The White Elephant of Green Hydrogen

A new cost-sheet published by the Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) shows that green hydrogen is too expensive to have any widespread application. That's because most of the input energy - electricity from offshore wind farms - is very expensive and much of it will be unavoidably wasted in the conversion to hydrogen.

According to GWPF deputy director Andrew Montford:

Between the wind farm’s electricity and heating your home with hydrogen, there will be highly significant energy losses - that's basic physics and chemistry. Green hydrogen would be four times the price of natural gas for heating, and twice the price of petrol for driving your car. It’s absurdly unaffordable."

And if the hydrogen was used to store excess wind power, being turned back into electricity at times of low wind, it would be an order of magnitude more expensive than power from a gas turbine run flat out.

And according to Mr Montford, even a revolution in wind farm costs would not make green hydrogen cheap enough:

Green hydrogen is a white elephant", he says.

Cost of hydrogen

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