The anticipated dramatic ramp-up in hydrogen projects has not yet materialised. While many more projects are being built, others face delays and cancellations. Can innovation help?
As we confront climate change, the importance of accelerating the shift to a clean energy system only increases. Some components of that system – like onshore wind and solar power – are mature, with only incremental development necessary as they scale up. Some – like nuclear fusion – are still in their infancy. Hydrogen, often seen as a ‘system glue’ for decarbonising difficult use cases and sectors, falls in between. While technologies like electrolysers and steam methane reformers (SMRs) have been industrialised for decades, other components of critical infrastructure have not yet caught up.
In many cases, we can deploy ‘good enough’ systems, but reaching energy system demands requires further innovation. Understanding this is key to how fast and on what scale hydrogen can be deployed because, in many instances, hydrogen is considerably more expensive than the technology or service it replaces. Energy pricing typically favours the cheapest option, ignoring externalities like climate-related disaster costs, which are borne by society. This challenge affects all clean energy technologies, but hydrogen’s high costs and product immaturity are particular obstacles.
One form of innovation is incremental, focused on reducing costs, improving reliability and simplifying use. At the other extreme, it is about invention – electrolysers that don’t rely on a membrane to separate hydrogen from oxygen, or radical new materials for solid-state hydrogen storage. Between these poles lies a wide spectrum of developments in system components, materials and operational methods.
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