How green is blue hydrogen?

🤖 Plain-English Summary

Abstract Hydrogen is often viewed as an important energy carrier in a future decarbonized world. Our analysis assumes that captured carbon dioxide can be stored indefinitely, an optimistic and unproven assumption.

🔑 Key Findings

• Currently, most hydrogen is produced by steam reforming of methane in natural gas (“gray hydrogen”), with high carbon dioxide emissions.
• Increasingly, many propose using carbon capture and storage to reduce these emissions, producing so‐called “blue hydrogen,” frequently promoted as low emissions.
• We undertake the first effort in a peer‐reviewed paper to examine the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions of blue hydrogen accounting for emissions of both carbon dioxide and unburned fugitive methane.

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