Clean hydro­gen is seen by most peo­ple famil­iar with the sub­ject, from experts to politi­cians, as a cru­cial tool to stop glob­al warm­ing before it exceeds 2 °C. That’s why gov­ern­ments and investors are throw­ing mon­ey at almost any project that uses clean hydro­gen. This is tempt­ing many to try to strike gold with clean hydro­gen projects; ini­tia­tives, projects and large-scale plants are spring­ing up like mush­rooms in a wide range of applications.

But, says Michael Liebre­ich, a promi­nent fig­ure in the clean hydro­gen dis­course, there will not be enough green ener­gy to pro­duce clean hydro­gen for all applications.

He there­fore wants to steer stake­hold­ers away from fuel cell cars and oth­er appli­ca­tions where bat­ter­ies are a viable alter­na­tive to fer­til­iz­ers and oth­er select­ed appli­ca­tions where clean hydro­gen can be more ben­e­fi­cial. To illus­trate which areas of appli­ca­tion investors and politi­cians should or should not invest in, he has cre­at­ed a frame­work named the Hydro­gen Lad­der.

Let’s delve deep­er into the intri­ca­cies of the Hydro­gen Lad­der to bet­ter under­stand its impli­ca­tions for the clean hydro­gen land­scape.

Shortage

There is not enough green elec­tric­i­ty that can be con­vert­ed into clean hydro­gen to sup­ply all pos­si­ble appli­ca­tions of hydro­gen, says Michael Liebreich.

Of course it’s not enough today, says the opti­mist. This is because less than 1 per­cent of all hydro­gen pro­duced 2023 is clean. We will rem­e­dy this by build­ing a heck of a lot of PEM elec­trolyz­ers all over the world.

But even then, insists Michael Liebre­ich, we will not be able to pro­duce enough hydrogen.

It feels like Michael Liebre­ich is a par­ty crash­er. Here we have the par­ty of a life­time to cel­e­brate the great future of clean hydro­gen. We are drink­ing bub­bly and in a great mood. Opti­mism is high; we are invin­ci­ble. Then he comes here and trash­es every­thing. Who does he think he is?

Michael Liebreich

Michael Liebre­ich is a Lon­don­er and an Olympian. But it’s not in these qual­i­ties that he hangs out in the hydro­gen space. He is known for his deep under­stand­ing of how ener­gy mar­kets work, includ­ing clean ener­gy and its impact on the envi­ron­ment. Exper­tise that builds on his expe­ri­ence as a con­sul­tant at McK­in­sey, ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist at Groupe Arnault, and espe­cial­ly as founder of Bloomberg New Ener­gy Finance, a lead­ing source of insights on clean ener­gy, trans­porta­tion and tech­nol­o­gy. Today he runs his own con­sult­ing business.

It is worth not­ing that Michael Liebre­ich is not anti-hydro­gen. On the con­trary! He is also excit­ed about the future of hydro­gen. After all, that’s why he’s at the same par­ty as us. But unlike the par­ty prizes, he has only sipped his bub­bly. He is sim­ply the sober one among us. Maybe we should lis­ten to what he has to say about clean hydrogen.

Short interruption for important message

Dear share­hold­ers and investors,

You may won­der why I have dragged you to this par­ty. Of course, you have noth­ing against hydro­gen, and are as keen as any­one to reduce green­house gas emis­sions. But you are pri­mar­i­ly inter­est­ed in see­ing Smoltek’s shares increase in value.

Of course you know why I’ve invit­ed you to the par­ty: Smoltek devel­ops car­bon nanofibers that can be used for a lot of good things. For a start, we have focused on two busi­ness areas: Smoltek Semi and Smoltek Hydro­gen. The lat­ter has devel­oped a unique cell mate­r­i­al for PEM elec­trolyz­ers; it can sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce the amount of the nec­es­sary but ridicu­lous­ly expen­sive cat­a­lyst met­al irid­i­um. This will save gigan­tic amounts of mon­ey for elec­trolyz­er man­u­fac­tur­ers and, by exten­sion, all their customers.

