There’s a buzz about green hydrogen. But pink, produced using nuclear, may have a huge role to play too
Both pink and blue have been used to differentiate between different methods of hydrogen production.
Eve Livesey | Moment | Getty Images
From Tesla’s Elon Musk to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the past few years have seen many high-profile names talk about the role hydrogen may — or may not — play in the planet’s shift to a more sustainable future.
Musk has expressed skepticism about hydrogen’s usefulness, but many think it could help to slash emissions in a number of sectors, including transportation and heavy industry.
While there’s a major buzz about hydrogen and its importance as a tool in securing a low-carbon future — a topic that’s generated a lot of debate in recent months — the vast majority of its production is still based on fossil fuels.
Indeed, according to a Sept. 2022 tracking report from the International Energy Agency, low-emission hydrogen production in 2021 accounted for less than 1% of global hydrogen production.
If it’s to have any role in the planned energy transition, then hydrogen generation needs to change in a pretty big way.
“The first thing to say is that hydrogen doesn’t really exist naturally, so it has to be produced,” said Rachael Rothman, co-director of the Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures at the University of Sheffield.
“It has a lot of potential to help us decarbonize going forwards, but we need to find low-carbon ways of producing it in the first place,” she said, adding that different methods of production had been “denoted different colors.”
“About 95% of our hydrogen today comes from steam methane reforming and has a large associated carbon footprint, and that’s what’s called ‘grey’ hydrogen,” Rothman told CNBC.
Grey hydrogen is, according to energy firm National Grid, “created from natural gas, or methane.” It says that the greenhouse gases associated with the process are not captured, hence the carbon footprint that Rothman refers to.
The dominance of such a method is clearly at odds with net-zero goals. As a result, an array of sources, systems and colors of hydrogen are now being put forward as alternatives.
These include green hydrogen, which refers to hydrogen produced using renewables and electrolysis, with an electric current splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen.
Blue hydrogen, on the other hand, indicates the use of natural gas — a fossil fuel — and carbon capture utilization and storage. There has been a charged debate around the role blue hydrogen could play in the decarbonization of society.
Pink potential
Alongside blue and green, another color attracting attention is pink. Like green hydrogen, its process incorporates electrolysis, but there’s a key difference: pink uses nuclear.
“If you split … water, you get hydrogen and oxygen,” Rothman said. “But splitting water takes energy, so what pink hydrogen is about is splitting water using energy that has come from nuclear.”
This means that “the whole system is low carbon, because … there’s no carbon in water … but also the energy source is also very low carbon because it’s nuclear.”
Alongside electrolysis, Rothman noted that nuclear could also be used with something called a thermochemical cycle.
This, she explained, harnessed very high temperatures to split water into oxygen and hydrogen.
Pink hydrogen already has some potentially significant backers. These include EDF Energy, which has floated the idea of producing hydrogen at Sizewell C, a 3.2-gigawatt nuclear power station planned for the U.K.
“At Sizewell C, we are exploring how we can produce and use hydrogen in several ways,” the firm’s website says. “Firstly, it could help lower emissions during construction of the power station.”
“Secondly, once Sizewell C is operational, we hope to use some of the heat it generates (alongside electricity) to make hydrogen more efficiently,” it adds.
EDF Energy, which is part of the multinational EDF Group, said in a statement sent to CNBC: “Hydrogen produced from nuclear power can play a substantial role in the energy transition.”
The company also acknowledged there were challenges facing the sector and its development.
“Hydrogen is currently a relatively expensive fuel and so the key challenge for low carbon electrolytic hydrogen, whether produced from renewable or nuclear energy, is to bring down the costs of production,” it said.
This needed “supportive policies which encourage investment in early hydrogen production projects and encourage users to switch from fossil fuels to low carbon hydrogen.”
“Growing the market for low carbon hydrogen will deliver the economies of scale and “learning by doing” which will help to reduce the costs of production.”
