GREEN HYDROGEN
This patch of desert, more than 100 miles from the nearest
town, sits next to the biggest problem that green hydrogen could help solve:
vast iron ore mines that are full of machines powered by immense amounts of
dirty fossil fuels. Three of the world’s four biggest ore miners operate dozens
of mines here.
Proponents hope green hydrogen will clean up not only mining but also other
industries by replacing fossil fuel use in steelmaking, shipping, cement and
elsewhere.
Green
hydrogen is made by using renewable electricity to split water’s molecules.
(Currently, most hydrogen is made by using natural gas, a fossil fuel.) The
hydrogen is then burned to power vehicles or do other work. Because burning
hydrogen emits only water vapor, green hydrogen avoids carbon dioxide emissions
from beginning to end.
In the Pilbara region of Western Australia and in dozens of spots around the
globe endowed with abundant wind and sun, investors see an opportunity to generate
renewable electricity so cheaply that using it to make green hydrogen becomes
economical. Even if only some of the projects come to fruition, vast stretches
of land would be duly transformed.
The
project is one example of a global gamble, worth hundreds of billions of
dollars, being made by investors, including some of the most polluting
industries in the world.
Last
year, government subsidies sped up action in the European Union, India,
Australia, the United States and elsewhere. The Inflation Reduction Act, the
Biden administration’s landmark climate legislation, aims to drive the domestic
cost of green hydrogen down to one-quarter of what it is now in less than a
decade through tax incentives and $9.5 billion in grants.
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