“Making green hydrogen a global trade commodity is a fundamental prerequisite to accelerating the transition to a more sustainable system based on renewables in an era of high energy and commodity prices, coupled with an inefficient energy system,” said Francesco La Camera, IRENA Director-General, at the Fifth Meeting of the Collaborative Framework on Green Hydrogen this week.
The summit gave IRENA members a chance to talk about their ambitions for international green hydrogen and derivatives commerce, as well as the hurdles they faced in getting from announcements to projects.
Mr. La Camera stated hydrogen may help reduce 10% of global CO2 emissions from energy by 2050 and achieve 12% of final energy consumption, citing IRENA’s flagship World Energy Transitions Outlook Report for 2022. “Global trade may provide a fourth of this hydrogen.” This contrasts sharply with the current scenario, in which hydrogen is seldom exchanged across borders due to insufficient transportation infrastructure and is largely used where it is generated.”
The Collaborative Framework on Green Hydrogen, co-facilitated by Morocco and the European Commission, saw a high level of participation from private actors and government representatives from member countries, who discussed the role of international hydrogen trade in strengthening energy security while speeding up the decarbonization of hard-to-decarbonize sectors. Participants also examined the major roadblocks to worldwide green hydrogen project development and commerce.
The occasion commemorated the release of the “Worldwide Hydrogen Trade to Meet the 1.5°C Climate Goal: Green Hydrogen Cost and Potential” paper, which uses geospatial analysis to look at the global cost of development of green hydrogen between 2030 and 2050. It calculates the potential for green hydrogen generation based on solar and wind resources, taking into account exclusion zones including protected regions, forests, wetlands, urban areas, slopes, and water shortages. This paper demonstrates that the capacity to manufacture low-cost green hydrogen exists on all continents and surpasses our planet’s energy use by an order of magnitude.
