Hydrogen, the lightest and most abundant element in the universe, is being viewed as a potential game-changer in the global transition towards cleaner energy. The video explores Europe's largest green hydrogen plant in Spain, showcasing a process called electrolysis to produce clean hydrogen. This green hydrogen could revolutionize sectors such as heavy industry and mass transportation, given the pressure to cut carbon emissions from fossil fuel-based hydrogen production.

The video discusses the different types of hydrogen production - green, blue, pink, grey, black, brown, and emerald - highlighting their varying impacts on the environment and their economic viability. Companies like Iberdrola and startups like Pyroc and Zero Avia are innovating their processes to produce cost-effective, clean hydrogen on a large scale. The race is on to establish a robust, global hydrogen economy, with substantial investment capital fueling this rapid evolution.

Main takeaways from the video:

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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. electrolysis [ɪˌlɛkˈtrɒlɪsɪs] - (noun) - A chemical process that uses electricity to separate elements from their natural sources, such as water. - Synonyms: (decomposition, ionic dissociation, chemical separation)

The solar electricity powers a process called electrolysis.

2. photovoltaic [ˌfoʊtəʊvɒlˈteɪɪk] - (adjective) - Relating to the conversion of light into electricity using semiconducting materials. - Synonyms: (solar, light-sensitive, electrical conversion)

We take the energy from the photovoltaic plant.

3. decarbonize [diˈkɑrbəˌnaɪz] - (verb) - To remove or reduce carbon dioxide emissions, typically from industrial processes or fuels. - Synonyms: (decarbonate, reduce emissions, carbon reduction)

Fertilizers, of course, are a key element in order to decarbonize the whole chain.

4. economies of scale [ɪˈkɑːnəmiz ɒv skeɪl] - (noun phrase) - Cost advantages that enterprises obtain due to their scale of operation, with cost per unit of output generally decreasing with increasing scale. - Synonyms: (cost advantages, operational efficiency, mass production benefits)

Everybody can see that this will also bring economies of scale keep going down through the learning curve.

5. fossil fuels [ˈfɒsəl fjulz] - (noun) - Natural fuels formed in the geological past from the remains of living organisms, such as coal and gas. - Synonyms: (non-renewable resources, hydrocarbon fuels, mineral fuels)

Hydrogen is already in widespread use, largely in the fertilizer and petrochemical industries. Currently, nearly all of it is made by breaking apart hydrocarbon fossil fuels.

6. kinetic energy [kɪˈnetɪk ˈɛnərdʒi] - (noun) - Energy that a body possesses due to its motion. - Synonyms: (motion energy, dynamic energy, mechanical energy)

To be very clear, if you move into the energy of the future world, it's kinetic energy and it's a mix of electrons and hydrogen.

7. zero carbon fuel [ˈzɪərəʊ ˈkɑːrbən fjul] - (noun phrase) - A type of fuel that emits no carbon dioxide when burned. - Synonyms: (clean fuel, eco-fuel, carbon-neutral fuel)

The hydrogen goes directly to an adjacent factory to make ammonia, which is used today mainly in fertilizer, and is widely seen as a potentially crucial zero carbon fuel

8. greenhouse gas [ˈɡriːnhaʊs ɡæs] - (noun) - Gas that contributes to the greenhouse effect by absorbing infrared radiation, e.g., carbon dioxide and chlorofluorocarbons. - Synonyms: (heat-trapping gas, emission gases, atmospheric gas)

Currently, nearly all of it is made by breaking apart hydrocarbon fossil fuels, giving hydrogen and carbon dioxide that gives off about a billion tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

9. renewables [rɪˈnuːəblz] - (noun) - Natural resources that can be replenished, such as solar and wind energy. - Synonyms: (sustainable resources, green energy, sustainable energy sources)

And it's not only about the hydrogen or ammonia or methanol manufacturing facility, it is also about the electricity that you need to generate from renewables to fuel all these factories

10. hydrocarbons [ˌhaɪdrəˈkɑːrbənz] - (noun) - Organic compounds consisting entirely of hydrogen and carbon, primarily in fossil fuels. - Synonyms: (organic compounds, carbonaceous, petrochemicals)

hydrocarbons get a lot of negative press because when they're burnt, they produce CO2.

