Carbonomics: The Rise of Clean Hydrogen

Clean hydrogen has a major role to play in the path towards net zero carbon, providing de-carbonization solutions in the most challenging parts of the Carbonomics cost curve - including long-haul transport, steel, chemicals, heating and long-term power storage.

Clean hydrogen cost competitiveness is also closely linked to cost deflation and large scale developments in renewable power and carbon capture (two key technologies to produce it), creating three symbiotic pillars of de-carbonization.

Clean hydrogen is gaining strong political and business momentum, emerging as a major component in governments' net zero plans such as the European Green Deal. This is why Goldman Sachs Research believes that the hydrogen value chain deserves serious focus after three false starts in the past 50 years. Hydrogen is very versatile, both in its production and consumption: it is light, storable, has high energy content per unit mass and can be readily produced at an industrial scale. The key challenge comes from the fact that hydrogen (in its ambient form as a gas) is the lightest element and so has a low energy density per unit of volume, making long-distance transportation and storage complex and costly. In this report we analyze the clean hydrogen company ecosystem, the cost competitiveness of green and blue hydrogen in key applications and its key role in Carbonomics: the green engine of economic recovery.