A new report reveals that hydrogen has surged up the priority list of many oil and gas organizations, taking a primary position in the sector’s decarbonization efforts.
A new report reveals that hydrogen has surged up the priority list of many oil and gas organizations, taking a primary position in the sector’s decarbonization efforts.
A survey of more than 1000 senior oil and gas professionals found that 52% expect hydrogen to be a significant part of the energy mix by 2030, according to the DNV GL report, Heading for Hydrogen.
A fifth (21%) of industry leaders say their companies have already entered the hydrogen market. A fifth (21%) say their organization is already actively entering the hydrogen market. The proportion intending to invest in the hydrogen economy doubled from 20% to 42% in the year leading up to the Coronavirus-induced oil price crash.
DNV GL found a significant rise in those reporting that their organization is actively adapting to a less carbon-intensive energy mix – up from 44% for 2018 to 60% for 2020. Carbon-free hydrogen production, transmission and distribution is now widely recognized as a central component to the oil and gas industry’s decarbonization efforts.
More than half of respondents to DNV GL’s research in Asia-Pacific (56%), the Middle East & North Africa (54%) and Europe (53%) agree that hydrogen will be a significant part of the energy mix within 10 years. North America (40%) and Latin America (37%) are only a little behind.
While hydrogen gas produced from renewable energy (green hydrogen) is the industry’s ultimate destination, analysis shows that the sector can only realistically scale up to large volumes and infrastructure with carbon-free hydrogen produced from fossil fuels combined with CCS technology (blue hydrogen).
DNV GL’s 2019 Energy Transition Outlook, a forecast of world energy demand and supply, predicts that natural gas will become the world’s largest energy source in the mid-2020s, accounting for nearly 30% of the global energy supply in 2050. Natural gas and hydrogen can play similar roles within the global energy system, and the synergies between them – in application and infrastructure – will drive the hydrogen economy.
However, Heading for Hydrogen points to political, economic, and technical complexity in scaling the hydrogen economy.
‘To progress to the stage where societies and industry can enjoy the benefits of hydrogen at scale, all stakeholders will need immediate focus on proving safety, enabling infrastructure, scaling carbon capture and storage technology and incentivizing value chains through policy,’ said Liv A. Hovem, CEO, DNV GL – Oil & Gas.
DNV GL is involved in projects including the Hy4Heat programme in the UK, which aims to establish whether it is technically possible, safe, and convenient to replace methane with hydrogen in residential and commercial areas. Tests on three specially constructed houses are proving the safety case for a switch from natural gas to hydrogen in a domestic setting at DNV GL’s Spadeadam Testing and Research site – the world’s first comprehensive hydrogen testing facility
A project run by Dutch gas and power networks operator Stedin is demonstrating that zero-carbon hydrogen could help to decarbonize heating in a residential apartment block near Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Gassnova is running a full-scale demonstration project in which DNV GL qualified carbon capture technology is being developed by Aker Solutions at Norcem’s cement plant in Brevik, Norway.
