Hydrogen is the gas that climate protectionists, energy experts and now many politicians dream of because it could help to drastically reduce CO₂ emissions and store fluctuating wind and solar power.

In the coming decades, the gas should replace the fossil fuels coal and oil.

The lightest of all elements could replace conventional fuels and enable zero-emission cars that run on fuel cells.

The only exhaust gas would be water vapor.

Above all, hydrogen is to serve as a chemical energy store in order to store the electricity from the fluctuating sources of wind and sun.

Some large corporations want to jump on the hydrogen train.

Manfred Lindinger

Editor in the “Nature and Science” section.

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For the Vice President of the South African chemical company Sasol Marius Brand, the German energy researcher Bernd Rech, the Australian diplomat in Germany, Philip Green, and the President of the Polytechnic University of Montreal, Philippe Tanguy, the potential of green hydrogen is clear.

But there is still a long way to go in a real hydrogen society, in which the lightest of all elements takes over the role of the fossil fuels coal and oil.

At the same time, the technical prerequisites for this have long been created.

The cost of green hydrogen will fall

According to Philippe Tanguy, the following three prerequisites must be in place for hydrogen to become established: the possible risks associated with the highly flammable gas must be clear, the systems used to produce hydrogen must be scalable, and the costs must be be reduced. Only then can society create acceptance for hydrogen. But there is another aspect that could be a hurdle. “Financially strong investors always look to see in which projects they are investing that promise strong returns.” It is still difficult to counter the idea of ​​profit maximization in business, especially when a technology is still on the threshold between laboratory and practice stands and it is not clear whether it will prevail.

For Philip Green, hydrogen is indispensable as a carbon-neutral fuel, both for the chemical and for the metalworking industry. The world cannot just be electrified, as envisions doing it. The biggest hurdle for Green at the moment is the cost. One kilogram of hydrogen costs several times as much as a comparable amount of fossil fuels. "The central question is: How do we get the price lowered to a level that also makes economic sense to produce and use hydrogen in large quantities?"

(The following passage was subsequently corrected, for the original version see Box No. 1)

Philip Green named Germany and Australia, which have made a lot of money (Germany alone nine billion euros).

For Marius Brand as a representative of the chemical and petroleum industry in South Africa, the costs of green hydrogen are the decisive factor.

But he was confident that the price will fall in a similar way to the cost of renewable energy over the past few decades.

However, it is much more difficult for his country.

This is due to the lack of research and the possibilities of the industry.

Collaborations with other countries could help here.

Gigafactories for hydrogen production

In order for hydrogen to be available in abundance, the gas would have to be produced in huge quantities - which is a huge technical and logistical challenge.

So far, the electrolysis machines that split water into hydrogen and oxygen have tended to run on small scales.

One reason is that there are still no large membranes to be able to build larger electrolyzers.

Inexpensive and efficient catalysts are also still in short supply.

There is still an urgent need for research here.

"We also need gigafactorys for hydrogen production, as we are currently seeing everywhere in the battery sector."