April 4 (SeeNews) - Blue hydrogen will be in focus in the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region in the next five to ten years, where that type of fuel shapes up to be a major decarbonisation tool in combination with carbon capture and storage (CCS), Akos Hegedus, managing director of Linde Gas Hungary, said on Tuesday.
"The question is whether the products which companies are selling to the end users could cover the extensive price of blue or green hydrogen," Hegedus said during a panel at the Budapest Hydrogen Summit.
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Green hydrogen is obtained by electrolysis of water, with the process powered from renewable sources such as wind or solar, stored in tanks and fed into the existing gas grid. Blue hydrogen uses natural gas for production, with the resulting carbon dioxide emissions captured and stored underground. Grey hydrogen is also produced from natural gas, without capturing greenhouse gases released in the process.
With demand sensitive to the price of supply, green hydrogen production hinges on the affordability as well as the availability of power generated from renewable sources, which at present are not sufficient to support the production of power both for end consumption and for electrolysers used in green hydrogen production. In this sense, EU decarbonisation targets by 2030 are linked to price of supply of hydrogen for industrial output.
The region is still lacking in large-scale hydrogen electrolyser projects, with efforts directed at present to R&D and pilot projects, Hegedus also said.
Linde Gas Hungary is part of Germany-founded, UK-based industrial gases and engineering group Linde, which booked sales of $31 billion (28.4 billion euro) in 2021, according to its website. In Southeast Europe, Linde is also present in Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Greece and Turkey.
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