Their cus­tomers? Yes, all the ones you see here at the par­ty. They all need PEM elec­trolyz­ers. And all will want to save big by choos­ing elec­trolyz­ers with Smoltek cell mate­r­i­al. You see?

This makes Smoltek such a damn good invest­ment. Both cha-ching and social ben­e­fit at the same time.

But…

(I’ve said it before, there’s always a but in every good story).

The rub is that there won’t be enough PEM elec­trolyz­ers and green elec­tric­i­ty for every­one at the par­ty. At least that’s the mes­sage Michael Liebre­ich is try­ing to get across to every­one at the party.

But no one wants to lis­ten to him. Every­one is pre­oc­cu­pied with boast­ing about their antic­i­pat­ed suc­cess to their peers instead of pay­ing atten­tion to Liebre­ich’s warnings.

But we have lis­tened and will now explain what Michael Liebre­ich is try­ing to say.

Hydrogen Ladder

The Hydro­gen Lad­der looks like the Euro­pean Union ener­gy label. (You know that col­or­ful stick­er on white goods, light bulb pack­ag­ing and cars you buy that shows how ener­gy effi­cient it is on a scale from A to G – from best to worst).

How­ev­er, instead of grad­ing the ener­gy effi­cien­cy of white goods, light bulbs and cars, Michael Liebre­ich uses the same col­or and let­ter scale to grade the like­li­hood that hydro­gen will be direct­ly or indi­rect­ly used on a large scale by an appli­ca­tion a decade from now.

Why a decade?

Right now the gov­ern­ment is throw­ing mon­ey at all clean hydro­gen appli­ca­tions. Any­one with ideas for how clean hydro­gen can be used is run­ning after this money.

In ten years, when the sub­si­dies start to dry up and the tough com­mer­cial con­di­tions kick in, the wheat will be sep­a­rat­ed from the chaff. In the mean­time, the tech­nol­o­gy will be fine-tuned and the nec­es­sary infra­struc­ture will emerge.

So in ten years – give or take a few years – we will see which appli­ca­tions can real­ly stand on their own.

While we wait for the ver­dict, we can spec­u­late on what will work and what won’t. This is what Michael Liebre­ich does with his Hydro­gen Ladder.

What the Hydrogen Ladder is and isn’t

It is impor­tant to under­stand that the Hydro­gen Lad­der is only a clas­si­fi­ca­tion based on Michael Liebre­ich’s assess­ment of the like­li­hood of a clean hydro­gen appli­ca­tion being com­mer­cial­ly viable at scale around 2035.

In his assess­ment, Michael Liebre­ich has weighed

• sci­en­tif­ic fac­tors such as ther­mo­dy­nam­ics, physics, and chemistry,
• eco­nom­ic fac­tors such as cost, crit­i­cal min­er­al avail­abil­i­ty, and co-ben­e­fits, and
• envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors such as air pol­lu­tion, geopol­i­tics, and human behavior.

The mod­el is about noth­ing else. It is not an assess­ment of ener­gy effi­cien­cy. It is not an assess­ment of the speed of the tran­si­tion to hydro­gen. It is not an assess­ment of mar­ket size. It is not an assess­ment of how much car­bon diox­ide the atmos­phere can be saved from.

That said, we are now ready to look at Michael Liebre­ich’s rank­ing of 35 can­di­dates for clean hydro­gen use.

No alternative

Rung A sig­ni­fies use cas­es where hydro­gen is the only option, with no alter­na­tive ener­gy car­ri­ers or process­es avail­able. These appli­ca­tions may not nec­es­sar­i­ly be grow­ing mar­kets, but hydro­gen’s role is indis­pens­able due to its unique prop­er­ties or require­ments of the process.

