Page 22 - bne IntelliNews monthly magazine October 2024

22 I Companies & Markets bne October 2024
31.8%; petroleum (crude oil and natural gas plant liquids) for 28%; and coal for 17.8%.
Germany has one of the highest shares of renewables in its energy mix of any major economy: 57.1% in 2023, compared to 50.2% in 2022.
While India remains heavily dependent on coal to meet
its economy’s insatiable appetite for energy to fuel its fast economic growth, renewable sources accounted for 19.5% of India's electricity generation in 2023, up from 15.2% in 2010.
India is anticipated to meet its targets of a 50% non-fossil
Infrastructure bottleneck could thwart Kazakhstan’s ambition to export green hydrogen to Europe
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Kazakhstan's ambitions in producing and exporting green hydrogen to the EU may never come to fruition because of infrastructure, logistical hurdles and other challenges but the Central Asian country should look hard at using the clean commodity in producing higher-value green industrial products both for domestic use and export, according to an analytical article published by Carnegie Endowment’s Carnegie Politika think tank.
The EU and Kazakhstan in November 2022 signed a strategic partnership on the production of green hydrogen (hydrogen produced by the electrolysis of water powered by renewable electricity) and critical raw materials (CRM) and in March 2023, Germany opened a Hydrogen Diplomacy Office in Astana.
In her article, Yana Zabanova, a PhD candidate at the University of Groningen and research associate at the Research Institute for Sustainability, Helmholtz Centre Potsdam (RIFS Potsdam), focuses on developments that have occurred since the partnership was sealed amid the EU’s plans to import
up to 10mn tonnes of green hydrogen by 2030 and various challenges Europe has so far faced in achieving this goal.
For Europe, cross-border hydrogen infrastructure has remained expensive (and the EU has a very limited budget
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fuel energy share and a renewable energy capacity of 500GW before 2030.
While China and India remain amongst the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases (GHGs), they both have ample reserves in their carbon budget – the amount of permissible emissions under the terms of the 2015 Paris Agreement – as they transition to a green economy. The West, however, has long since used up its carbon budget allocation and is now in carbon debt. China remains the global green energy champion and has already reportedly passed peak emissions, whereas thanks to the growing use of fossil fuels amongst the Western economies, emissions have reached an all-time high and are continuing to climb.
A space shuttle main engine burning hydrogen with oxygen, produces a nearly invisible flame at full thrust. / Nasa, public domain
to finance such infrastructure links with third countries), the pace of hydrogen cost reductions has been slower than anticipated and demand from industry for clean hydrogen has been weaker than expected. In July, the European Court of Auditors highlighted these issues and called for a "reality check" as regards the European bloc’s hydrogen policy, raising doubts about the production and import targets.
Geoeconomics and geopolitics analyst Zabanova argues that for potential producers like Kazakhstan, the current situation with the infrastructure bottleneck and other difficulties raises the question of whether they should focus more on using hydrogen to decarbonise their domestic economies rather than prioritising exports.
“Challenges such as the high cost and lack of transport infrastructure are significant obstacles
to exporting hydrogen from Kazakhstan to Europe”