Big industry pushes for hydrogen future

A NEW Hydrogen Council formed by 13 companies from across industry has called on world leaders to back a shift to hydrogen as a key part of the future energy mix to combat climate change.

The council was launched today at the World Economic Forum taking place in Davos, Switzerland, and includes heavy industry players Air Liquide, Linde, and Shell along with automotive giants BMW, Honda and Toyota. In a briefing document released for governments, the council argues that hydrogen and fuel cell technologies can be used to decarbonise transport, industry energy use, industry feedstocks, and heating.

Together, the council members invest €1.4bn/y in hydrogen technologies and pledged to increase this if its efforts are backed with appropriate policies and support from government, including for large-scale infrastructure investment schemes.

'The 2015 Paris Agreement to combat climate change is a significant step in the right direction but requires business action to be taken to make such a pledge a reality,' said Benoît Potier, CEO of Air Liquide. 'The Hydrogen Council brings together some of the world's leading industrial, automotive and energy companies with a clear ambition to explain why hydrogen emerges among the key solutions for the energy transition, in the mobility as well as in the power, industrial and residential sectors, and therefore requires the development of new strategies at a scale to support this. But we cannot do it alone.'

The companies said in statement that they have a responsibility to manage the energy transition to a low-carbon economy and set out that hydrogen is the sensible choice because it offers a clean source of fuel or industry feedstock that can be produced using renewable power and carbon-abated fossil fuels. Furthermore, it can be stored at large scale, and transported at high energy-density in either liquid or gaseous form.

'Producing green hydrogen via electrolysis and storing it for later use is an interesting option to store a large amount of intermittent renewable power,' said Isabelle Kocher, CEO of ENGIE. 'This energy vector has many advantages: it does not emit CO2, [and] it has the capacity to be used in many sectors such as industry, transport, [and] energy.'

The 13 members of the council are: Air Liquide, Alstom, AngloAmerican, BMW, Daimler, ENGIE, Honda, Hyundai, Kawasaki, Shell, Linde, Total and Toyota.