Hydro­gen Lad­der lists fol­low­ing appli­ca­tion areas in this category:

• Fer­til­iz­er: Hydro­gen is crit­i­cal for pro­duc­ing ammo­nia, a key ingre­di­ent in fer­til­iz­ers, through the Haber-Bosch process.
• Hydro­gena­tion: Essen­tial in pro­cess­ing fats and oils, hydro­gena­tion con­verts unsat­u­rat­ed fats to sat­u­rat­ed fats by adding hydrogen.
• Methanol: Hydro­gen is used to pro­duce methanol, a fun­da­men­tal build­ing block in the pro­duc­tion of var­i­ous chem­i­cals and fuels.
• Hydro­c­rack­ing: In refin­ing, hydro­gen is used to break down heavy crude oil frac­tions into lighter, more valu­able products.
• Desul­phuri­sa­tion: Hydro­gen plays a cru­cial role in remov­ing sul­fur from fos­sil fuels, reduc­ing pol­lu­tion from their combustion.

Decent market share

Rung B iden­ti­fies areas where hydro­gen has a strong chance of cap­tur­ing a sig­nif­i­cant mar­ket share. This is due to advan­tages it offers over oth­er ener­gy car­ri­ers in terms of cost, safe­ty, con­ve­nience, or oth­er factors.

Hydro­gen Lad­der lists fol­low­ing appli­ca­tion areas in this category:

• Ship­ping: Hydro­gen serves as a clean ener­gy source when used as clean ammo­nia or e‑methanol, reduc­ing emis­sions in marine transport.
• Jet avi­a­tion: As e‑fuel, hydro­gen pro­vides a sus­tain­able alter­na­tive to con­ven­tion­al jet fuels, promis­ing low­er car­bon emissions.
• Chem­i­cal feed­stock: Hydro­gen is piv­otal in syn­the­siz­ing a wide range of chem­i­cals, sup­port­ing var­i­ous indus­tri­al processes.
• Steel: Employ­ing hydro­gen as a reduc­ing agent in steel­mak­ing process­es reduces car­bon emis­sions, mak­ing pro­duc­tion greener.
• Long dura­tion grid bal­anc­ing: Hydro­gen can be stored and con­vert­ed back to elec­tric­i­ty, offer­ing a solu­tion for bal­anc­ing ener­gy sup­ply and demand over extend­ed periods.

Some market share

Rung C sug­gests that hydro­gen will like­ly cap­ture some mar­ket share, though not dom­i­nant­ly. This could be in sec­tors where hydro­gen com­petes with oth­er clean tech­nolo­gies or where its adop­tion is dri­ven by spe­cif­ic local advan­tages, such as avail­abil­i­ty of renew­able resources or infra­struc­ture readiness.

Hydro­gen Lad­der lists fol­low­ing appli­ca­tion areas in this category:

• Coastal and riv­er ves­sels: Hydro­gen offers a clean­er fuel alter­na­tive, reduc­ing emis­sions for marine ves­sels in sen­si­tive ecosystems.
• Non-road mobile machin­ery: In con­struc­tion and agri­cul­ture, hydro­gen-pow­ered machin­ery can reduce car­bon foot­print and noise pollution.
• Vin­tage and mus­cle cars: As e‑fuel, hydro­gen pro­vides a sus­tain­able path to keep these cars run­ning with­out tra­di­tion­al gasoline.
• Bio­gas upgrad­ing: Hydro­gen can enhance the qual­i­ty of bio­gas, increas­ing its ener­gy con­tent and mak­ing it a more effec­tive fuel source.

Small market share

Rung D implies that hydro­gen could plau­si­bly secure a small slice of the mar­ket. These are areas where hydro­gen’s use is fea­si­ble but faces strong com­pe­ti­tion from oth­er tech­nolo­gies or where its advan­tages are not as pronounced.

Hydro­gen Lad­der lists fol­low­ing appli­ca­tion areas in this category:

• Long dis­tance trucks and coach­es: Hydro­gen may offer a viable alter­na­tive for long-haul trans­port, where bat­tery weight and charg­ing times are lim­it­ing factors.
• High-tem­per­a­ture indus­tri­al heat: In indus­tries requir­ing high tem­per­a­tures, hydro­gen can pro­vide a clean source of heat.
• Gen­er­a­tors: Hydro­gen-fueled gen­er­a­tors can serve as a clean back­up pow­er source, espe­cial­ly in remote or sen­si­tive locations.

