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Climate change, the idea that human behavior has long-term effects on the environment or weather, has become a global concern over the past few decades. Temperatures across the world have steadily increased over the past 100 years.
The average carbon footprint is 4 tons of carbon dioxide. Measures to lower that number have started to pick up. Governments worldwide, including the USA, India, and Morocco, have implemented measures to help combat climate change. Companies and businesses worldwide have also stated their pledge to the environment and have sustainability pages on their websites. More specifically, energy companies, especially ones working in natural gas and fossil fuels, have had a solid outside push to become more sustainable. Some companies, such as BP and Shell, have invested in the latest development in clean energy: Green Hydrogen.
Green Hydrogen is a way of creating hydrogen out of water and electricity. The most common way we make hydrogen nowadays is coal and methane. These ways of creating hydrogen emit carbon dioxide, which harms the environment. The green energy process splits water into hydrogen and oxygen, which doesn’t emit carbon dioxide and uses solar and wind energy to power the process. A lot of energy is needed to produce green energy, and plans have already started to create large fields of renewable energy worldwide. BP and other energy companies in Australia plan to build over 10 million solar panels and 1,743 wind turbines to develop green hydrogen. Other countries such as India and Spain have also led headlines as possible leaders in the industry’s future. Green hydrogen is exciting and essential because it can help us become less dependent on natural gas and fossil fuels. Even though strides toward a more sustainable future are made yearly, we still depend on fossil fuels for 84% of our energy production.
Even though the green hydrogen industry sounds very promising and lucrative on paper, in reality, the industry is still in the beginning stages. The process requires a large amount of renewable energy and a lot more than some of the areas have at the current moment. Skeptics of the push for green hydrogen also state the industry requires significant investments to be viable. Green hydrogen is too expensive at the present moment to be commercially viable and needs government help to cut the costs down closer to the market level. While some energy companies have been packed in on the start-up of green hydrogen, others, such as ExxonMobil, have been hesitant to join in, still staying strong in producing hydrogen using fossil fuels.
Although the industry is in its infancy, green hydrogen could be the future energy solution. Green hydrogen is the perfect alternative to the fossil fuels that dominate the market. The required renewable energy could take a while to create, but the outcomes for our global climate could be worth it. Production could become sooner than later; some experts in the industry expect green hydrogen will play a more significant role in environmental sustainability as early as 2030. Even though most of what we know about the splitting water process is speculation and projections, it is interesting to think about how different our energy industry could be.
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