Industry Trends & Growth
Markets

Hydrogen is America’s clean energy choice. Hydrogen is flexible, affordable, safe, domestically produced, used in all sectors of the economy, and in all regions of the country.
National Hydrogen Vision Meeting, 2001

MARKETS
There are two significant issues affecting every nation on this globe: abundant, clean, economical fuel and economical, efficient waste handling technology.

Internationally, hydrogen production has been estimated at 700 to 900 billion cubic meters primarily serving the chemical and petrochemical industries. With only a growth rate of 3.9% in 2002, the hydrogen economy is logging a 15% growth rate in R&D spending, leading industry experts to project an 18% annual growth rate in consumption over the next 10 years. Leading reasons for this shift and the intense R&D efforts and growth projections are as follows:

-The National Energy Security initiative
- Green Laws in Europe
- Global climate and climate change
- Emphasis on zero-emission vehicles
- Acceptance of distributed energy options

Perhaps surprisingly, current commerce in hydrogen is comparatively insignificant because the technical challenges of storing and transporting hydrogen have motivated industrial consumers to produce it as needed on-site. Still, US revenues reached $900 million in 2002. Note that even at this level, if used solely for transportation or home energy use, this level is sufficient for:

-30 million fuel cell cars OR
- 8 million households

"Merchant hydrogen" (hydrogen which is transported) activity is poised to expand dramatically in the middle of this decade due to the development of new technologies for production, storage and transport as well as new demands in the energy market. New blending technologies dramatically improve the transportability of hydrogen as well as its safety issues.

The graph at the end is the projected market growth in the US, however with President Bush stating that the US will have a hydrogen vehicle on the market by 2010, this picture could improve substantially. The Northeast blackout in the summer of 2003 has also added emphasis on the fact that the United States, as well as the world as a whole, needs alternative power sources and within the next three years. Third world nations are particularly affected as they lack the infrastructure to fully join the 21st Century. New technology would effectively allow them to “leapfrog” as they did with the adoption of cell phones.

The total market picture improves substantially when the total process for producing hydrogen is taken into account. Billions are spent annually dealing with various industrial wastes. In particular, the coal industry has come under heavy attack. Coal is the US’s most abundant fuel and the US leads the world in total reserves. Much has been done to improve the process, but the mining and processing alone generate huge amounts of waste that become a liability to the industry. Coal-tailings (among other industrial wastes) are the starting point for the Hydrocore process, offering additional market opportunities in clean-up. With the plentiful domestic coal reserves, the United States can sustain the nation’s current rate of consumption for more than 500 years.