TRANSPORTING HYDROGEN: A GLOBAL OUTLOOK ON CROSS-BORDER TRADE-
ISSUE BRIEF
ISSU E B RI E F
Transporting hydrogen: A global outlook on cross-border trade JULY 2025
JOSEPH WEBSTER
I: INTRODUCTION Clean hydrogen is needed to achieve an energy-secore, net-zero future, with feasible use cases ranging from fertilizer production and steelmaking to zero-carbon fuels and beyond. As this nascent sector develops, clean hydrogen will need to be transported from where it is produced to where it is consumed, often over long distances. Seaborne transportation of clean hydrogen, however, will be significantly constrained by unfavorable techno-economic factors and technical challenges. Instead, clean hydrogen trade will primarily occur via pipeline, although some countries may import electricity to serve as a feedstock for domestic hydrogen production. Clean hydrogen—that is, hydrogen with little to no carbon emissions—can be produced using several methods. These include processes driven by clean electricity from various sources, such as hydropower, wind, solar, geothermal, and nuclear power. Hydrogen produced from fossil feedstocks, such as natural gas, must include high-rate carbon capture to be considered clean. According to the US Department of Energy’s current definition, hydrogen qualifies as clean if one kilogram is produced with a carbon intensity equal to or less than two kilograms of carbon dioxide.1 Geologic hydrogen—naturally occurring under the Earth’s surface—could be a game-changer, but significant challenges to commercialization remain.
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Hydrogen—almost all of which is currently produced with unabated natural gas or coal—is used today to produce ammonia or methanol, or for refinery applications like desulfurizing diesel. Future potential use cases for clean hydrogen include steel making, maritime shipping (likely via clean methanol), long-haul and heavy-duty trucking, and more. While hydrogen is usually not the most appropriate decarbonization vector, due to its high production costs and handling difficulty, it is highly versatile and can theoretically be used in virtually any energy application.
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US Department of Energy, “Clean Hydrogen Production Standard (CHPS),” Alternative Fuels Data Center, accessed May 20, 2025, https://afdc.energy.gov/laws/13033#:~:text=Clean%20hydrogen%20 is%20defined%20as,per%20kilogram%20of%20hydrogen%20produced.
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