On April 4, the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued the report: Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Authored by 83 of the world’s foremost scientists, it charts a path forward for the world to decarbonize itself.
Amongst other things, the report highlights hydrogen’s vital role in helping the world reach net-zero, a world in which we emit as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as we take out.
Why is hydrogen important?
Hydrogen is a safe and reliable energy source that can do everything from powering long haul freight and airplanes to fuelling industrial steel production and domestic heating. It can be produced abundantly and virtually anywhere in Canada at low cost, thanks to the country’s vast supply of affordable energy, technological expertise, and highly skilled workforce.
As the IPCC report points out, hydrogen offers the world one of the only pathways to completely decarbonize every single part of the global economy, by serving as a clean energy source where other renewables can’t, such as shipping.
The skills and expertise of Canada’s energy workers are one the country’s greatest assets. Yet, it is estimated that over the next three decades, the clean energy transition could affect between 312,000 to 450,000 energy sector workers in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland and Labrador. On top of being safe and renewable, hydrogen has the potential to leverage their expertise to develop a whole new sector, creating thousands of new cleantech jobs in the process.
A rising market for hydrogen and our expertise to carry it
Clean hydrogen offers Canada the prospect of becoming a top global supplier in a market expected to reach $2.5 trillion USD by 2050. Already, Canada’s highly skilled workforce and energy expertise have helped position it as a pioneer in hydrogen production, attracting over $67 billion in foreign direct investment in the past five years alone, and creating tens of thousands of jobs in the process. In this context, additional FDI in the coming years mean an opportunity to propel the technologies needed to develop this booming sector even further.
Reducing Canadians’ – and the worlds’ – carbon emissions with hydrogen
The development of new technologies like carbon capture and fuel cell technology will only serve to make hydrogen more sustainable and reliable, and helping to draw in further investment to fuel Canada’s hydrogen boom.
In fact, recent advances in hydrogen technology are what made it commercially viable as a power source, just as the world is confronted with the imperative of finding new sources of energy. But it’s not just about fighting climate change.
In an uncertain world racked by international conflict and supply-chain disruptions, Canada and its allies are seeking new and reliable sources of green energy.
Canada – with its abundant supply of renewable electricity and expertise in carbon capture technology – is ideally positioned to offer long-term energy security solutions to the world with this fuel of the future, thus opening new economic opportunities for our country. Additionally, Canada’s environmental and ethical standards mean that we can develop this market in a sustainable manner while boosting our communities’ wealth.
Find out more about why the future of hydrogen is in Canada.
Laura.Stilwell
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