Niche market share

Rung E envi­sions sce­nar­ios where hydro­gen could find a foothold in niche mar­kets. These are appli­ca­tions where hydro­gen offers unique ben­e­fits to small, spe­cial­ized sec­tors, pos­si­bly dri­ven by spe­cif­ic tech­no­log­i­cal, safe­ty, or envi­ron­men­tal considerations.

Hydro­gen Lad­der lists fol­low­ing appli­ca­tion areas in this category:

• Region­al trucks: Hydro­gen could serve spe­cial­ized trans­port needs where elec­tric alter­na­tives are not viable.
• Com­mer­cial heat­ing: As part of a hybrid sys­tem, hydro­gen can sup­ple­ment heat­ing solu­tions, reduc­ing car­bon emissions.
• Island grids: Hydro­gen can offer a resilient and sus­tain­able ener­gy solu­tion for remote island communities.
• Short dura­tion grid bal­anc­ing: For man­ag­ing short-term fluc­tu­a­tions in the elec­tric­i­ty grid, hydro­gen can play a cru­cial role.

Niche market share in some geographies

Rung F high­lights the poten­tial for hydro­gen to cap­ture niche mar­ket shares in spe­cif­ic geo­gra­phies. This reflects the influ­ence of local factors—such as the avail­abil­i­ty of renew­able ener­gy sources for hydro­gen pro­duc­tion, local pol­i­cy sup­port, or spe­cif­ic envi­ron­men­tal or logis­ti­cal challenges—that might make hydro­gen an attrac­tive option in cer­tain regions but not universally.

Hydro­gen Lad­der lists fol­low­ing appli­ca­tion areas in this category:

• Light avi­a­tion: In remote areas, hydro­gen-pow­ered avi­a­tion could offer a clean­er alter­na­tive to con­ven­tion­al fuels.
• Remote and rur­al trains: Where elec­tri­fi­ca­tion is not fea­si­ble, hydro­gen trains can reduce emis­sions and reliance on diesel.
• Local fer­ries: For short sea routes, hydro­gen fer­ries can offer a sus­tain­able trans­porta­tion solution.
• Light trucks: In spe­cif­ic regions, hydro­gen light trucks could meet deliv­ery needs with low­er emissions.
• Bulk pow­er imports: Hydro­gen could facil­i­tate the import of renew­able ener­gy across borders.
• UPS: Unin­ter­rupt­ible Pow­er Sup­plies (UPS) pow­ered by hydro­gen can pro­vide reli­able back­up pow­er in crit­i­cal applications.

Row of doom

Final­ly, rung G rep­re­sents use cas­es where hydro­gen’s prospects are the most chal­leng­ing. These are sce­nar­ios where the com­bi­na­tion of tech­ni­cal, eco­nom­ic, and prac­ti­cal bar­ri­ers makes the wide­spread adop­tion of hydro­gen unlike­ly or where its use is out­per­formed by oth­er alter­na­tives across most or all con­sid­er­a­tions. This could reflect sit­u­a­tions where the ener­gy required to pro­duce, trans­port, and use hydro­gen out­weighs its ben­e­fits, or where oth­er solu­tions are more effi­cient, cost-effec­tive, or practical.

