Changes in the politics and technology of energy mean that the idea of a hydrogen economy might be about to make its mark in a number of practical arenas
It might be thought that as the hype of the last decade has declined, the idea of a hydrogen economy is once again on technology’s back-burner. But not only did it never go away, it is seeing some real progress in many areas that might make some aspects of the old hydrogen economy concept come much closer to fruition.
There is a large and active ‘hydrogen community’ in the UK, organised as part of a network called H2FC Supergen (H2FC, meaning hydrogen fuel cell, is one of the many abbreviations and acronyms that proliferate in this sector, while Supergen is an acronym for SUstainable Power GENeration). Now in its sixth year of operation, the H2FC Supergen is administered from a hub organisation at Imperial College London. It funds multidisciplinary research and produces white papers on how hydrogen and fuel cell technologies can affect energy policy.
The very term hydrogen economy is not universally popular among the community. “We don’t like the phrase,” commented Prof Marcus Newborough, head of business development for ITM Power plc (LON:ITM), a Sheffield-based company that develops and manufactures equipment to produce hydrogen by electrolysing water. “It gets in the way of feet-on-the-ground developments year by year from a zero start point, which is pretty much where the sector is today. To come up with a complete economy based on hydrogen is well beyond the day after tomorrow; it’s a long time in the future.” Rather than this grand vision, Newborough prefers to focus on incremental introduction of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies as demonstrators.
