In an interview with Gazprom’s in-house magazine, the department head of Gazprom Export Sergey Komlev voiced his thoughts about blue hydrogen in Russia. He voiced his concerns that Europe’s carbon neutrality will negatively impact Russia’s natural gas supplies and lead to significant declines in the country’s revenues by the year 2050.
Russia’s number one gas producer, however, remains certain that it will be able to maintain its positions on the European market as leading energy exporter by substituting the decline in natural gas with ‘blue hydrogen’.
Europe’s interim goal on the way to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 is a 55% emission reduction by 2030. And that means completely moving away from sources of energy that emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
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As a result, Russia’s volumes of direct supply of natural gas will inevitably take a strong hit, and the shortfall will need to be compensated, at least in part, by hydrogen produced by said natural gas.
According to Komlev, the production of CO2-neutral hydrogen from natural gas (referred to as ‘blue’ hydrogen), is already a possibility. And the initial cost is said to come to $2 per kilogram of hydrogen.
This prospect will allow Russia to become the world’s largest exporter of blue hydrogen with a potential of exporting as much as 33.4 mln tonnes of hydrogen to other countries that will be roughly 20% of the global market in 2050.
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