While there is excitement about the role nuclear could play in hydrogen production and the wider energy transition — the IEA, for example, says nuclear power has “significant potential to contribute to power sector decarbonisation” — it goes without saying that it’s not favored by all.
Critics include Greenpeace. “Nuclear power is touted as a solution to our energy problems, but in reality it’s complex and hugely expensive to build,” the environmental organization says. “It also creates huge amounts of hazardous waste.”
A multi-colored future?
During her interview with CNBC, the University of Sheffield’s Rothman spoke about the bigger picture and the role different types of hydrogen might play. Could we ever see a time when the level of blue and grey hydrogen drops to zero?
“It depends how long a timeframe you’re looking at,” she said, adding that “in an ideal world, they will eventually drop very low.”
“Ultimately, we ideally get rid of all of our grey hydrogen, because grey hydrogen has a large carbon footprint and we need to get rid of it,” Rothman said.
“As we improve carbon capture and storage, there may be a space for blue hydrogen and that’s yet to be evaluated, depending on the … developments there.”
“The pink and green we know there has to be a space for because that’s where you really get the low carbon [hydrogen], and we know it should be, it’s possible to get there.”
Fiona Rayment, chief scientist at the UK National Nuclear Laboratory — which, like EDF Energy, is a member of trade association Hydrogen UK — pressed home the importance of having a range of options available in the years ahead.
“The challenge of net zero cannot be underestimated; we will need to embrace all sources of low carbon hydrogen generation to replace our reliance on fossil fuels,” she told CNBC.
While there has been a lot of talk about using colors to differentiate the various methods of hydrogen production, there is also a lively discussion about whether such a classification system should even exist at all.
“What we want is low carbon hydrogen,” Rothman said. “And I know there is a lot of confusion about the various colors, and I’ve heard some people say … ‘why do we even have the colors, why do we not just have hydrogen and low carbon hydrogen?'”
“And ultimately, it’s the low carbon bit that’s important, and both pink and green would do that.”
Global renewable developer and energy giant RWE has halted its US offshore wind operations “for the time being” because of the “political environment” the Trump administration has created.
RWE, Germany’s biggest electricity producer, said in March that it had dialed back its US offshore wind activities. But now, CEO Marcus Krebber said in a speech transcript, which he’ll deliver at the company’s Annual General Meeting in Essen on April 30, that its US offshore wind business is now closed (but it wasn’t all bad news):
In the US, where we have stopped our offshore activities for the time being, our business in onshore wind, solar energy, and battery storage has so far been developing very dynamically. At the start of this year, we reached an important milestone when our US generation capacity hit the 10 gigawatt mark. The construction of a further 4 gigawatts is secured.
He went on to say that renewables have created regional value and jobs, but that the company remains “cautious given the political developments.” RWE has introduced more stringent requirements for future US investments:
All necessary federal permits must be in place. Tax credits must be safe harbored and all relevant tariff risks mitigated. In addition, onshore wind and solar projects must have secured offtake at the time of the investment decision. Only if these conditions are met will further investments be possible, given the political environment.
About half of RWE’s installed renewable capacity is in the US, where it’s the third-largest renewable energy company through its subsidiary, RWE Clean Energy. RWE holds the rights to develop US offshore wind projects in New York, Louisiana, and California.
RWE paid $1.1 billion for the New York lease area in 2022, where it’s meant to develop the 3 gigawatt (GW) Community Offshore Wind with the UK’s National Grid. Community Offshore Wind was projected to come online in the early 2030s and expected to power more than a million homes.
The developer paid $5.6 billion for the Louisiana lease in the Gulf of Mexico in 2023 as the lone bidder for development rights, and the Canopy Offshore Wind project off Northern California was not expected to be completed for another decade.
Read more: Trump admin halts $5 billion NY offshore wind project mid-build
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It’s that time of year again, time for events across the country to show off electric vehicles at Drive Electric Earth Month.
