H2 Green Steel – The power of green hydrogen.
Holding great potential in powering everything from hard-to-abate sectors, including industrial manufacturing and heavy-duty transport, to balancing energy grids and heating homes, green hydrogen will play a key role in a decarbonized future.
More than 30 national governments have produced strategies aiming to accelerate decarbonization by investing in hydrogen, creating a new hydrogen economy – the EU, for example, is set to generate 1 million tons of renewable hydrogen a year by 2024, increasing to 10 million by the end of the decade.
By 2050, hydrogen use will have grown sixfold from today’s levels and meet 10 percent of total final energy consumption, according to Net Zero by 2050, the International Energy Agency´s Roadmap for the global energy sector. This is all supplied from low-carbon sources. By that time, Goldman Sachs also estimates that the potential global market could be worth US$11.7 trillion.
Green hydrogen is hydrogen produced using fossil-free electricity. It is clean, leaving no residues, carbon dioxide, or carbon atoms, making it unique as a chemical element.
Therefore, the green hydrogen of the future will be vital as a means of decarbonizing parts of the economy that are not easily electrified and as an enabler of industrial transformations, with steel production as one of the key areas where green hydrogen is expected to be a cost-competitive and sustainable alternative within a decade.
And it is not only an enabler of decarbonization, but also a flexible energy carrier that will play an important role in the future of energy storage, which is key in mitigating climate change.
While energy produced from renewable energy sources including solar and wind can be difficult to store long-term using solutions such as batteries, hydrogen allows longer-term storage by converting electricity into hydrogen.
Today, steel production accounts for about 7 percent of global carbon emissions annually, sending large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But green hydrogen-based production offers an opportunity to decarbonize the steel industry and make the process completely emissions-free.
H2 Green Steel will use green hydrogen produced with fossil-free energy, holding one of the world’s largest electrolysis plants as an integrated part of our steel production facility in Boden. Large-scale green hydrogen production will be an enabler in the transition of heavy industry towards sustainable operations.
As governments are mapping out paths to phase out fossil fuels and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, green hydrogen will be crucial in achieving climate targets.
Given the wide range of potential applications for hydrogen, it will play a key role in cutting emissions in various industries and for various technologies – from mobility, including vehicles, heavy trucks and aviation, to the natural gas industry.
At H2 Green Steel, we want to show the world that producing green hydrogen at a large scale and at an affordable price is possible.
The power of green hydrogen, December 14, 2021