Hydrogen Economy Update

C-MACC Hydrogen Weekly Update 19

Finding Alternate Sources of Hydrogen Will Likely Be Critical

• Weekly Theme: Hydrogen Sources
• News Update
• Projects Update
• Ammonia/Methanol Update
• Power Update
• Next Week: Deep Dive On Ammonia

Key Points

• As low-cost green hydrogen becomes more elusive, we would expect increased efforts to find alternative sources of hydrogen. Gasification and pyrolysis are technologies that show promise.
• The history of gasification is not good, but technology is improving, and syngas production can drive both fuels and materials production – finding low-cost feedstock is the challenge, as is scale.
• Pyrolysis is very dependent on what it is you are heating up and your source of heat – as with gasification, you do not produce a pure stream of hydrogen, but it can be captured for fuel/materials.
• Europe appears very disadvantaged in the table below as it does not have the low-cost feedstocks or the energy at the right price – Europe should rethink its attitude toward CCS to add some options.
• Our work with multiple clients and many technologies suggests that there will likely be opportunities for all options, but it will be very situation and location-specific.

Exhibit 1: There are some other nascent technologies/routes that are not yet ready for primetime.