Elena Burmistrova, Deputy Chairman of the Gazprom Management Committee, said it was vital to make use of the widest possible range of technological solutions in proceeding with the transition of the world energy balance to a low-carbon future.
“I want to draw attention to a very important condition in changing the economy – technological discoveries in every sense of that word,” Burmistrova, quoted by the Interfax news agency, told the annual meeting of the energy technology company Baker Hughes.
“It meets the requirements of diversification and the very philosophy of freedom of economic competition. It is therefore strange to hear in Europe, for instance, calls to artificially limit the range of technological means to support the production of hydrogen strictly through electrolysis.”
“A forced choice limiting production to a single means of production from the entire range of those available would be far from being the most economically effective decision. ’Green’ hydrogen is too expensive and too high in energy consumption and large-scale production would involve colossal resource stress throughout the entire European economy. Would it be reasonable to embark on such expenditure at a time when we are engaged in a fight against the consequences of the crisis?”
Burmistrova said it was also unlikely capacities of renewable energy sources could be boosted “to the extent needed to cover future demand not only for electricity but also for hydrogen. And it also can only deepen the problem of access to sources of fresh water.”
Gazprom, she said, “views with optimism growing interest in hydrogen inasmuch as one of the most promising, economic and logical ways of producing this fuel is on the basis of gas. And the promising technology of pyrolysis of methane will allow for hydrogen to be produced absolutely without carbon dioxide emissions, with only pure, solid carbon being produced in the process. There cannot be the slightest doubt about the demand for this technology.”