Hydro­gen Lad­der lists fol­low­ing appli­ca­tion areas in this category:

• Metro trains and bus­es: In urban set­tings, elec­tric alter­na­tives are typ­i­cal­ly more effi­cient and cost-effective.
• Urban deliv­ery and taxis: Elec­tric vehi­cles offer a more prac­ti­cal and eco­nom­i­cal solu­tion for urban deliv­ery and taxi services.
• 2 and 3‑wheelers: Elec­tric bikes and scoot­ers are more viable due to their low­er ener­gy require­ments and sim­pler infrastructure.
• Cars: Bat­tery elec­tric vehi­cles (BEVs) pro­vide a more direct and effi­cient use of elec­tric­i­ty for per­son­al transportation.
• Bulk e‑fuels: Pro­duc­ing e‑fuels on a large scale is ener­gy-inten­sive and less effi­cient com­pared to direct electrification.
• Mid/low-tem­per­a­ture indus­tri­al heat: Elec­tric heat­ing solu­tions are gen­er­al­ly more effi­cient for these applications.
• Domes­tic heat­ing: Elec­tric heat pumps offer a more effi­cient and sus­tain­able option for res­i­den­tial heating.
• Pow­er gen­er­a­tion using non-stored hydro­gen: Direct use of renew­able elec­tric­i­ty is more effi­cient than con­vert­ing it to hydro­gen for pow­er generation.

Hydrogen Ladder 5.0

From time to time, Michael Liebre­ich updates his Hydro­gen Lad­der. Hydro­gen Lad­der Ver­sion 5.0 is the lat­est ver­sion at the time of writ­ing. It was pub­lished in Octo­ber 2023 on LinkedIn.

Note the col­or codes.

• Red means that there are no real­is­tic alter­na­tives to hydro­gen for this application.
• Green means that hydro­gen com­petes with bio­mass or biogas.
• Yel­low means that hydro­gen com­petes with elec­tric­i­ty and bat­ter­ies. Gray means there are oth­er com­pet­ing solutions.

Note that just because some­thing com­petes with hydro­gen does not mean that the com­pet­ing prod­uct is a cli­mate-neu­tral choice. For exam­ple, Michael Liebre­ich has used yel­low for the steel indus­try, because elec­tric­i­ty can be used instead of coal, oil or gas to heat blast fur­naces. But this does not make the steel indus­try cli­mate neu­tral. Because, even if you heat the blast fur­nace with elec­tric­i­ty, coal needs to be added in the chem­i­cal process that con­verts iron ore into pig iron, result­ing in huge amounts of car­bon diox­ide emis­sions. To make steel com­plete­ly fos­sil-free, hydro­gen must also be used.

Why create the Hydrogen Ladder?

Michael Liebre­ich seems to see him­self as one of the few adults in a room filled with overex­cit­ed hydro­gen entre­pre­neurs, mon­eyed investors spray­ing cash over all sorts of hydro­gen projects, and politi­cians and oth­er stake­hold­ers with inflat­ed expec­ta­tions. With that in mind, it is rea­son­able to describe the Hydro­gen Lad­der as a means to achieve three things:

• Cut­ting through hype: There’s a lot of excite­ment about hydro­gen, but also con­fu­sion about where it makes prac­ti­cal sense. The lad­der helps cut through the noise.
• Focus­ing invest­ment: By high­light­ing the most promis­ing appli­ca­tions of hydro­gen, it guides invest­ment in research and infra­struc­ture towards the areas with the most poten­tial impact.
• Man­ag­ing expec­ta­tions: The lad­der shows where we should­n’t expect hydro­gen to be the mir­a­cle solu­tion. It pro­motes real­is­tic expec­ta­tions about hydro­gen’s role in the clean ener­gy mix.

Conclusions of the Hydrogen Ladder

Michael Liebre­ich’s main point is that entre­pre­neurs, investors, politi­cians and oth­er stake­hold­ers should focus on the top two rungs (A and B) and wait with the rest.

He argues that just sup­ply­ing the appli­ca­tions in the top step (A) with clean hydro­gen would require more green ener­gy than what is pro­duced today. And togeth­er with the sec­ond top rung (B), the pro­duc­tion of renew­able elec­tric­i­ty would have to increase five times com­pared to today.

Criticisms

Far from every­one appre­ci­ates Michael Liebre­ich’s attempt to pro­vide his view of hydro­gen. Sup­port­ers of hydro­gen some­times per­ceive him as over­ly skep­ti­cal, argu­ing that the Hydro­gen Lad­der down­play hydro­gen’s poten­tial in the tran­si­tion away from coal, oil and nat­ur­al gas towards green solutions.

