The Clean Industry Podcast
A podcast where we talk about industrial decarbonization and cleantech innovations.
The Clean Industry Podcast
Hydrogen 101: The colors of hydrogen
In this episode, we unpack the colorful world of hydrogen. If hydrogen is colorless, why do we keep calling it green, blue, or even pink? We dive into why these labels matter, and why the industry urgently needs harmonized global methods and numbers to back them up.
Link to the article mentioned on why a harmonized global methodology is key: It doesn’t matter what the color of hydrogen is as long as it lowers net emissions - Hycamite
Welcome to The Clean Industry Podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Hycamite, a company that produces clean hydrogen and solid carbon by splitting methane. Here, we explore the technologies and innovations that shape the future of industrial decarbonization. This episode is a part of our special series called Hydrogen 101, where we break down the fundamentals of hydrogen, what it is, how it's used, and so forth. My name is Sonja, I'm your host. My co-host, Matti Malkamäki, is a long-time energy entrepreneur, a visionary in clean tech, and a leading voice in Europe's hydrogen economy. He has been involved in hydrogen before it was cool. He's been chairing industry groups, advising major projects, and championing innovation from the ground up. Welcome back, Matti.
Matti:Thank you. My pleasure.
Sonja:So this is our second episode. And in the first episode, I asked you to rate your teaching skills. Do you remember what number you gave?
Matti:I didn't give the best grade. I don't remember. Was it seven or eight? Something like that one.
Sonja:You said six out of ten.
Matti:Six out of ten. Okay.
Sonja:And something that most of our listeners might not know is that you used to be a ski instructor.
Matti:Correct.
Sonja:And now I'm wondering...
Matti:Did they ever learn to ski? [laughter]
Sonja:Well... Is it that your somewhat poor teaching skills made you take the leap from teaching people how to ski into the hydrogen business? Or how did that happen?
Matti:Yeah, well, being a skiing instructor was more or less like a hobby for me. So it was a good way for, you know, not only developing myself as a person and as a skier, but also that gave me possibility to, you know, go to the ski resorts free of charge and even being paid for that. So it was a very, very, very important thing for a university student at that time. But I don't think that you can pull any direct links from that one to this that what I'm doing now. So that's a little bit different.
Sonja:Do you have any skills that you still use from that time, from being a ski instructor?
Matti:I think I do, actually, because the thing is that being a ski instructor is something that you need to make the people feel confident and still learning something new that actually might make them worried or concerned that, okay, what's going to happen and how steep these slopes are and so forth, so that whether it's really like something that they are able to pull through and come down alive and in good health and so forth, and still you need to give them self-confidence that, hey, you are able to do it, and I'm here just to help you on that one. So I think that that was the best thing. And I actually was using a lot of time for teaching young children that were, well, not in good health as such. And that was really, really, really good for me in that way that you couldn't use like the normal ways when communicating with the people so that if the other person is blind or deaf or something like that one, then it requires some additional skills
Sonja:yeah yeah I can imagine and now I see the link I didn't think of it before when I was writing this question it was more of like a fun thing to open this podcast with but when you're mentioning that I really see the link between being a ski instructor and leading a startup because as a founder I imagine and I know you think very fast and you're always like 10 steps ahead of everyone else and you need to to convince your team to take that leap with you. Yes, great. That's super interesting. Today, we're not gonna continue on that start-up path. We're gonna be talking about the different methods of producing hydrogen. Because this series is called Hydrogen 101, so we are starting with the basics. From our first episode we learned that hydrogen itself is clean when it's used, it doesn't emit any CO2 at point of use. But how the hydrogen is made, is a whole other story, correct?
Matti:Yes. Correct. To correct a little bit about the use case, if the hydrogen is being burned, there's no CO2 emissions. But of course, like in all the burning and so forth, you might have some other emissions like NOx or something like that one that are because of the air is being burned and it consists of nitrogen as well. But that is not, well, hydrogen doesn't produce CO2 emissions. I think that that is the best way to say it.
Sonja:Yeah. Well, then if we go to the production methods, Would it be fair to say that hydrogen can be either a climate solution or a climate problem, depending on how it's been produced?
Matti:I think that's a pretty fair statement. So that if we are making hydrogen using fossil fuels in a way that, you know, produce a lot of CO2 emissions, like in a normal steam methane reformation or something like that one, then actually per every kilo of hydrogen produced, the emissions can be something from 10 to even more than 20 kilos of CO2 equivalent per that kilo of hydrogen. So it can be very, very, very emission rich, if you will.
