But three critical factors have aligned recently to make it possible to bring that production cost down to between $1 and $2 by 2050. Right now, it costs $3 to $7 per kilogram to produce, compared with $1 per kilogram when made with fossil fuels. Q: What’s changed to give the green hydrogen revolution the potential to become a reality?Ī: The key reason green hydrogen hasn’t scaled is cost. 5 But what it does do is to provide a green alternative for “hard-to-abate” industries that can’t adapt to electrification. Green hydrogen isn’t a stand-alone solution - it would be used along with electrification to head toward net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. However, green hydrogen created by solar and wind power has the potential to do that. You can’t put solar or wind power into your car or a plane.

Right now, renewables can be used to pump the grid, but that’s about it. Green hydrogen - produced by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen in an electrolyzer, using renewable-powered electricity - can exponentially expand the use of solar and wind power. What makes hydrogen a big deal is the diversity of its potential uses. 4 It’s already being used in a number of industrial applications in the form of “gray” or “blue” hydrogen, both of which are created by fossil fuels. Haim Israel: Hydrogen is the lightest and most common of the elements. Question: What makes green hydrogen so different? Israel shared his thinking about why so many people are charged up about hydrogen, and how it might change our lives if the predictions for it come true. “Together with renewable electricity, green hydrogen gives us a shot at attaining a zero-carbon-emission global economy by 2050.” “We think we’re reaching an inflection point where green hydrogen could supply our energy needs, fuel our cars, heat our homes and be used in industries that have no economically viable alternative to fossil fuels,” he says. We’ve heard enthusiasm for hydrogen more than once in the last few decades, but according to Haim Israel, head of global thematic investing research at BofA Global Research and lead author of its 103-page primer on hydrogen, this time the excitement is justified.

By many accounts, we will soon see green hydrogen - green because it’s produced with renewables - become a new multi-trillion-dollar commodity sector, transform the energy industry and play a big role in fighting climate change. The universe’s most abundant element is among the hotter topics in the halls of industry and government from Australia to Saudi Arabia, along with a number of Asian, American and European nations. IF YOU HAVEN’T YET HEARD ABOUT GREEN HYDROGEN, you’re about to - in a big way.