How a Hydrogen Breakthrough is Closer Than Ever

Oh hydrogen, that clean, green fuel that would solve so many emissions problems — if only it didn’t come with a few emissions problems of its own. If you’ve written off hydrogen as the fabled emissions free fuel panacea that’s never gonna live up to its promise (as many people have) … that’s understandable. It’s a bit like the flying car of clean energy: always on the horizon, never quite taking off.

But don’t count hydrogen out just yet. A few companies are working on making hydrogen power a reality. With everything from highly efficient hydrogen electrolyzers to produce it, to solid hydrogen storage systems to store it, there’s been a lot of progress that would’ve seemed unbelievable just a few years ago. To quote Monty Python’s The Holy Grail: “I’m not dead.” Hydrogen might have looked like it fizzled out, but could these new developments spark a hydrogen boom?

Trending

The Problem With Lasers And Nuclear Fusion

If you’re new to hydrogen, here’s why it’s getting so much attention: hydrogen is excellent at storing energy. Its gravimetric energy density, or how much energy is packed per unit of mass, is 120 MJ/kg, far higher than gasoline’s 44 MJ/kg.¹² But, because hydrogen is a lightweight gas, its volumetric energy density is low at 8 MJ/liter, compared to gasoline’s 32 MJ/liter.³ This makes hydrogen storage tricky since it requires significant space and compression. However, when consumed in a fuel cell, hydrogen only releases water…no harmful emissions.⁴

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe and is common on Earth, but it’s rarely found in pure form. It binds easily to other elements, making it hard to isolate.⁵⁶ One method to produce hydrogen is electrolysis, or the process of using electricity to split water.⁷ If powered by renewable energy, this method is carbon-free. Unfortunately, only 0.1% of hydrogen is produced this way. So, it’s still very much a niche energy hipster. The majority (83%) still comes from fossil fuels,⁸⁹ undermining its potential as a clean energy source. Add to that the challenges of storing hydrogen, which requires a lot of energy to compress into storage vessels.

So, hydrogen represents a lot of potential upsides, but clearly there’s some significant challenges that need to be dealt with first … from generation to storage. Are we getting closer to a workable solution, or is hydrogen just the hot air in the fossil fuels industry’s balloon?

Hysata

Let’s start with generating hydrogen … and a friendly face. We’ve talked about Australian-based Hysata a few times before, but let me refresh your memory. The company has developed a capillary-fed electrolyzer for generating hydrogen.

As you might remember from earlier, an electrolyzer zaps H2O, causing it to split into H and O.⁷ This also causes non-conducting bubbles to form around the electrolyzer, which could block chemical reaction sites and hinder its performance. As you can imagine, that’s not great for a device that’s supposed to electrolyze stuff. So, Hysata keeps the electrolyte in a reservoir at the bottom of the cell, safely away from the anode and the cathode of their electrolyzer. Essentially, as the electrolyte comes up that tube it gets split immediately and the gas generated just flows out from the porous electrodes. This process eliminates the need for liquid immersion of the electrodes and helps to keep those pesky gas bubbles from blocking reactions.¹⁰

The result? The efficiency rating jumps from around 75% to 95%. Hysata claims this also translates into 25% less electricity lost as heat compared to the average electrolyzer.¹¹ This is impressive, but for a lot of tech, what comes next is the hard part. That’s the jump from the safe, cozy lab to the harsh real world, but it looks like Hysata is off to a promising start.

Last summer, the company got the greenlight for a pilot demonstration of its full-scale electrolyzer module.¹² Hysata is joined by German research institute Forschungszentrum Jülich (or FJZ), which is on hand to independently verify the project. This is thanks in part to a 20.9 million AUD investment from the Aussie government, plus another 3 million from the Stanwell Corporation.¹³ It’s worth noting that Stanwell is the largest electricity generator in Queensland.¹⁴

That wasn’t the only milestone Hysata saw last summer. In addition to the greenlight on the company’s pilot demo, it also officially opened a new 8,000 square meter electrolyzer manufacturing facility in Port Kembla. With a successful Series B investment round from earlier this year, the company is planning to expand it. That investment round earned Hysata a cool $111 million, making it, the company claims, the largest Series B in Australian cleantech history.¹⁵

Of course, the real problem for Hysata isn’t one that can be solved by funding alone: demand. A recent Bloomberg New Energy Finance report says that the electrolyzer market is oversaturated. On top of this, only one pure electrolyzer company earned a profit last year. Everybody else posted losses of up to $1.4 billion.¹⁵ However, Hysata’s high efficiency might see it succeed where others have struggled. Only time will tell, but for now it’s promising to see its team plow ahead.

Hydrogen Lightning Round

There’s a lot more hydrogen news, so let’s move into the hydrogen lightning round—don’t worry, this won’t explode in your face!

First, let’s return to Australia and revisit Sparc Hydrogen and how they’re producing it. They’re a collaboration between Sparc Technologies, the University of Adelaide, Flinders University, and Fortescue Future Industries. Hold on to that Fortescue name for later. Sparc’s design is special because it generates hydrogen via photocatalytic water splitting (PWS). Essentially, it uses a photosensitive catalyst, excited by the sun’s rays, to rip water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen.¹⁶ Think of it like a solar panel, but instead of turning solar rays into electricity it’s splitting atoms. We covered their approach in a previous video if you’d like to see more.

