Green and blue hydrogen

GREEN hydrogen is the ultimate in clean fuel because it is made from 100% renewable energy and its only emission is water (when used as a fuel).

It could power everything. Homes, industry and transport. 

It’s perfect. In theory. 

But the reality is that there just isn’t enough renewable energy or the infrastructure to store and transport the vast quantities of affordable hydrogen that would be needed to power the global economy.  Yet.

INEOS, though, is working on that through its INOVYN business.

It has launched a new business with one sole goal: to drastically cut its global carbon footprint and intends to be a leading European producer of green hydrogen.

Some of those green hydrogen projects are already advancing at pace.

Unfortunately,  it won’t be enough – in the short term – to reach net zero by 2050, but it is an essential part of the journey.

Society  is beginning to understand the scale of the problem facing the world.

People realise there is no single solution. 

Every year more than 350 million tonnes of CO2 are released globally into the atmosphere.

Replacing our entire energy system with renewable electricity overnight is simply not possible. It’s not as easy as flicking a switch on and off.

Many paths must be explored and exploited.

That’s where blue hydrogen, where the CO2 emissions produced during its production are captured and stored, comes in.

Its role in decarbonising energy should not be underestimated because it can be brought on stream quickly and buys us time.

It will allow new infrastructure to be built that can ultimately be used to enable the development of more and more green hydrogen businesses.

The beauty about blue hydrogen is that the technology, which is needed to permanently store carbon safely, is already available and more and more CO2 storage projects are coming to fruition.

That’s why INEOS is investing in both green and blue hydrogen. 

INEOS is already involved in such projects – at Grangemouth in Scotland.

It plans to switch all its businesses to hydrogen, capturing over one million tonnes of CO2 each year by 2030 linked to the Acorn project. 

It is also an integral part of the HyNet North West consortium in the UK that will reduce regional carbon dioxide emissions through carbon capture and storage by up to 10 million tonnes every year by 2030.

And In Norway INEOS is to build a 20MW green hydrogen electrolyser at Rafnes. The project will supply INEOS operations and the Norwegian transport sector.

Hydrogen – whether it is blue or green – presents significant opportunities to reduce CO2 emissions. 

There will be no net zero without hydrogen.

Only by massively increasing our use of clean, low carbon hydrogen, will we get to net zero by 2050 (2045 in Scotland and Germany).