BAKU, Azerbaijan, Hydrogen is certainly one of the technologies with the greatest potential to reduce carbon emissions in the coming years, said Dr. Werner Hoyer, President of the European Investment Bank (EIB), Trend reports.

“Of course, we all know that hydrogen has physical drawbacks such as conversion losses and difficulties in handling the gas. But it also has significant advantages, most importantly, its very high energy content. Hydrogen has almost three times the energy density of gasoline. This makes it a very attractive source of energy for many hard-to-abate sectors – such as steel, cement or chemicals, heavy transport or aviation and also for storing energy to facilitate the further integration of renewables in the energy mix,” he said.

The EIB president noted that the potential of hydrogen to reduce carbon emissions in hard-to-abate sectors is difficult to overstate.

“Everything that hydrogen does for our climate in the long-term, it will also do for our energy independence in a much shorter time frame. Indeed, one of the many things hydrogen can also do is act as a substitute for natural gas in its core applications of power generation and heating – albeit at a cost which needs to be considered carefully. In theory, a portion of hydrogen could be blended in the existing natural gas grid to fuel these applications. This means that if plentiful, low-cost renewable hydrogen were available today, it could already help alleviate the supply concerns that have pushed gas prices to their current highs,” added Hoyer.

Source: TREND News Agency