Hydrogen as an energy carrier

Hydrogen is both a raw material and a fuel, especially in industry. The production of green hydrogen and its reliable availability can help industry to become more sustainable. It is an important step towards achieving the climate targets because CO₂-free hydrogen is a valuable replacement for the fossil fuels and raw materials that are currently used in industry.

At the moment, hydrogen is mainly produced from natural gas. This produces CO₂. This form of hydrogen is called grey hydrogen. Capture, storage and/or reuse can prevent the CO₂ from being released into the environment. In that case  this hydrogen is called blue hydrogen. For the energy transition, the focus is on so-called green hydrogen. Green hydrogen is made with electricity from renewable sources, such as sun and wind. This green electricity is used to convert water into hydrogen through electrolysis.

The green hydrogen produced with green electricity will mainly be used in industry. It is a sustainable raw material for the chemical industry. It also serves as a clean fuel for industry and part of the mobility sector, such as trains, shipping and trucks. Hydrogen could possibly also be used for the heating of houses, but not in the short term. Gasunie is focusing mainly on making industry more sustainable, because that is where the greatest climate gains can be achieved. This is because heavy industry is clustered in five regions in the Netherlands and can easily be reached by reusing existing natural gas pipelines for this purpose.