BAKU, Azerbaijan, July 13. Global wind and solar power capacity for green hydrogen production and trade is required to reach over 10,000 gigawatts (GW) by 2050, Trend reports via the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).
“For large-scale hydrogen production and trade to be a viable component of the 1.5°C scenario, the electricity used to produce the hydrogen must not detract from the availability of electricity for other essential and more effective uses – it must be additional. This places the upscaling and acceleration of renewable energy generation at the heart of the transition to green hydrogen,” the IRENA said.
According to the report, worldwide renewable energy production needs to at least triple by the mid-2030s - from 290 GW per year to more than 1 terawatt (TW) per year.
“To give a sense of the scale needed, total wind and solar generation was 1,612 GW in 2021, and none of it was for hydrogen. In addition, installed electrolyser capacity would need to grow from its 2021 level of 700 megawatts (Rystad Energy, 2021) to 4-5 TW by 2050,” IRENA noted.
Meanwhile, according to the 1.5°C scenario, the global hydrogen production would need to expand by almost 5 times to 614 megatons per year, accounting for 12 percent of the final energy demand by 2050.
“To achieve this growth, focus on hydrogen should be broadened to cover hydrogen derivatives such as ammonia, methanol and synthetic fuels, which are easier to transport and store than hydrogen itself and are more suitable for specific applications (e.g. shipping, aviation),” the report added.
---
Follow the author on Twitter: @mariiiakhm