar Davide Tonelli from ULB and UCLouvain analyzes the challenges involved in sustainably meeting different hydrogen demand scenarios on a country-by-country basis.
Electrolysis is a method for producing hydrogen that involves splitting water into oxygen gas and hydrogen gas, which can be stored and used as fuel or feedstock to produce useful chemicals. This process can be powered by fossil fuels like coal or natural gas, or by renewable energy sources like wind and solar—both of which require space to deploy.
“Today, hydrogen is mostly used in refineries and the production of chemicals,” Rosa explained. “But in the future, demand for hydrogen could increase more than fivefold, due to adoption of hydrogen or hydrogen-derived products in transportation, industrial heating methods, and steel manufacturing techniques. There is an opportunity to meet this increased demand with sustainably produced hydrogen.”
Read more at Carnegie Institution for Science