Can hydrogen help the world reach net zero? - FT Film

Hydrogen is this magic molecule, which is the lightest, the most energetic and the most abundant in the universe. When you master hydrogen in its pure component, you're basically having the best energy you can have. In the global shift to cleaner forms of energy, ever more attention is being drawn to the awesome potential of the smallest, simplest element there, hydrogen. In this film, well look at the gathering race to build a massive new hydrogen economy, which could transform sectors from heavy industry to mass transportation.

Starting here in the southern Spanish province of Thiudad real these solar panels are being used to power the biggest green hydrogen plant in Europe. It's been built by Eberge Roller, the continent's biggest utility company. The solar electricity powers a process called electrolysis. This uses electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.

The hydrogen goes directly to an adjacent factory to make ammonia, which is used today mainly in fertilizer, and is widely seen as a potentially crucial zero-carbon fuel. A molecule of water is hydrogen and oxygen. With the energy, the green energy, we break the molecule, so we get oxygen in one side and hydrogen in the other side. We take the energy from the photovoltaic plant, which is actually four or 5 km away from here in Porto Llano. We take it and we bring it to this building where we have the electrolysis. We have 16 cells of electrolysis there. We break the water molecules, we get this hydrogen and this oxygen.

And what we do is the oxygen can be used for other industrial uses, and the hydrogen is delivered to the customer. We can only produce in the day. So this is why we have the tanks. We store a part of the production, so during the night we can use that hydrogen that we have stored and deliver it to the customer as well.

The project near the town of Puerto Llano, is just the start of an ambitious hydrogen drive from Iberdrola, which plans to invest €3 billion in this space by 2030. Before 2030, we have different projects in different geographies in the Iberian Peninsula, in US, in Australia, Brazil, and we will see how these projects are progressing. And it's not only about the hydrogen or ammonia or methanol manufacturing facility, it is also about the electricity that you need to generate from renewables to fuel all these factories. And this is also an interesting investment from our side.

Hydrogen is already in widespread use, largely in the fertilizer and petrochemical industries. Currently, nearly all of it is made by breaking apart hydrocarbon fossil fuels, giving hydrogen and carbon dioxide that gives off about a billion tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions. For the moment, the green hydrogen process is more expensive.

But Iberdrola, with a huge and growing collection of solar and wind farms, hopes that will change pretty quickly as the cost of renewable energy and electrolyzers continues to fall while the price of fossil fuels goes up with tighter carbon pricing systems. What we want is that the final customer, the guy that is going to buy the bread in the supermarket, doesn't have to pay more in order to buy a product which has not polluted while it has been produced. So fertilizers, of course, are a key element in order to decarbonize the whole chain.

If we can take that money, lower the price of the green hydrogen, our customer will be able to sell more green fertilizers and that money will flow through the chain until the final customer. That's the goal, that's the idea. And this is something we are counting on in order to make that project fully viable.

Some energy experts have voiced concern that enthusiasm for green hydrogen could go too far. Recent studies have shown that if man-made hydrogen leaks into the atmosphere, it could interact with greenhouse gases to worsen global warming. Meanwhile, the world is already struggling to build enough renewable power to move its electricity generation away from fossil fuels. The more electricity that's used to make green hydrogen, they worry, the longer it will take to decarbonize the grid.

We can see that renewable is expanding very much. Everybody can see that this will also bring economies of scale keep going down through the learning curve. My understanding is that the final solution will be greenhyde.

But green is just one colour in the hydrogen rainbow. Pink hydrogen also involves electrolysis, with the electricity generated by nuclear plants instead of renewables. Grey hydrogen is produced by splitting apart methane gas to produce hydrogen and carbon dioxide. Black and brown hydrogen are produced in a similar way, using black or brown coal. The blue hydrogen process also breaks up fossil fuels, but in this case, the carbon dioxide is captured and stored or used for industrial purposes.

Advocates say this is the most promising, cost-effective solution in the near term. But critics argue that it comes with a high risk of greenhouse gas leakage and that it's being aggressively promoted by the fossil fuel industry.

