Metalloinvest, the official partner of the Russian Energy Week international forum, co-organized a panel session dedicated to one of the key issues for the development of the world economy in the coming decades - "The Hydrogen Future of Russia and the World." /b>
The importance of the stated topic is determined by forecasts of the global demand for hydrogen, which may reach 40-170 million tons per year by 2050.
The session participants noted that Russia has to overcome a number of fundamental challenges to meet its own needs and supply hydrogen to foreign markets. They are associated both with the uncertainty regarding the main parameters of the hydrogen market and with technological solutions for its production.
In particular, blue hydrogen will have to find optimal solutions for capturing and storing the CO2 generated in the process.
For the production of "green" hydrogen, a large-scale implementation of technologies is required that will provide a sufficient amount of energy from renewable energy sources, which is associated with significant investments, which are not always effective from an economic point of view.
The participants emphasized that when addressing these and other pressing issues, it is important to maintain a reasonable balance between purchases of foreign technologies and investments in their own.
Yuri Gavrilov, Director of Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Metalloinvest noted that the Company has significant expertise in reducing CO2 emissions throughout the entire production chain.
“Metalloinvest is considering the full range of existing and promising technologies that will allow the Company to reduce the carbon footprint of its products and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050,” noted Yuri Gavrilov. - Given the complexity of the task, it is hardly worth talking about the only optimal technological solution for all our enterprises. Most likely, it will be a combination of various options for production, storage, logistics, infrastructure, depending on the geographical location of enterprises and available resources.
Taking into account our needs, in the near future, the full provision of "green" hydrogen seems unlikely. Rather, it is worth talking about "yellow" hydrogen, which is also produced by electrolysis, eliminating CO2 emissions, using the energy of nuclear power plants.
We are already conducting research at the level of pre-design work in all the necessary areas. We plan to step by step towards our goal, gradually increasing confidence that it is technically feasible at an industrial level and economically feasible. It is also important to discuss with the state regulatory mechanisms and incentive methods that will allow the implementation of such large-scale capital and energy-intensive projects.
We believe that within the next 10 years it is possible to carry out large-scale production of hydrogen and determine an acceptable economic model. "