Drive Electric Earth Month is an offshoot of Drive Electric Week, a long-running annual tradition hosting meetups mostly in the US, but also occasionally in other countries. It started as Drive Electric Earth Day, but since not every event can happen on the same day, they went ahead and extended it to encompass “Earth Month” events that happen across the month of April. It’s all organized by Plug In America, the Sierra Club, the Electric Vehicle Association, EV Hybrid Noire, and Drive Electric USA.
Events consist of general Earth Day-style community celebrations, EV Ride & Drives where you can test drive several EVs in one place, and opportunities to talk to EV owners and ask them questions about what it’s like to live with an EV, away from the pressure of a dealership.
This month, there are 158 events registered across the US and 1 in Mexico (including one online webinar about things to consider when purchasing an EV).
Events have been happening all month, but the biggest weekend is this upcoming one, APril 26-27.
One really neat event was the Asheville event, which showcased the resiliency of EVs in an area devastated by Hurricane Helene, which was made more severe by climate change. That event was attended by the Rivian R1T which famously got dragged 100 feet submerged in mud and came out running fine.
But the bulk of the events happened on the weekends surrounding Earth Day, April 22, so there were several last weekend and will be even more this upcoming weekend.
There are plenty of events in the big cities where you’d expect, but Plug In America wanted to highlight a few of the events in smaller places around the country. Here’s a sampling of upcoming events:
- Big Island EV – Cruise and Picnic in Waimea, HI on April 26, 10am-1pm – EV drivers will congregate in various places around the Big Island (Kona, Waimea, Waikoloa and Hilo), then drive up Saddle Road to the Gil Kahele Recreation Area on Mauna Kea for a potluck and a chance to talk about the experience of owning EVs on the Big Island.
- Santa Barbara Earth Day 2025 and Green Car Show in Santa Barbara, CA on April 26-27, 11am-8pm – This is part of Santa Barbara’s Earth Day celebration, which routinely attracts 30,000 participants and is one of the longest-running Earth Day celebrations on the planet. The Green Car Show includes ride & drives and an “Owners Corner” where owners can showcase their EVs and attendees can check them out and ask questions.
- Earth Day’25 – EV’s role in a sustainable future in Queretaro City, Mexico on April 26, 9am-4pm – The sole Mexican event, this is a combined in-person/online seminar at the Querétaro Institute of Technology.
- Norman Earth Day Festival in Norman, OK on April 27, 12-5pm – Another municipal Earth Day festival, with hands-on activities for kids to learn about the environment. A portion of the parking lot reserved for an EV car show for EV owners who pre-register to show off their vehicles.
- Oregon Electric Vehicle Association Test Drive & Information Expo in Portland, OR on April 27, 10am-4pm – This one is at Daimler Truck’s North American HQ, and will have several EVs for test drives, owner displays (including DIY gas-to-EV conversions), and keynote presentations by EV experts. They’ll even have a 1914 Detroit Electric EV available for test rides!
- And, we at Electrek want to give a shoutout to Rove’s EV Drive Days in Santa Ana 10am-3pm April 28 – ROVE is the company behind the “full-service” EV charging concept that we’ve talked about several times here on Electrek, and we like what they’re doing for EV charging. They’ve hosted a few community events, and this is their contribution to Earth Month.
Each event has a different assortment of activities (e.g. test drives won’t be available at every event, generally just the larger ones attended by local dealerships), so be sure to check the events page to see what the plan is for your local event.
These events have offered a great way to connect with owners and see the newest electric vehicle tech, and even get a chance to do test rides and drives in person. Attendees got to hear unfiltered information from actual owners about the benefits and trials of owning EVs, allowing for longer and more genuine (and often more knowledgeable) conversations than one might normally encounter at a dealership.
And if you’re an owner – you can show off your car and answer those questions for interested onlookers.
To view all the events and see what’s happening in your area, you can check out the list of events or the events map. You can also sign up to volunteer at your local events, and if you plan to show off your electric car, you can RSVP on each event page and list the vehicle that you plan to show (or see what other vehicles have already registered).
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