Sonja:Yeah. So then to dive into these different production methods, this is going to give the listeners an overview of all the different methods that exist. And there is a way to color code hydrogen based on how it has been produced. It's not an official way, but but it's used in the media a lot. And I know you have an opinion on these colors. And you have an opinion on whether they should be used or not. But for the sake of our listeners and for the sake of how they've been portrayed and used in media, could you walk us through the main colors and briefly explain what each color means?
Matti:Yes, yes, I can. And to start with that one, yes, I do have an opinion, a very strong opinion on the colors and the use of them.
Sonja:We can get back to that.
Matti:Yes, we can get back to that one. But on the other hand, I need to say that the colors are some way useful as well. So they are useful in that sense that people, you know, on layman's terms, so that when they are seeing that, okay, there's hydrogen, so how you differentiate hydrogen from another one, you can either use the technical terms, but if you are not an engineer or somehow in the industry, it doesn't tell you anything. So therefore the colors, they bring some addition value. But the problem is that the colors have been used in a way that, okay, you evaluate that one is better than the other. And for that evaluation, they are not that good. And we will come back to that one in a later phase. But if we go through the colors, so starting from what is the most used way for producing hydrogen at the moment, we have gray hydrogen. So gray hydrogen is, well, that's hydrogen that is being produced from methane using steam methane reformation and in that production method you actually use the methane and steam to form hydrogen. From energy point of view it is actually the most energy efficient way to produce hydrogen but it's also one of the most CO2 producing methods as well so there's a lot of CO2 emissions coming from that. Then if you use the same kind of steam reformation but in this case the energy that is being brought into that steam is from coal. Practically coal is perhaps the most used. We can then say that okay this is like black or brown hydrogen.
Sonja:Is there a difference between black and brown or is it just two terms used?
Matti:? I think it's just two terms used so that or at least if there's a differentiation I have seen that the both names brown and black has been used you know crossing each other so that how it is so therefore I would I actually couple them. But then we come to this blue hydrogen, so that if we have the steam methane reformation, and especially the steam methane reformation, we then come to a phase where we can collect some of the CO2 that has been produced in that production. So there's different kind of amine, ways of using amines in order to collect the CO2. And you will then have gaseous CO2 that is not entering the atmosphere, but you can then sort of put that in a pipeline and then you know being stored underneath the seabed or something like that one but it is important to understand that this kind of capturing CO2 capturing is not 100% solution so that you always always always will have still some emissions coming and the best numbers that I have seen in the industry discussions have been that something like 95% of the CO2 can be can be so to say sequestered from the pipelines to the or Or, you know, exhaust pipes or chimneys. But then if we move forward and we are then talking about green hydrogen. Yeah. So green hydrogen is something that has been thought is the key for turning gray hydrogen into renewable. Green hydrogen is typically used with wind power, produced hydrogen. So you have a unit called electrolyser, where you're actually breaking the water molecule into oxygen and hydrogen.
Sonja:So green uses just water as a feedstock?
Matti:Well, in layman's terms, yes, you can say it that way. But there are chemicals involved as well. Actually, the water that goes through the electrolysis is a little bit salty. So you need to have some salts there. And not all the water is being broken into oxygen and hydrogen so that you will have actually like a waste stream of salty water there as well.
Sonja:Okay.
Matti:And then you have this oxygen so that you're producing eight kilos of oxygen against every one kilo of hydrogen and you need to think that okay what to do with that oxygen. You can of course release it to the atmosphere that is not an issue at least in the smaller terms but that is like another side stream that you're getting from there.
Sonja:But no CO2 right?
