Why hydrogen fuel cells have no future

5 reasons why hydrogen is the fuel of the future

Tracing its origins back to ancient Olympia, the Olympic torch an eternal symbol of the hallowed sporting event shone brightly in Japans capital during the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympic Games.

But when the flame was lit at Tokyos New National Stadium, it was hydrogen fuel cells, not fossil fuels, that sustained the fire.

The 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympic Games was powered by hydrogen technology, from the use of hydrogen cells for the electricity supply in the Athletes Village to the building of over 160 hydrogen stations for fuel cell vehicles.

As an early pioneer in embracing and developing hydrogen-powered technology, Japan is on a quest to reduce emissions to less than a tenth of current levels by the year 2050.

The benefits of the technology have not gone unnoticed by the international energy community, including Japan, where hydrogen took center stage at the 2019 G20 Summit.

From rendering freight transportation carbon-free to the convenient use of portable hydrogen capsules, here are five reasons why hydrogen is a secure, clean and affordable alternative.

1. Zero emissions on the roads

Heavily dependent on fossil fuels for energy, the transportation sector contributes to a staggering 20 percent of carbon dioxide emissions globally.

Hydrogen-powered vehicles could be the answer to this problem, as fuel cell vehicles, which use hydrogen gas to power an electric motor, emit only heat and water as by-products.

In China, hydrogen-powered transportation is gaining traction, with over 1,500 fuel cell vehicles currently plying the streets. Wan Gang, Chinas Science and Technology Minister and the visionary leader of its electric vehicle economy, has predicted that hydrogen-powered vehicles will be the future of transportation not just in China, but also the world.

Hydrogen-powered technology can also play a significant role indecarbonizing long-haul road freight, given that heavy vehicle lorries produce almost 2.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually.

Global logistics giant DHL and electric vehicle start-up StreetScooter have teamed up to launch the H2 Panel Van, the worlds first 4.25-ton electric vehicle with an added fuel cell that allows it to travel up to 500 kilometers.

As part of its mission to green the logistics industry, DHL plans to have 100 of such fuel cell delivery vehicles on the roads between 2020 and 2021.

2. Longer driving range

With a relatively short refueling time, vehicles with hydrogen fuel cells can also travel for longer on lesser energy.

In China, hydrogen-powered buses can drive beyond 500 kilometers on a full tank of hydrogen a considerable jump from the 200 kilometers that electric buses typically achieve. Hydrogen-powered cars in Europe are traveling even farther, up to 800 kilometers or more, on a single tank.

Another example is Toyotas leading hydrogen-powered car, the Toyota Mirai, which can complete a 3,500-kilometer journey from Northern to Southern Europe and back on just 40 kilograms of hydrogen.

While the costs of producing hydrogen have been cited as a barrier to widespread adoption, companies like Electriq Global are coming up with innovative ways to tackle the challenge.

The Israeli-Australian firms new hydrogen-based technology allows drivers to travel up to twice the usual distance while paying less than half the price of gasoline. The best part? The technology is entirely emission-free.

3. Decarbonizing industrial sectors

Owing to the large amounts of fossil fuels used, the steel-making and chemicals production industries have long been regarded as emissions-heavy sectors.

But hydrogen-powered technology is slowly changing things.

The petrochemical and chemicals sector, which produced up to 1.25 gross tonnage of carbon emissions in 2017, is turning to electrolytic hydrogen as a substitute for fossil fuels.

Within the steelmaking industry, the development of breakthrough technologies has led to a large number of promising projects, including a steelmaking factory in Hamburg, which uses an innovative hydrogen-based process to produce steel with low carbon emissions.

In Sweden, steel production firm Hybrit is developing the worlds first fossil-free hydrogen-powered steel plant that aims to use biofuels to produce iron ore pellets.

As more industries embrace hydrogen energy, the cost of producing it from renewable energy could become more affordable by 2030, said the International Energy Agency in a recent report.

4. Easy to store, easy to use

One key benefit of hydrogen is the ease at which it can be stored, shipped, and used. This means that countries with little space for wind and solar equipment will still be able to benefit from carbon-free energy.

Energy companies are constantly finding effective ways to store and harness the potential of hydrogen. In Oxfordshire, United Kingdom, technological giant Siemens has launched the worlds first energy storage demonstrator, which can store and transport carbon fuel safely and effectively.

Hydrogen fuel is so versatile that in 2016, a Japanese research team designed and created hydrogen capsules that allow consumers to store hydrogen batteries in their pockets and use them for day-to-day activities.

5. Successful use in space travel

Contrary to popular belief, the use of hydrogen energy is not new. Hydrogen was used by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as a rocket propellant and fuel cell unit to operate auxiliary power units in space since the early 1960s.

That same decade, internationally acclaimed American industrial designer Brooks Stevens launched the Utopia Concept, a series of hydrogen fuel cell propulsion cars that revolutionized the motor industry.

But the most memorable use of hydrogen has to be the Apollo moon landing missions in 1967 when NASA used 363 feet tall valves fueled by liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen, and kerosene to power its rockets.

Named the Saturn V rockets, they were, and still are, considered to be the most powerful rockets ever built.

The Future of Hydrogen

The time is right to tap into hydrogens potential to play a key role in a clean, secure and affordable energy future.At the request of the government of Japan under its G20 presidency, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has produced this landmark report to analyse the current state of play for hydrogen and to offer guidance on its future development. The report finds that clean hydrogen is currently enjoying unprecedented political and business momentum, with the number of policies and projects around the world expanding rapidly. It concludes that now is the time to scale up technologies and bring down costs to allow hydrogen to become widely used. The pragmatic and actionable recommendations to governments and industry that are provided will make it possible to take full advantage of this increasing momentum.

