The role of hydrogen in the mobility and transport of the future Over the last 60 years, two main attributes of the hydrogen molecule as an energy vector have been recognised, depending on the circumstantial crisis of the moment. In the chronological order in which these were highlighted, first as a possible solution for energy independence in the oil crisis in the 70s, and in the 90s, after the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ( UNFCCC), established at the Second Earth Summit (Rio 1992) and which entered into force in March 1994, with the premise of strengthening public awareness globally about the problems related to climate change, as a clear energy vector for the decarbonisation of different sectors. However, it was never embedded as a real solution for any of the objectives in the world energy system as it was not a sufficiently mature technology. In December 2015, the twenty-first session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21) took place in Paris, together with the eleventh session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (COP-MOP11). This meeting led to the Paris Agreement, which took over from the Kyoto protocol, which entered into force in 2020. The central objective of the Paris Agreement is to ensure that the global temperature increase this century is less than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and to continue efforts to further limit the increase in temperature and only reach 1.5 degrees centigrade. In the transport sector, with the rise of renewables from 2010 together with the technological development of batteries that has accompanied the development of the electric car, the CO2 emissions of this sector were targeted ambitiously. The Paris Agreement reinforced and globalised the need to decarbonise transport. However, when the problem of the decarbonisation of transport is analysed in depth there is a clear need for access to an amount of energy that exceeds 25% of world energy consumption, which renewables are still far from being able to supply. That is compounded by the limitations of batteries in terms of energy density, the need to deploy recharging infrastructure, the need to maintain economic activity, evidence
Arturo Fernandez Goyenechea Innovation Manager at Petronor
that the transition to decarbonised transport will require time and a lot of investment in technologies that complement electric vehicles. Hydrogen has once again emerged as a promising decarbonisation alternative and as a vehicle for energy independence by allowing effective coupling of renewables with the gas and fuel sectors. This will allow a massive deployment of renewables, in many cases overcoming the limitations in problems of access to the power transmission and distribution grid. In transportation, hydrogen is becoming socially accepted as a real alternative in the near future. In this case Toyota is the equivalent of the Tesla for electric cars, although possibly not accompanied by quite
