Green hydrogen from renewable energies should only be competitive in a few years. But the Ukraine war is clearly accelerating the change.
Because hydrogen from renewable energies was more than twice as expensive as hydrogen from fossil natural gas, experts did not expect a breakthrough for this future technology for another five to ten years. Since the price of gas has risen to a new record level, however, sustainable hydrogen is now paying for itself much faster than expected – and could thus significantly accelerate the ramp-up of the hydrogen economy.
“The change is already here. Wherever the production of green power is cheap, for example with hydropower in Scandinavia or with lots of wind and sun in Namibia, power-to-X products like green ammonia are already cheaper than the fossil alternative,” explains hydrogen expert Michael Sterner of the Technical University of Regensburg.
Analysts at Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) go even one step further: according to the experts’ latest calculations, green hydrogen is already cheaper than fossil hydrogen from natural gas in parts of Europe, the Middle East and Africa. According to BNEF, one kilogram of gray hydrogen currently costs $6.71 in these regions, compared with $4.84 to $6.68 per kilogram for green hydrogen.