Last time we checked, Sparc had finished polishing its reactor design and began prototype construction,¹⁷ and in April of 2024, the team successfully tested the second generation prototype of their PWS reactor.¹⁸ Better yet, they’re working on their pilot plant. This is a huge milestone, and they’re on track to begin construction of the plant in Q4 of 2024 and complete it by Q1 of 2025.¹⁹ Between Sparc and Hysata, Hydrogen is looking up in the land down under.

We also talked about Thiozen’s hydrogen generation in the past too, so let’s check back in with them. In May of 2024, the company’s pilot project successfully produced hydrogen from so-called sour gas.²⁰ This is natural gas with a high hydrogen sulfide content.²¹ If we want to use this gas as fuel, then we have to remove the hydrogen sulfides. Ordinarily the hydrogen sulfides go to waste, so it’s neat that Thiozen has devised a successful way to “clean” the gas by breaking up the hydrogen sulfide and keeping the hydrogen.²⁰ On the other hand, this hydrogen production method is still derived from the collection and use of natural gas. It’s not exactly going to help wean us off fossil fuels.

Fortescue falls into a similar pattern. The company has begun work on a massive 50 MW green hydrogen project. Fortescue claims that this hydrogen plant will have the capacity to produce up to 22 tonnes of green hydrogen per day (or 8 kilotons per year).²² For context, the world is estimated to produce 180 kilotons this year.²³ One facility potentially adding another 8 kilotons to the score by itself isn’t nothing. But I do have to note that Fortescue is primarily a mining company — and one that’s run into some ethical and legal controversy for its treatment of the environment and Aboriginal Australians.²⁴

Moving over to hydrogen storage, we talked about GKN Hydrogen briefly before. Its team is using metal hydride to store hydrogen, so that means we’re looking at a solid hydrogen storage system. This allows for a more dense hydrogen storage solution compared to compressed gas tanks.²⁵ Well, since we last talked about GKN, it was spun off along with GKN’s metallurgy division to form a new company. Recently, it was acquired by Langley, a multinational (UK-based) holding company.²⁶

This is sort of a mixed blessing. On one hand, being part of a large holding company usually means you’ve got some capital backup if you need it. Or, at least that somebody with a lot of capital to spend thinks your idea will make them more money. Langley’s biggest department, both in terms of revenue and employees, is its power solutions division.²⁷ Langley touts its interest in sustainability and its throwing a lot into hydrogen.²⁷

Anyway, as part of Langley, GKN has been commissioned to build an emergency hydrogen battery at a communication facility in South Tyrol, Italy. Its system can provide continuous electrical output of 10 kW of emergency power for up to 96 hours. This should be more than enough to tide the facility over during a disaster and coordinate around emergencies.²⁸ It’s not revolutionary, but it’s a nice test case.

I want to finish off the lighting round on a positive note, so let’s look at a successful marriage of sustainable energy and hydrogen production. H2Mare has successfully connected two hydrogen electrolyzers to its land-based wind turbine.²⁹ According to the German government, this is the first instance of directly connecting two electrolyzers to a megawatt-scale turbine.³⁰

The idea here is to find out whether or not a wind turbine can generate enough electricity to make a decent amount of hydrogen without any help from the grid. Wind power is of course renewable, so this would be a step closer to that ideal, truly green hydrogen. Generating hydrogen can be energy intensive, so being able to make hydrogen solely and directly from wind power could ease the burden on the grid. But wind power is also intermittent, so there’s concerns that it won’t be self-sufficient.³¹

And if successful, this project will serve as a model for a bigger project, one that will connect a novel type of PEM electrolyzers to a larger offshore wind turbine.²⁹ The sea is a lot harsher and more demanding than dry land, but generally offers stronger and more consistent winds. H2Mare is hoping to prove that marrying these technologies together isn’t just mechanically possible, but economically viable. If this works, well, that’s an even bigger step toward making green hydrogen a reality.³¹

Of course, I’m getting a little ahead of myself. The project is brand new, as they just cut the ribbon for the on-shore, off-grid portion in September. We’ll have to wait and see if this project pans out before we can even begin to dream about a possible green hydrogen wind farm. Still, if it does work, then that provides another avenue for hydrogen production to maybe find its footing, away from the fossil fuel and mining industries.

I’m not going to sugarcoat the fact that all this recent hydrogen news is a mixed bag. We have a lot of groups like Hysata and others that are doing some really impressive stuff. This feels like a significant stride forward, and it really makes me want to believe in the hydrogen dream.

On the flip side, as exciting as these developments are, they don’t directly deal with the challenges hydrogen is facing — namely, that hydrogen still has to come from somewhere. The vast majority of the time, it’s coming from fossil fuels or processes powered by fossil fuels. Until we find ways of divorcing hydrogen from that industry, it’s never going to live up to the zero emissions promise. The current costs also aren’t helping matters.

While I don’t think hydrogen is the cure all solution, I do think there’s likely a place for hydrogen on our sustainable energy utility belt.