Cascadia Energy Technologies, LLC
DOE draft National Clean Hydrogen STRATEGY & Roadmap
First, second and third waves
U.S Department of Energy (DOE)…the strategy paper…talks of a “first wave” of clean hydrogen applications, which will be in “existing markets that have few alternatives to clean hydrogen for decarbonization”.
It lists these applications as forklift trucks, oil refineries, ammonia production, buses, long-haul heavy-duty trucks, and heavy machinery in mining, construction and agriculture that need to be refuelled quickly and operate far from power grids.
In a second wave — “where clean hydrogen offers a growing economic value proposition, supported by commitments by industry and policy momentum — application will be steel production, energy storage and power generation, aviation, medium-duty trucks, regional ferries, “certain industrial chemical production” such as plastics.
This will be followed by a third wave, where applications will “become competitive as clean hydrogen production scales significantly and as costs decline and infrastructure becomes available”. Here it lists container ships, methanol production, cement, blending with existing natural gas networks, and back-up and stationary power to replace diesel generators in critical round-the-clock facilities such as hospitals and data centres.
‘enormous’ stranded assets show the need to decarbonize
‘It’s about energy in the right place at the right time’
The likelihood of fossil fuel assets being rendered worthless underscores the need to decarbonize the world’s economy as quickly as possible, according to Mark Carney, the U.N.’s special envoy on climate action and finance. His comments come in the runup to COP26, one of the most important climate summits ever held. The U.K. will host U.N.-brokered talks in Glasgow, Scotland from Oct. 31 through to Nov. 12.
Speaking to CNBC’s Steve Sedgwick for the Sustainable Future Forum, Carney, the former governor of the Bank of England, said it was essential to “retool the plumbing” of financial markets so that every financial decision can take climate change into account. This includes steering lending away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy alternatives. “We need to mainstream this transition to net zero if we are going to get to where the world needs,” Carney said in an interview aired on Thursday.
As part of this effort to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, Carney referenced the U.N.’s Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, or GFANZ, that is seeking to accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy. Chaired by Carney, this global coalition of leading financial institutions is responsible for assets of more than $90 trillion…
“We have a combination of things in the world right now and we see it playing out in the U.K. and playing out in Europe most acutely,” he continued. “We have both too many hydrocarbons, enormous stranded assets, whether it’s in coal, three-quarters of coal, half of gas, roughly the same of oil, we have too many fossil fuels. And we don’t necessarily have enough of fossil fuels in the right place.”
“That all screams transition, being transparent about transition, supporting those generation mechanisms that will help get us to ramp up and allow us to ramp up net zero power as quickly as possible.”
Carney, as governor of the Bank of England, first warned about the “potentially huge” risk to investors from stranded assets in 2015, saying vast reserves of coal, oil and gas could become “literally unburnable.“
Mark Carney, chairs a coalition of financial institutions with assets of $90 Trillion.