Hydrogen can help tackle various critical energy challenges.It offers ways to decarbonise a range of sectors including long-haul transport, chemicals, and iron and steel where it is proving difficult to meaningfully reduce emissions. It can also help improve air quality and strengthen energy security. Despite very ambitious international climate goals, global energy-related CO₂emissions reached an all time high in 2018. Outdoor air pollution also remains a pressing problem, with around 3million people dying prematurely each year.

Hydrogen is versatile.Technologies already available today enable hydrogen to produce, store, move and use energy in different ways. A wide variety of fuels are able to produce hydrogen, including renewables, nuclear, natural gas, coal and oil. It can be transported as a gas by pipelines or in liquid form by ships, much like liquefied natural gas (LNG). It can be transformed into electricity and methane to power homes and feed industry, and into fuels for cars, trucks, ships and planes.

Hydrogen can enable renewables to provide an even greater contribution.It has the potential to help with variable output from renewables, like solar photovoltaics (PV) and wind, whose availability is not always well matched with demand. Hydrogen is one of the leading options for storing energy from renewables and looks promising to be a lowest-cost option for storing electricity over days, weeks or even months. Hydrogen and hydrogen-based fuels can transport energy from renewables over long distances from regions with abundant solar and wind resources, such as Australia or Latin America, to energy-hungry cities thousands of kilometres away.

There have been false starts for hydrogen in the past; this time could be different.The recent successes of solar PV, wind, batteries and electric vehicles have shown that policy and technology innovation have the power to build global clean energy industries. With a global energy sector in flux, the versatility of hydrogen is attracting stronger interest from a diverse group of governments and companies. Support is coming from governments that both import and export energy as well as renewable electricity suppliers, industrial gas producers, electricity and gas utilities, automakers, oil and gas companies, major engineering firms, and cities. Investments in hydrogen can help foster new technological and industrial development in economies around the world, creating skilled jobs.

Hydrogen can be used much more widely.Today, hydrogen is used mostly in oil refining and for the production of fertilisers. For it to make a significant contribution to clean energy transitions, it also needs to be adopted in sectors where it is almost completely absent at the moment, such as transport, buildings and power generation.

However, clean, widespread use of hydrogen in global energy transitions faces several challenges:

• Producing hydrogen from low-carbon energy is costly at the moment. IEA analysis finds that the cost of producing hydrogen from renewable electricity could fall 30% by 2030 as a result of declining costs of renewables and the scaling up of hydrogen production. Fuel cells, refuelling equipment and electrolysers (which produce hydrogen from electricity and water) can all benefit from mass manufacturing.
• The development of hydrogen infrastructure is slow and holding back widespread adoption.Hydrogen prices for consumers are highly dependent on how many refuelling stations there are, how often they are used and how much hydrogen is delivered per day. Tackling this is likely to require planning and coordination that brings together national and local governments, industry and investors.
• Hydrogen is almost entirely supplied from natural gas and coal today.Hydrogen is already with us at industrial scale all around the world, but its production is responsible for annual CO2emissions equivalent to those of Indonesia and the United Kingdom combined. Harnessing this existing scale on the way to a clean energy future requires both the capture of CO2from hydrogen production from fossil fuels and greater supplies of hydrogen from clean electricity.
• Regulations currently limit the development of a clean hydrogen industry.Government and industry must work together to ensure existing regulations are not an unnecessary barrier to investment. Trade will benefit from common international standards for the safety of transporting and storing large volumes of hydrogen and for tracing the environmental impacts of different hydrogen supplies.

The IEA has identified four near-term opportunities to boost hydrogen on the path towards its clean, widespread use. Focusing on these real-world springboards could help hydrogen achieve the necessary scale to bring down costs and reduce risks for governments and the private sector. While each opportunity has a distinct purpose, all four also mutually reinforce one another.

1. Make industrial ports the nerve centres for scaling up the use of clean hydrogen.Today, much of the refining and chemicals production that uses hydrogen based on fossil fuels is already concentrated in coastal industrial zones around the world, such as the North Sea in Europe, the Gulf Coast in NorthAmerica and southeastern China. Encouraging these plants to shift to cleaner hydrogen production would drive down overall costs. These large sources of hydrogen supply can also fuel ships and trucks serving the ports and power other nearby industrial facilities like steel plants.
2. Build on existing infrastructure, such as millions of kilometres of natural gas pipelines.Introducing clean hydrogen to replace just 5% of the volume of countries natural gas supplies would significantly boost demand for hydrogen and drive down costs.
3. Expand hydrogen in transport through fleets, freight and corridors.Powering high-mileage cars, trucks and buses to carry passengers and goods along popular routes can make fuel-cell vehicles more competitive.
4. Launch the hydrogen trades first international shipping routes.Lessons from the successful growth of the global LNG market can be leveraged. International hydrogen trade needs to start soon if it is to make an impact on the global energy system.

International cooperation is vital to accelerate the growth of versatile, clean hydrogen around the world.If governments work to scale up hydrogen in a coordinated way, it can help to spur investments in factories and infrastructure that will bring down costs and enable the sharing of knowledge and best practices. Trade in hydrogen will benefit from common international standards. As the global energy organisation that covers all fuels and all technologies, the IEA will continue to provide rigorous analysis and policy advice to support international cooperation and to conduct effective tracking of progress in the years ahead.

As a roadmap for the future, we are offering seven key recommendations to help governments, companies and others to seize this chance to enable clean hydrogen to fulfil its long-term potential.