And then there's emerald hydrogen, a concept being pursued by one ambitious startup near Hull in the northeast of England. Pyroc has patented a system to produce hydrogen from hydrocarbons like methane, using a plasma torch. The process happens in the absence of oxygen, meaning that it produces solid carbon instead of carbon dioxide.

One of the funniest things we talk to people about is your carbon footprint, is your CO2 , your carbon dioxide footprint. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, solid carbon. Ironically, solid carbon is the lead in your pencil. It's inert. It won't turn into carbon dioxide in thousands of years, so it's not a problem. In fact, it's quite a useful byproduct. It gets used in the tire industry to make tires rubber and usable. It gets used for coatings, toner and so forth. And then we're increasingly using it in new cases as a building material in cement or with steel, in the production of steel and other use cases.

Hiroc says its process can offer a useful alternative to green hydrogen. It can be deployed on a small scale and uses less energy per kilogram of hydrogen produced. And it offers a potential means of using the world's reserves of fossil gas without dangerous emissions of carbon dioxide. hydrocarbons get a lot of negative press because when they're burnt, they produce CO2 . But they're great fuels, they're really, really energy-rich and therefore they're a great source of hydrogen for us.

We've got buyers, we've got too many buyers and we're having to limit the number of projects we can do this year. The investment behind that is huge and fantastic, because people see the potential of our technology rolling out.

A full-scale hydrogen economy will require vast amounts of capital and for some investment funds, that looks like one of the biggest opportunities in the world today. Pierre Etienne Franc, a former industrial gases executive, is the CEO of hi 24, a fund dedicated to hydrogen investments. Launched in 2022, the fund has raised €2 billion from a range of major industrial and financial companies, including Airbus and Allianz.

When you master hydrogen in its pure component, you're basically having the best energy you can have. To be very clear, if you move into the energy of the future world, it's kinetic energy and it's a mix of electrons and hydrogen. Whatever you do in the future, you will need a mix of the two. The only question is, is hydrogen represent 1015 or 20% of the final energy demand? You have no choice. It's going to represent a big part of it.

As a phone, we are involved from the upstream to the downstream, so we are involved into the whole value chain of hydrogen upstream. You're dealing with very classic industries which are already using hydrogen. Just need to shift from grey to green. So if you find the right schemes, with the right policy support, you can deliver green hydrogen at a price which is similar to gray, and then you will get a solid return steady. Those projects are the first one to start.

You've got the second type of project, which are more risky. They are far bigger, they are more exploratory, but if they move forward, they're going to be extremely interesting in terms of performance. Is the one trying to develop this power to XDev topic, which is you do massive renewable capture, you do hydrogen, you transform it to ammonia, and then you ship it to the countries that need that source of power, which is clean.

And then the third one, which are the ones that are linked to mobility, where you basically try to deploy the networks that are going to enable captive fleets and massive heavy-duty fleets of trucks, of buses or trains. So we are looking at those three types of projects with different blended risk rewards, but all of them are very promising.

So far, all of high 20 fours investments have been in Europe, which has been the busiest region for hydrogen projects so far. But Pierre Etienne warns that European policymakers will need to up their game if the continent is to remain at the forefront of this fast-moving industry. Europe is a little bit too regulated in the way it processes its knowledge, but the skills are there. The issue is to have a real friendly business market system. And this is where Europe still has a little bit of a way to go.

It's a fundamental moment that we're living now, but Europe needs to tackle it very seriously, because if nothing, we will lose many energy-intensive industries, and that's going to be a drama. Competition between governments over hydrogen investment has reached a fever pitch. The EU, which had long set the pace for green policy, is now scrambling to respond to a game-changing move by the US, where Joe Biden's $369 billion Inflation Reduction Act has offered lavish subsidies for clean hydrogen production.

First of all, I think it's a positive sign that everyone wants to become carbon neutral. Climate change is a global challenge for all of us. So it's good that the US is stepping up with the IRA, Japan and others. And hydrogen is a key example for that low-carbon green hydrogen. So in that sense, I think it's positive that we are all working on it. And if the US will step up, it's clearly also the EU will step up.

I think ten years ago, when I joined the commission in the energy department, hydrogen was a niche. It was something for researcher coming together. It was always there, but it wasn't top on the agenda. I think that has changed and I think it's a good momentum. I think financial support is important, but mostly it should come from the private sector. So there is a key role for the private sector to provide enough funding and go ahead and we see a lot is happening there in the hydrogen area.

