By 2050, the main exporters of green hydrogen are expected to be “North Africa ($110 billion per year), North America ($63 billion), Australia ($39 billion), and the Middle East ($20 billion). In this projection, the firm Deloitte relies on modeling data from the International Energy Agency (IEA) and on the potential of countries in terms of renewable energies, in particular wind and solar.
On the world map of green hydrogen in 2050, North Africa is the first exporting region in the world and Europe is the first importing zone. A Deloitte study is reshaping global energy maps and, potentially, the industry of the future.
The emergence of green hydrogen linked to that of renewable energies “will reshape the global energy and resources landscape from 2030, and could eventually constitute a market of 1.400 billion dollars per year”, affirms this published study. in the middle of summer.
In May, the World Hydrogen Council a lobby created in Davos in 2018 by the major industrialists in the sector, identified with the firm McKinsey, more than a thousand green hydrogen production projects announced worldwide, requiring 320 billion of dollars of investments, for their implementation. in service, mostly planned before 2030.
By 2050, according to Deloitte, the main exporters of green hydrogen are expected to be North Africa ($110 billion per year), North America ($63 billion), Australia ($39 billion) and the Middle East ( $20 billion).
To reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and meet international climate commitments, the growing demand for green hydrogen is primarily aimed at decarbonizing high-emitting base industries.
Petrochemicals, steel, cement and fertilizers are concerned. Heavy transport such as air or sea are also thirsty for hydrogen to replace fossil fuels that cannot be counted on like automobiles on electric batteries.
The production of green hydrogen from the sun or the wind can also be used to “inclusively” develop the industry of emerging countries, the report hopes. It could, for example, make it possible to develop the steel industry in the countries of the South.
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But currently, 99% of industrial hydrogen The world is “grey”, resulting from methane gas from petrochemical sites, an operation that releases a lot of greenhouse gases like CO2 into the atmosphere, and contributes to global warming.
And less than 1% of hydrogen can be said to be “green”, resulting from the electrolysis of water which separates the atoms of oxygen and hydrogen by an electric current.
The green hydrogen of the future will therefore come from the electrolysis of water from wind, solar or hydraulic electricity. Some ongoing experiments are even focusing on production directly at sea, alongside wind turbines and desalinated seawater.
This is where North Africa has a card to play, points out Sébastien Douguet, head of economic consulting at Deloitte, and co-author of the study based on modeling data from the International Energy Agency ( IEA) in particular.
“Several North African countries such as Morocco or Egypt are taking up the issue of hydrogen and hydrogen strategies were announced only a few years ago behind the European Union and the United States”, notes the researcher.
“ Morocco has a very high wind power potential often underestimated, and a significant solar potential and Egypt has the means to become the main exporter of hydrogen to Europe in 2050 thanks to the already existing gas pipelines” which would be reallocated to hydrogen, he explains, questioned by AFP.
“In our study, we assume that investments will stop in 2040” in the capture and storage of CO2 emitted during the production of hydrogen from methane gas, the current strategy of the Gulf oil countries, but also of the United States, Norway or Canada, adds Mr. Douguet. The hydrogen thus produced does not have the green label, but “blue”.
Several countries rely on the transport by boat of intermediate vectors such as green kerosene, methanol, or ammonia, from which the hydrogen would then be extracted on arrival at the port. A strategy already launched in Japan and Korea, importers, with Australia, a producer of ammonia, according to Mr. Douguet.
“This green economy can become profitable for end customers, provided that public support for the establishment of infrastructure is sustainable and that public policies are coordinated”, however, warns the author of the study.