At the same time, the Hydro­gen Lad­der is crit­i­cized by the oth­er side for giv­ing hydro­gen a more sig­nif­i­cant role than warranted.

Per­haps this dichoto­my proves that Michael Liebre­ich is on the right track? But there are also more nuanced criticisms:

• Con­flict of inter­est: Some crit­ics point to Liebre­ich’s vest­ed inter­ests in cer­tain ener­gy sec­tors, par­tic­u­lar­ly his involve­ment with Charge­Point, a com­pa­ny focused on elec­tric vehi­cle charg­ing infra­struc­ture. This rais­es ques­tions about poten­tial bias towards elec­tri­fi­ca­tion and away from hydro­gen solu­tions, even where hydro­gen may have advantages.
• Over­ly focused per­spec­tive: Liebre­ich’s back­ground pri­mar­i­ly lies in finance and clean ener­gy con­sult­ing. While this pro­vides exper­tise, some argue it can lead to an overem­pha­sis on eco­nom­ic fac­tors while poten­tial­ly under­es­ti­mat­ing the role of tech­no­log­i­cal break­throughs or shifts in geopo­lit­i­cal pri­or­i­ties that could reshape the hydro­gen landscape.
• Arbi­trary time­line: The focus on a ten-year time­frame is some­what restric­tive. While it aims to look beyond imme­di­ate hype, tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion can occur at unpre­dictable rates. Break­throughs in hydro­gen pro­duc­tion or stor­age could dra­mat­i­cal­ly accel­er­ate the via­bil­i­ty of cer­tain use cas­es well before the decade mark, while oth­ers might require more extend­ed devel­op­ment periods.
• Lim­it­ed scope: The Hydro­gen Lad­der, by its own def­i­n­i­tion, is pri­mar­i­ly con­cerned with the like­li­hood of large-scale adop­tion and does­n’t ful­ly encom­pass all facets of the hydro­gen dis­cus­sion. It does­n’t deeply address poten­tial niche appli­ca­tions where hydro­gen might excel even in small­er mar­kets, nor does it ful­ly account for the envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits of spe­cif­ic use cas­es in off­set­ting emis­sions, regard­less of ulti­mate mar­ket size.
• Sub­jec­tiv­i­ty: While Liebre­ich attempts to ground his assess­ment in sci­en­tif­ic and eco­nom­ic prin­ci­ples, there remains an inher­ent degree of sub­jec­tiv­i­ty in the weight­ing of var­i­ous fac­tors with­in the frame­work. Crit­ics may dis­agree on the empha­sis he places on ther­mo­dy­nam­ics, cur­rent costs, or behav­ioral trends, lead­ing to alter­na­tive inter­pre­ta­tions of the lad­der’s rankings.
• Lack of nuance: The Hydro­gen Lad­der’s col­or-cod­ed sys­tem, while visu­al­ly appeal­ing, can some­times over­sim­pli­fy com­plex issues. Lump­ing diverse use cas­es into broad cat­e­gories risks obscur­ing impor­tant distinctions.

Nevertheless

Nev­er­the­less, the Hydro­gen Lad­der has its mer­its as a frame­work for talk­ing about the role of clean hydro­gen in the near future. The debate is not about whether or not clean hydro­gen has a future, but where it will be most useful.

What­ev­er the out­come of the con­ver­sa­tion, we can be sure of one thing: There will be a heck of a lot of PEM elec­trolyz­ers built in the next ten years and well beyond to meet the surge in demand for clean hydro­gen that every­one sees.

The true winners?

Human­i­ty, avoid­ing a shit­load of car­bon emissions.

Smoltek, enjoy­ing the sound of cha-ching as PEM elec­trolyz­er man­u­fac­tur­ers use Smoltek Hydro­gen’s patent­ed tech­nol­o­gy to reduce the need for scarce iridium.

You, see­ing your invest­ment in Smoltek pay off.