Davos — More than a dozen leading European and Asian companies have teamed up to promote the use of hydrogen as a clean fuel and scale down the production of harmful gases that lead to global warming.
Convened on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum, the first Hydrogen Council brought together 13 firms, among them top car manufacturers BMW, Daimler, Honda, Hyundai and Toyota as well as leading industrial gas companies Air Liquide and Linde.
Others at the gathering late on Tuesday included energy firms Alstom, Engie, Shell, Total as well as Anglo American.
Scientists have long pursued the use of electric fuel cells for cars that use hydrogen as the byproduct of its combustion is water and not gases that cause climate change.
Air Liquide’s CE Benoit Potier described the council as "key leaders of the energy, transport and industrial (gas) sector joining forces to express a common vision of the key role hydrogen will play in the future to bring a solution to the energy transition". In particular, they will share data and research to make hydrogen technologies profitable, as well as working on international standards to help speed their adoption.
They will also try to convince governments to support the technology, another indispensable condition for its success.
"At the early stage, unless we have strong government support, this transformation" into a decarbonised society "is impossible".
Those participating in the Hydrogen Council insist the applications for hydrogen go beyond fuel cells for cars.
One of the major challenges for renewable energy technologies such as solar and wind is storing the energy produced if it cannot be used immediately.
Besides building expensive mega-batteries, current options include pumping water up to reservoirs to produce hydro power when energy is needed.
Fuel cell technology, used in reverse, could help resolve this problem.
"If you take this solar electricity you don’t know what to do with, you electrolyse water, this makes hydrogen, which is a gas you can put in the natural gas network," Total’s CE Patrick Pouyanne said.
This not only makes use of the surplus electricity, but it also makes investment in solar and wind projects more profitable.
"We’ve mastered the technology, but the challenge now is to expand its use onto a mass scale," Pouyanne said.
Bringing down costs will play an important role. "If we manage to reduce costs all along the production chain, then hydrogen will become a solution for moving energy where it is needed," Engie’s chief Didier Holleaux said.
AFP
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