Then in order to accompany and have cover the costs of the first ones, the first movers who have to pay a high price, we have set up a hydrogen bank or hydrogen facility, which is financed by our innovation fund with 300 billion. And this will be a starting point this year to really do more.

Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine has highlighted the risks of Europe's reliance on Russian natural gas, giving new impetus to the hydrogen agenda. We had a hydrogen strategy already in 2020, but with the invasion of Russia and Ukraine, we really made very ambitious targets for hydrogen as well, in order not only to decarbonize, but also to become more independent, for example, from imports from Russian gas or fossil fuels.

To see one of the most disruptive hydrogen investments in the EU, we headed to one of the continents northernmost cities, Lulaya.

In Swedish Lapland. Steel production accounts for about 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions today. It relies heavily upon blast furnaces, which heat iron ore with coke, a carbon-rich derivative of coal. The carbon in the coke binds with the oxygen in the iron ore, leaving iron together with large volumes of carbon dioxide. This transformation that we do here at SSAB, when transforming both leuliocyte and oxylacone, we are actually reducing the swedish carbon dioxide footprint with 10%.

Outside Lulia, SSAB, Sweden's biggest steel company and also its biggest carbon emitter, has built a first of its kind pilot plant that uses green hydrogen. In place of coal. We use the same iron ore, but instead of using carbon to reduce the oxygen, we use hydrogen. So we take this iron ore pellet, we put it down. In this process, we add the hydrogen gas, and then the hydrogen gas reduces the oxygen from the pellet. And then we get the rest product. Here is water, and then we get a pallet, a sponge iron pellet that is actually almost 100% iron.

The only different thing is that in this process, it comes out as a liquid, and in the hybrid, it's still a cold product. So then we have to take this product and then melt it down. I'm actually super proud of SSAB for being in the forefront in this transformation. People were sort of shaking their heads, saying that, what are you doing? This is not the way you do it. But now we saw that we have produced fossil-free iron ore, or sponge iron. We have produced the steel from it, and our partners have produced vehicles from it. So we have actually been able to prove that this works.

SSAB's chief technical officer, Martin Pei, says that this process is now at the center of the company's long-term strategy. It has already made its first shipments of green steel using iron treated in the Lulea pilot plant to customers, including the automotive company Volvo, and it plans to start full-scale industrial production in 2026.

In the beginning, there is really a concern if there will be such products on the market at all. Now, when we have shown that this works and a lot of other companies are starting to plan for such transition, we get quite clear signal that more and more customers believe also that this is the right way to go for us as a company. We realize that we cannot just continue without significant technical breakthrough. Otherwise we would be irrelevant in the long run.

Beyond heavy industry, one of the biggest potential target areas for hydrogen is transportation. For green passenger vehicles, electric batteries have become the dominant technology, beating out hydrogen fuel cell cars. It's cheaper to recharge an electric car than to fill up an equivalent hydrogen vehicle. And it's easier to roll out electric charging stations than to create the complex hydrogen fuel network needed to support large numbers of fuel cell cars.

But experts see more potential for other areas of transportation, where the heavy weight of batteries and the time they take to charge can create problems. Hydrogen could offer a compelling option for trucks, buses, trains and ships, and it might just offer a means of cleaning up the world's most controversial form of transport.

Of all the challenges in the push for a greener world economy, cleaning up aviation has long been seen as one of the most fearsomely difficult. But here in the English Cotswolds, one startup is trying to prove that hydrogen can offer a solution. Zero Avia has developed a system to power planes using hydrogen fuel cells. Fuel cells effectively perform electrolysis in reverse, turning hydrogen and oxygen into water, together with electricity that powers a motor.

The company was founded in 2017 by Val Mifdakov, a former Google executive, and has received investment from Amazon and Bill Gates breakthrough Energy Ventures. And when I started the company, we actually looked at all of those areas. We looked at batteries, we looked at hybrids, we looked at sustainable aviation fuels, bio and synthetic hydrogen combustion, even.

