Green Hydrogen

Something Green for St. Paddy’s Day

Picking up from my last entry about fusion, today I’m learning about green hydrogen. Green

hydrogen is defined as hydrogen produced by splitting water (H2O) into hydrogen and oxygen using renewable electricity. The process of splitting the water molecules is called electrolysis. This method uses electrical current to separate the hydrogen from the oxygen in water. The electricity used must be obtained from renewable sources for the whole process to be called “green” hydrogen.

The hydrogen that is then produced doesn’t emit carbon dioxide like fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and gas do. Here are some other benefits of green hydrogen:

- Easy to store: hydrogen is easy to store which means it doesn’t have to be used as soon as it’s produced and can be used for different purposes.

- Flexible uses: green hydrogen can be transformed into electricity or synthetic gas and used for electric vehicles, trucking, shipping, steel production, and other applications.

- Fuel cells: hydrogen fuel cells are energy efficient and re-charge quickly.

However, green hydrogen also has some negative aspects:

- Expensive: it can be relatively more costly to produce energy from green hydrogen relative to fossil fuel energy or simply renewable energy because production requires the use of renewable energy (which in some instances costs more than fossil fuel energy) to conduct

electrolysis as an intermediate step before the hydrogen can be used for energy.

- High energy consumption: green hydrogen in general requires more energy than other fuels because you first need to use renewable energy to conduct electrolysis and then you have to do another process to use the hydrogen (as noted in the bullet above, it would be more efficient to use the renewable power directly).

- Safety issues: hydrogen is highly volatile and flammable and therefore extensive safety measures are needed when producing green hydrogen to avoid leakage and explosions.

Despite these negative aspects, green hydrogen is seen as a good source of carbon-free energy. The bottom line is that, with a ‘little bit of luck’ green hydrogen will be developed further as an alternative to fossil fuels.