British Petroleum will be pivoting its hydrogen production strategy to green hydrogen later this decade, as it ramps up its production of hydrogen produced with natural gas and decarbonizes its refinery operations in the immediate term, Chief Executive Officer Murray Auchincloss announced in a Feb. 6 corporate earnings conference call.
The company noted that, as it continues to engage in discussions with the U.S. on organizing tax policy on the production and use of green hydrogen domestically, it sees attractive opportunities currently for greater green hydrogen usage in the European Union and Australia, according to a transcript of the earnings call.
BP expects that the use of what it calls low-carbon hydrogen will rapidly accelerate in the 2030s and 2040s as production costs continue to decline and energy policies mandating decreasing emissions from energy production take hold. BP estimates that hydrogen can meet about 16 percent of the world’s energy needs by 2050.
“Low-carbon hydrogen plays a critical role in decarbonizing the energy system, especially in hard-to-abate processes and activities in industry and transport. Low-carbon hydrogen is dominated by green and blue hydrogen, with green hydrogen growing in importance over time,” according to BP’s 2023 Energy Outlook.
