ARTICLE Hy24: Ready to scale up! Hydrogen is scaling up to meet an expansive vision of its role them. Like states’ commitments, the projects are spread widely, in a Net Zero world. Almost every week another basis study is with more than 80% of new projects located in Europe, but produced by a government or NGO, a financial player, strategy China alone has announced more than 50 large-scale hydrogen consultant, or one of the energy majors. Every single report projects in total. concludes that hydrogen should account for 15% or 20% of Total hydrogen investment through 2030 will reach $500 billion, global energy consumption by 2050. To achieve that, we must including $130 billion directly associated announced projects, multiply the amount of H produced by a factor of ten, shift the2 $120 billion of additional direct investment needed to reach process to green or carbon-capture, and create the infrastructure stated government targets, and $250 billion implied investment necessary for distribution. from original equipment manufacturers and suppliers. Alongside the Net Zero vision, financial support is driving scale. Some of the projects focus on expanded electrolysis capacity, Funding commitments by governments have skyrocketed to more since the size and scale of hydrogen refineries must increase than $70 billion. Total project exponentially to meet the vision’s investments worldwide are rising demand. Current installed capacity by almost a billion a week. The “Hydrogen should account forworldwide is about 300MW. The spending plans vary dramatically, ambition, though, is for scale of but they span Europe, Australia,Korea, Japan, and elsewhere.15% or 20% of global energy about 80GW. The EU alone hasset a 40GW target for 2030 (up China now boasts the world’s consumption by 2050.” from less than 0.1GW today). largest deployment of hydrogen- Already several projects have been powered trucks and buses. It will announced and promised, in total spend a further $5 billion on fuel-cell vehicle deployment by about 3GW. The world’s total capacity to refine green H is on2 2024. the verge of significance. The most tangible expression of this massive up-scaling of Downstream, at the other end of the value chain, hydrogen is hydrogen is the number of large-scale projects announced over beginning to play an important role in some sectors, especially the past two years. The Hydrogen Council has tracked 359 of transport. Hydrogen fuel cells are powering more than 20,000 64