Letter on hydrogen: Grey is going green and blue

Recent breakthroughs in the refining sector are important and should not be lost in the wider malaise over project FIDs

Hydrogen’s global conference circuit restarts this month after the summer recess, with the industry’s ongoing struggle to achieve project FIDs once again high on the agenda. Only about 15% of the green and blue hydrogen projects announced since 2015 have reached FID, according to the latest estimate from management consultants McKinsey & Company. Others put the figure significantly lower. The switch to green and blue hydrogen is gaining some genuine momentum in the refining sector “Hydrogen projects are facing bottlenecks, such as the need to build out entire value chains for technology deployment preventing them from reaching FID,” McKinsey said in its latest assessment of the t