And it was pretty clear that the combination of hydrogen on board the aircraft, but going to electric motors through fuel cells is the best possible option, and we didn't see anybody doing this. So that's how I started the company to do it.

Many airlines are currently focused on moving towards so called sustainable aviation fuel, which is chemically the same as conventional jet fuel, but produced using plant matter or carbon dioxide captured from the air. Vahl argues that this approach still comes with climate impacts linked with the burning of hydrocarbons in the air, which only fuel cell powered flight can avoid.

So you don't have nitrogen oxides, you don't have high temperature water vapor, you don't have particulate emissions. All of those things actually contribute two thirds of the aviation climate impact. So if you just do the, let's say, biofuels or synthetic aviation fuel saf , you're solving only a third of the problem at best, and you're not solving two thirds of the problem.

So in order to solve two thirds of the problem, or an entire problem, you need to get away from combustion, and hydrogen electric is the only way to do it. Hydrogen flight is hardly new. Nearly a century ago, airships using hydrogen-filled balloons crossed the Atlantic on a regular basis. But that era came to a fiery end with the Hindenburg disaster of 19370.

Aviat says there's no danger of a similar tragedy involving its engines. It's been testing its system on small planes in the Cotswolds, where the company has set up a large operation, thanks to financial incentives from the UK government. Since January 20230, Avia has been running test flights of a 20 seater sized plane with one of its engines powered by hydrogen, despite one earlier crash landing in 2021 in which nobody was harmed.

Test pilot John Killeby says the company is on track to meet all the regulatory requirements needed to get its hydrogen-fueled engines on the commercial market in the next few years. We're designing how we test the systems to demonstrate that they're safe. We won't be able to use this technology in a commercial application unless we demonstrate that it's safe. We work to the same requirements of safety that there are for conventional known about powertrain systems.

And we as an organization are working really closely with the regulators to make sure that as we progress, they learn and we progress together. Zeruavia is in a race against us rival Universal hydrogen, which in March 2023 ran a 15 minutes test flight of a 40-seater sized plane with one engine powered by a hydrogen fuel cell, Valsa's zero.

Avia expects to get its engine for 20 seater planes on the market in 2025, followed by 70 seaters in 2027 and 100 seaters in 2029. This is the beginning of guilt-free flying, if you will. So that's when you say, hey, I'm flying on sunshine or wind or any. Pick your renewable power of choice.

Different geographies, different types of renewable power, but you can fly on electricity. You just need to use the right medium to pack that electricity onboard the aircraft and hydrogen is the best way to do it.

So what will the hydrogen economy of the future look like, and how quickly can we get there? Hydrogen has the potential of decarbonizing industry and transport, and that's our common goal. It's good for climate change, it's good for competitiveness.

But we also shouldn't overestimate the role of hydrogen. It has a key role in certain sectors, but there's a lot more in the electrification, which we can do by solar, wind, bioenergy for those, and so on. If you can electrify, then do it, because it's the most efficient and competitive way to it, but sometimes you can't. Then we have another solution.

This is hydrogen. This is another route. It's a more expensive route, not only in terms of economics, in terms of efficiency, the use of energy is much poorer, but it's a solution that we have in our hands.

You will come in and you will have majority of operations on the non-combustion fuel hydrogen electric approach, where you won't have smell of jet fuel, the noise levels will be much lower, there will be no pollution around the airports, and the fuel will be produced on site from renewable electricity. I think the hydrogen economy will be 25% of the world's energy supply will come from hydrogen.

So if you look out, 2050, fusion, hopefully by then will be sorted. We've got hydrogen. They're going to be massive parts of what we do, and we want to be a big part of that as a business, our vision on dream, and we want to help deliver net zero as a planet, so we want to do our small part of that.

And hydrogen is a great place to be if you believe in the energy transition. This is the wave of the decade. And the only real risk, which is not a small one, is that energy transition doesn't come because, for reasons, some people stop it or don't want to push it with the regulatory frameworks or the policies of that are needed to make it happen.

Hydrogen may not be the answer for most of the challenges that we face in decarbonizing the world economy, but it's increasingly looking like an exciting potential solution for many of them. And the race to take advantage of those opportunities is already well underway.

Technology, Innovation, Science, Green Hydrogen, Renewable Energy, Clean Transport, Financial Times