Green hydrogen is an important piece of the energy transition. It is not the next immediate step, as we first need to further accelerate the deployment of renewable electricity to decarbonize existing power systems, accelerate electrification of the energy sector to leverage low-cost renewable electricity, before finally decarbonize sectors that are difficult to electrify – like heavy industry, shipping and aviation – through green hydrogen. Renewable energy technologies reached a level of maturity already today that allows competitive renewable electricity generation all around the world, a prerequisite for competitive green hydrogen production. Electrolysers though are still deployed at very small scale, needing a scale up of three orders of magnitude in the next three decades to reduce their cost threefold.

The opportunity for rapid uptake of green hydrogen in the next decade where hydrogen demand already exists: decarbonising ammonia, iron and other existing commodities. Many industrial processes that use hydrogen can replace grey with green or blue, provided CO2 is adequately priced or other mechanisms for the decarbonisation of those sectors are put in place.

The World Economic Forum is a longstanding supporter of the clean hydrogen agenda since 2017, having helped -inter alia- with the creation of the Hydrogen Council, the establishment of a hydrogen Innovation Challenge in partnership with Mission Innovation, and the creation, together with the Energy Transitions Commission, of the Mission Possible platform to help transition hard-to-abate sectors to net zero emissions by 2050.Green Hydrogen production is not a complex process but time and energy consuming process in which chemical reactions as well as heat and mass transfer mechanisms take place. Many parameters such as the feedstock type, catalyst configuration, solvent agent, temperature, and reaction time can affect the operational performance and the green fuel quality. However, experimental optimization of the process for a certain feedstock is not only time-consuming but also expensive. Simulating the transisterification process based on available experimental data on pilot or industrial scale can support process optimization and contribute to improved plant design. Also, computational tools are effective to determine process limitations and hazardous or undesirable operational conditions.