Global climate change, materializing as severe storms, heat waves, floods, and droughts, are taking lives, threatening wars, and damaging economies around the world. To address this challenge, more than 70 countries, including Canada, have set net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emission targets by mid-century. In Canada, 57% of national GHG emissions are associated with the distributed combustion of fossil fuel-based ‘energy carriers’, predominantly gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and natural gas. Another 25% of national emissions are associated with the recovery and processing of the oil and gas that is largely used to make these energy carriers.
Clearly, replacing fossil carbon-based energy carriers with zero-emission carriers is one of the major pillars in any transition to a net-zero emission energy system. For a province like Alberta, whose economy depends on oil and gas recovery and use, this transition could be seen as more of a threat than an opportunity. Hydrogen as a Zero-Emission Energy Carrier. However, Alberta is superbly positioned to take a leadership role in the transition to hydrogen as a zero-emission energy carrier that can be produced with minimal or no GHG emissions.
The province already produces over 5000 t H2/day (2/3rd of the total produced in Canada) from natural gas and uses it as an industrial feedstock to crack bitumen, refine oil, and make fertilizer and other materials and chemicals. With some of the production, a portion of the by-product CO2 (a greenhouse gas) is captured and geologically sequestered. In addition, some companies are building large new plants where up to 95% of the CO2 emissions from H2 production will be permanently sequestered in the subsurface.
Alberta also has excellent wind and solar resources that could be used to make low-cost electricity to split water and make hydrogen without GHG emissions. Canada’s Hydrogen Strategy and Alberta’s Hydrogen Roadmap agree on the importance of building a new fuel hydrogen economy around regional Hubs that bring together a low GHG supply of hydrogen with new markets for hydrogen in sectors such as transportation, space and industrial heating and even power generation.
Canada’s first hydrogen hub was established in the Edmonton Region in 2021 and has been working to better understand the opportunity and deploy pilots, demonstration projects and new commercialization ventures around the hydrogen economy. The work in Edmonton has highlighted the importance of creating strategically located hubs across Canada that are connected by hydrogen corridors capable of supporting hydrogen-fueled trucks and trains. The hubs can also support return to base transportation needs and the production and use of hydrogen for heat and power generation and export to other jurisdictions.
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