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Dec. 22 (UPI) -- A team of U.S. and British companies said Thursday they were interested in using natural gas from the North Sea as a feedstock to produce hydrogen, something of a darling resource during the so-called energy transition. U.S.-based Protuem Energy and Britain's Transitus Energy entered into a letter of intent to search for opportunities in the British, Dutch, Irish and Norwegian waters of the North Sea to produce hydrogen.
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Hydrogen production is described using a color spectrum. Most hydrogen production today is grey hydrogen, which breaks methane into its elemental components -- carbon and hydrogen, with carbon as the byproduct.
Proteum and Transitus are pursuing blue hydrogen, which uses the same processes as grey hydrogen production but incorporates carbon capture and storage technology to reduce emissions of any harmful greenhouse gases.
"Blue hydrogen will accelerate the transition towards decarbonization of the energy sector," said Bjorn Inge Tonnessen, the executive chairman at Transitus.
Energy companies are flocking to hydrogen as an alternate source of energy. GE Gas Power and Shell Global Solutions, an LNG entity within the company, signed an agreement last month to look for ways to cut the carbon intensity at Shell's global LNG projects using blue hydrogen processes.
Hydrogen, however, might not be the catch-all resource for global decarbonization efforts.
Green hydrogen is among the cleanest processing methods available today. It uses renewable energy to power an electric current that can split water into its elemental components -- oxygen and hydrogen -- with no carbon emissions at all.
The issue is whether it's better to use those renewable resources for power generation. A study published this week by the House of Commons found that green hydrogen is not a panacea.
Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, as well as a potent energy carrier, but House leaders said its future use will likely be limited to niche applications.
