It was one of the hottest would-be commodities of the COVID-19 era. Like the virus, it’s since faded into the background, to the extent that few give it a second thought.

Green hydrogen, made using renewable power to split water molecules in electrolyzers, these days looks like one of those quaint technologies that never quite took off — think pneumatic railways or penny-farthing bicycles. Recent events suggest a glimmer of hope for its revival.

On paper, green hydrogen sounds great. More than half of the energy produced in burning methane comes from its hydrogen atoms. If you could get the same heat without the pollution from the leftover carbon, you could replace natural gas in a host of applications, from chemical production to steelmaking.

The problem has always been price. As we’ve written, optimistic assumptions about the declining cost of green H2 have been going backward for years. Rather than decreasing toward a target of around $1 per kilogram at the end of this decade, they’ve instead been stagnating at four times that price or even increasing. That’s nowhere near cheap enough to displace hydrogen made from gas.

It may be........

© The Japan Times