By Yvonne Ruf and Uwe Weichenhain

Hydrogen will play a major role in the global ambition to decarbonize. Assuming a realistic, yet accelerated growth trajectory for hydrogen, our study "The Roaring '30s - A clean hydrogen acceleration story" underlines that the 2030s will be a pivotal decade for the hydrogen industry. It demonstrates what it means to ramp-up the entire value chain by using selected case studies that exemplify the immense implementation challenges.

Boost for global hydrogen production

According to our Roland Berger green hydrogen forecast, the capacity of green hydrogen projects will grow to 119 gigawatts (GW) by 2030. However, this is less than half of the 260 GW that governments have committed to globally and only around a fifth of the 590 GW that would be required to achieve the 1.5 degree target. For this reason, experts consider the 2030s to be a critical decade for the hydrogen industry . A massive acceleration, especially in green hydrogen production and thus decarbonization is expected. In a thought experiment, we create an ambitious but realistic target picture of 1TW installed electrolysis capacity and find out what needs to happen to get there.

Decisive factors for decarbonization

The manufacturing industry as well as the mobility and energy sectors, for which a large proportion of the green hydrogen produced is intended, will benefit from the growth in electrolysis capacity in the future. "The Roaring '30s - A clean hydrogen acceleration story" by Roland Berger underlines how important the remaining years of this decade are already for demonstrating the emission-reducing effect of hydrogen in successful first projects at scale. This remaining decade is crucial for installing the structural framework conditions to ensure the fundamental economics of clean hydrogen.