An 20 Megawatt hydrogen electrolyzer has started operation, the energy major describing it as “one among the most powerful” ShellFreitag,

The Electrolyzer, located in Zhangjiakou Province of China’s Hebei Province will make green hydrogen. Fuel cell cars can use it at Zhangjiakou’s competition area during the Winter Olympics. After the Games, hydrogen will be available for public and commercial transport.

Wael Sawan (Shell’s integrated gas and renewable energy director) stated that the Electrolyzer was their largest to-date.

Sawan commented, “We see opportunity across the entire hydrogen supply chain China, including its storage, production, and shipping.”

China’s facility can be linked to a joint venture that was established between Shell China (China) and Zhangjiakou City Transport Construction Investment Holding Group Co. Ltd.

There are many ways to produce hydrogen, which can be used in numerous industries and has many applications. An electrolysis method involves the use of an electric current that splits water into oxygen or hydrogen.

The electricity that is used to power this electrolyzer comes from renewable energy sources like wind and solar. Some call this green or sustainable hydrogen. Shell claimed that the onshore wind power will be used to create an electrolyzer for Zhangjiakou.

There is some excitement about the potential of green hydrogen, but most hydrogen production currently relies on fossil fuels.

Some business leaders recently spoke out about the challenges facing the green hydrogen industry. For example, in Oct. 2021 the CEO Siemens EnergyCNBC reported that there were “no commercial case” for it at this moment in time.

Today, a variety of colors — including brown, blue, gray and pink, to name a few — are used to differentiate between various production methods for hydrogen.

In December last year, the German Energy Company’s CEO was honored. RWECNBC interviewed him about the importance of being pragmatic when it comes to color codes.

“In the end, all hydrogen needs to be green,Markus Krebber stated that green hydrogen was the only fuel that is “fully decarbonized” because it is the only one. Industries needed to decide whether to build new facilities or make existing ones “H2-ready”.

“Officially, it isn’t possible to get enough green hydrogen in the near term so they need to be able to first run it on natural gas, then possibly on any other colors. [of] hydrogen … especially blue,” he said. But, once green hydrogen is made available to the required extent, the switch should be to green hydrogen.

Blue hydrogen refers to hydrogen produced using natural gas — a fossil fuel — with the CO2 emissions generated during the process captured and stored.

It was announced that one of the few facilities that use carbon capture technology (CCS), in order to decrease the greenhouse gas emissions from hydrogen production earlier this month. had been found to emit far more greenhouse gas emissions than it captures.

Shell owns the Quest plant in Alberta Canada. This plant is intended to trap carbon from oil sands operations, and store it underground.

Global Witness conducted an investigation. published last week,It was shown that 5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide were prevented from entering the atmosphere by the plant in 2015; however, the plant also produced 7.5 million metric tons greenhouse gases during the same time period.

According to the report, this means that only 48% of plant’s carbon dioxide emissions were captured. Shell spokeswoman, Shell spokesperson via email, said that Global Witness had made an incorrect analysis and pointed out that Quest facilities were designed to capture approximately a third of the carbon dioxide.

Shell’s Quest CCS plant, which opened late 2015, is part of its Scotford compound. It produces hydrogen for oil sands bitumen for refining (a type of petroleum deposits). It does not include the emission for the whole facility.

“Our Quest facility, which was constructed some years back to show the CCS principle and capture around a third CO2 emissions, was created as a demonstration project. The Shell spokesperson stated that it isn’t a hydrogen production plant.

—CNBC’s Sam Meredith contributed to this report