While pure electrification is effective for many applications, certain industries—like aviation, shipping, steel production, and chemical manufacturing—are challenging to electrify directly. In these sectors, converting renewable electricity into energy-dense green molecules offers a viable solution.

Green hydrogen, produced through the electrolysis of water using renewable electricity, serves as a foundational molecule. It can be utilized directly or further synthesized into other green molecules:

Synthetic sustainable aviation fuel, which can be produced through the combination of hydrogen and carbon dioxide (biogenic or captured)

Integrating green molecules into the energy system offers several benefits:

Ceramics, cement, glass and road freight transport, are all industries that require high energy densities or specific chemical properties which can utilize green molecules to reduce their carbon footprint. However, their pace on the energy transition is much slower due to their physical, technological or market particularities: these sectors account for roughly a quarter of the world’s energy consumption and are responsible for around a fifth of total CO2 emissions.

Green molecules can be converted back into electricity during peak demand periods, enhancing grid reliability. As the world transitions away from fossil fuels, these stabilization services must ideally be carbon neutral (or negative). Hydrogen and other molecules, can acts as a flexible energy carrier, storing surplus renewable electricity and delivering it when demand peaks. To meet modern grid demands, such solutions must mimic baseload power by being controllable, reliable, and quickly dispatchable. Fuel cells and batteries can work side by side, to provide an alternative to current solutions as gas turbines operated with fossil natural gas.