New Zealand could need almost three megatonnes of clean hydrogen a year if we used it as a carbon-free alternative in every technically feasible way. Green hydrogen has been described as a “Swiss army knife” of energy given how handy it can be for a variety of scenarios. In order to help plan for future infrastructure needs, NZ researchers sorted 20 uses – ranging from making fertiliser and steel to aviation fuel – according to how currently viable and competitive they are. The researchers say we probably wouldn’t turn to green hydrogen in all 20 of these cases, but even adapting the most likely cases to green hydrogen would require a two-fold upsizing of our current infrastructure to produce the electricity required.
