Global Hydrogen Flows

Authored by the Hydrogen Council in collaboration with McKinsey and Company, Global Hydrogen Flows addresses the midstream challenge of aligning and optimizing global supply and demand. It finds that trade can reduce overall system costs.
In doing so, it provides a perspective on how the global trade of hydrogen and derivatives, including hydrogen carriers, ammonia, methanol, synthetic kerosene, and green steel (which uses hydrogen in its production), can develop as well as the investments needed to unlock the full potential of global hydrogen and derivatives trade.
Our hope is that this report offers stakeholders – suppliers, buyers, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), investors, and governments – a thorough and quantitative perspective that will help them make the decisions required to accelerate the uptake of hydrogen.
Key messages from the report:
Hydrogen and its derivatives will become heavily traded: 400 out of the 660 million tons (MT) of hydrogen needed for carbon neutrality by 2050 will be transported over long distances, with 190 MT crossing international borders.
In a cost-optimal world, around 50% of trade uses pipelines, while synthetic fuels, ammonia and sponge iron, transported on ships, account for approximately 45%. Europe and countries in the Far East will rely on imports, while North America and China are mostly self-reliant.
Trade has huge benefits: It can lower the cost of hydrogen supply by 25%, or as much as US$6 trillion of investments from now until 2050. This will accelerate the hydrogen transition, which can abate 80 gigatons of CO2 until 2050.
The paper can be found on their website.