Taking the Hydrogen Council’s vision for hydrogen to the next level, the study entitled Hydrogen, Scaling up outlines a comprehensive and quantified roadmap to scale deployment and its enabling impact on the energy transition. Developed with support from McKinsey and launched as global leaders gathered at COP 23 in Bonn, this report, presents the first comprehensive vision of the long-term potential of hydrogen and a roadmap for deployment. This ambitious yet realistic approach would deliver deep decarbonization of transport, industry, and buildings, and enable a renewable energy production and distribution system. To realize this vision, investors, industry, and government will need to ramp up and coordinate their efforts.
Hydrogen is a central pillar of the energy transformation required to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius. To achieve the two-degree scenario, the world will need to make dramatic changes year after year and decrease energy-related CO2 emissions by 60% until 2050 – even as the population grows by more than 2 billion people and billions of citizens in emerging markets join the global middle class. Hydrogen can play seven major roles in this transformation: