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Why hydrogen hubs are important
Today, almost all hydrogen is made in a carbon-intensive way and then put to use in a handful of industrial processes. But as the world transitions toward clean energy, hydrogen needs to be produced using climate-friendly methods — and in vastly greater quantities, for use in many more applications. Subscribe to receive Canary’s latest news
“We use over 10 million metric tons of hydrogen a year in this country for things like petroleum refining and ammonia production,” Jigar Shah, head of the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, said in an interview. Almost all of that hydrogen is made via methane steam reforming, which uses steam and pressure to break the bond between carbon and hydrogen in fossil gas — a process that emits significant amounts of carbon. “That hydrogen has to be decarbonized,” he said.
And then much more clean hydrogen will be needed in turn to decarbonize heavy transportation — think freight trucks, ships and planes — and additional industrial processes that currently cannot be electrified at commercial scale, including steelmaking and production of chemicals and cement. Hydrogen can also replace fossil gas as a fuel for power plants and fuel cells that can provide stable and carbon-free electricity output for an increasingly wind- and solar-powered grid. But switching to hydrogen as a climate strategy will only work if it can be made in ways that don’t emit carbon dioxide or methane.
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