Carbon neutralization tuyere costs a lot of money: over the next 30 years, we need to invest more than $80 trillion in hydrogen energy and monopolize 15 trillion of it.

The world needs a huge amount of investment to truly achieve carbon neutrality, the Energy Transformation Committee (ETC) said in a report on Tuesday. In order to achieve the goal of carbon neutrality, the world needs to invest more than $80 trillion between now and 2050, of which hydrogen energy alone accounts for $15 trillion.

Of the $80 trillion invested, investment in renewable energy such as wind and solar will account for about 80 per cent. ETC said that in order to achieve the global net zero emissions target by the middle of this century, clean energy must be the core of carbon neutrality in every industry, while hydrogen will play an important role in industries such as steel and transport.

The Energy Transformation Committee is an international coalition of energy industry executives committed to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 and achieving the goals set by the Paris climate agreement.

Hydrogen energy monopolizes 15 trillion

ETC expects hydrogen use to grow from the current 115 million tonnes to 500m-800m tonnes a year by the middle of the century, accounting for 15-20 per cent of final energy demand. The production of green hydrogen will require an additional 30, 000 terawatt-hours of zero-carbon power supply, which will require an investment of $15 trillion, which will peak at about $800 billion a year by the end of the 2030s.

The $15 trillion will not only be used for hydrogen production, but will also promote large-scale growth in hydrogen use through investments such as power systems. Specifically, about 85 per cent of the $15 trillion investment is for power generation and 15 per cent for electrolytic cells, hydrogen production facilities and transport and storage infrastructure.

It should be noted that the current technology can already produce hydrogen through the electrolysis of water from renewable energy and has been supported by many governments, but at present it is too expensive to be widely used.