Matti:No CO2 from the electrolysers. But of course you will always have the CO2 coming from the power that you are using in that electrolyser. So if you are only using wind power and when it's being produced, you have very low emissions. But the wind doesn't always blow, you will have to have some supplementary power from somewhere else, and that actually always has CO2 emissions. So if you are using grid power, the emissions can be very high even. So it might be a little bit surprising perhaps to the listeners that if you would use only, for example, the grid power in Germany for running that electrolyzer, then per kilogram of hydrogen, the emissions, the CO2 emissions would be higher than with the first one with the gray hydrogen that I mentioned that is producing a lot of CO2. So that is very, how to say, sensitive line between that, okay, when the electrolysis hydrogen is clean and when it is not. And for that reason, the green hydrogen has quite an immense regulation in place. So we are talking about this three-pillar principle, so that you need to have the additional green power. You need to have it so that it's being produced on the same time than when it's being used in the electrolyzer. And then thirdly, so that it's coming from the same region, so that you actually have access to that one. I think that the next good color to mention here is perhaps yellow, where the principle is exactly the same as with the green, but there solar power, PVs, are being used for feeding or inputting the power into the electrolyzer. And, okay, yellow, sun, it's quite straightforward. Then we come to pink, where actually the power is coming from the nuclear power plants. And, of course, there are some others, like, for example, white, that is the natural hydrogen, so that we have in a bedrock, we have some hydrogen, and now there's, for example, in France, there's some projects where they are trying to get that hydrogen from the bedrock. And of course, that has no emissions because it's just coming directly from the bedrock. And that is then called white. The latest what I've heard about is actually golden. And that is ours. So we at Hycamite, we are producing turquoise hydrogen.
Sonja:Yeah.
Matti:But when we are producing, okay, perhaps if we go through first what the turquoise hydrogen is so that Turquoise hydrogen is something where you'll use the fossil fuels, and then you capture the CO2, or actually not the CO2 but the carbon in a solid form. And here actually the ratio for getting all the carbon captured is 100 percent. Because if you have a methane molecule, you don't produce hydrogen unless you also produce carbon. So we'll always have a 100 percent yield. Yeah. Yeah. the carbon can be used then further so that there's actually very, very small emissions overall coming from the process. And even when you are taking into the upstream emissions, we are usually less than with the other means of producing hydrogen. There was just recently a paper about what is golden hydrogen.
Sonja:I've never heard that. I don't even have it on my list.
Matti:And it was said that the golden hydrogen is hydrogen that is being used or where our process is being used so that we are capturing the solid carbon. But the methane that what we are putting in is actually biogas. So that would be like the golden era of hydrogen. And I really like that color.
Sonja:Yeah, I was thinking that because, of course, all these colors, you can hear that they have some kind of a thought in them already, what you associate. So green, you associate with something. Gray and black, you associate with something. And I understand that that might be confusing. But like golden hydrogen, That sounds pretty nice,
Matti:though. Yeah, the next one will be diamond. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Let's see. For sure, I mean, there are even production measures or ways for producing hydrogen that are not listed here. So, for example, a direct photolysis so that you have like cells where sunlight is affecting the water and then actually breaks that water into hydrogen and oxygen. So that kind of technologies are being researched at the moment and I don't think that they have a color yet. Okay. So there's a lot of new possibilities as well around these colors.
Sonja:Okay, great. Interesting. So just to give a quick recap, the most commonly used hydrogen would be the gray one.
Matti:Correct.
Sonja:Steam methane reforming. And there it's produced from methane and there is no carbon capture. So then as a byproduct, there's CO2. Correct. And then blue hydrogen is the same as steam methane reforming, but the carbon is at least partially captured. I had a question regarding that. Is there a use for the CO2 or does it always need to be stored somewhere?
Matti:Well, there's a lot of use cases that have been researched and developed at the moment. So there's been studies, for example, getting that into concrete and, you know, so that it's being carbonated on the same way that, well, it helps actually the concrete to form and so it will be in solid form then there but those are still under development and they are still you know coming but the problem is that those volumes of co2 that what we are producing as a mankind they are massive
Speaker 01:yeah
Matti:so if you think about hydrogen production alone not talking about any cars or power generation or something like that one mankind is now producing like 100 million tons of hydrogen per year and if we think that a everything would be produced with a steam methane reformation. And we think that, okay, that those processes are actually quite efficient. Then we have approximately 10 kilos of CO2 equivalent per every kilo of hydrogen. That means we are producing 1 billion tons. So 1,000 million tons. That is a massive number. And if you think that, okay, where can you put that CO2? you cannot find a use case for that. And then you have all the other CO2 emissions as well coming. So literally what we are doing as a mankind, we are using our atmosphere as a garbage yard. I mean, it's a landfill site or airfill site, if you will. We should stop that.
Sonja:And I imagine even if we would find applications for all of that CO2, there's still going to be a ton of leakage in between. So that brings us to green hydrogen, which is hydrogen produced by electrolysis, where renewable electricity is used to power that process. And it's produced from water, which means that there are no CO2 emissions. And then we had turquoise, which is methane pyrolysis, where instead of CO2, When methane is heated, there is solid carbon produced as a byproduct. And you mentioned... the golden. Correct. Is it like a new term for turquoise? Because I know there are several different ways of producing hydrogen also within methane processes.
Matti:Yeah, well, I think that is to come. So what kind of color we are using for different methane splitting processes and because methane splitting as a technology is something the way you can use, first of all, the methane from different sources. You can also use waste streams from oil and gas industry and you can then use different kind of methods for making that methane splitting so that you can use like plasmalysis you can use high temperature plasma you can use catalytic conversion that what we are doing and so forth and these all have their own different features on it so it's actually I think that's saying that okay it's turquoise hydrogen for all of those it's a little bit underestimation of the possibilities that what we have in this kind of technologies.
Sonja:Yeah, because those are really different from each other as well, especially around the carbon that's produced as a byproduct and where you can use it and whether you can use it at all. But you mentioned that the golden, even though it's not a term that's widely used yet, that it would be hydrogen when it's produced from biomethane.
Matti:Yes. That's what I read. It was a paper that was released in Germany
Sonja:okay okay interesting we'll follow follow that topic and then we had brown or black which was am I correct now it is same as gray but it's the feedstock is coal
Matti:no well the feedstock is is water still so so steam methane reformation you use steam yeah as a main source for getting the the hydrogen but what happens there in in that process is that you need to have heat And that heat is not coming from methane, but it is coming from the coal.
Sonja:So
Matti:the energy input is coal. So coal, the carbon as such, doesn't have any hydrogen. So it doesn't really produce, but it's been used as an energy source.
Sonja:Yeah. Okay, good. And then we had pink, which is electrolysis. So same as green hydrogen, but it's powered by nuclear. And yellow was also electrolysis. but powered by solar.
Matti:Yes.
Sonja:Okay, great. And then finally white, which was the natural
Matti:hydrogen. Correct.
Sonja:Oh, that's a lot of colors.
Matti:You start to see why I'm not liking them.
Sonja:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I kind of understand.
Matti:Yeah, but that actually gives us a further question on this one so that if we don't use colors and if we would use these technical terms, it would be a lot better for us in the industry to understand that, okay, what what are the means and you can have you know numbers and everything on that one so that okay what's like for example the carbon footprint generally from all these different colors and so but of course this is something that the big media you know the people on the street the politicians they would be lost because they have also so many other things on their plate in that sense
Sonja:yeah it's really a jungle with all those different ways to produce hydrogen because everything matters. They're the feedstock and how it's powered and so forth. So I think like simplifying everything into a color code, it does sound kind of convenient. And I mean, there are different production methods within these different colors as well. Like there are three different types of green hydrogen and there are, I think, three different types of turquoise hydrogen as well, or even more. Even more. Even more. Yes. Yeah. Do you think these codes are helpful in any way or can they be very misleading?
Matti:I think that perhaps we should still use them but what we should do also is that we should bring the number next to them and the number being their carbon footprint because that is the key element here so if we are able to get from you know grey hydrogen emission down to 1 or down to 0.5 or somewhere else, that number is important. So every CO2 molecule in the air we should try to avoid. And this is something that we should have so that, and this is what we are calling like a technology neutral way for the regulation so that instead of saying that, okay, make green or make blue or make something, make clean, make low- carbon so that it has to be to have a number attached to it. And this is important.
Sonja:Yeah, I definitely agree with that. And we have a really good article on our website also about that. I think we can link it to this podcast. So anyone who's interested in learning more about the different hydrogen colors and their carbon footprints could get to know that article and go in and read it. I think that we've had a good overview of the main colors. And over the next few episodes, we're going to look more closely at each of these production methods what they require and how clean they really are how scalable they are and so forth and I was wondering what are you most looking forward to unpacking in these upcoming episodes
Matti:oh unpacking I don't know there's quite a few things of course but I think that perhaps the most that I'm going to unpack or I'm I'm looking forward to is that actually when we have went through all these technologies and when we come to the point where the regulation and the role of the regulation is being discussed and evaluated so that how that impacts the use of these colors. I think that that is perhaps the one that I'm looking forward.
Sonja:Me too. I think that's a really interesting topic. Thank you, Matti, for being my co-host today. And thanks to everyone who's been listening to The Clean Industry Podcast and Hydrogen 101. This podcast was brought to you by Hycamite. See you next time.
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