COP26: International Energy Agency’s Fatih Birol backs Australia’s blue hydrogen push

International Energy Agency says blue hydrogen is worth pursuing … but demand must be increased to reduce costs.

International Energy Agency executive director Fatih Birol speaks at the COP26 UN Climate Summit in Glasgow. Photo: Daniel Leal-Olivas

International Energy Agency executive director Fatih Birol told a gathering of Australian government officials that global heating would be restricted to 1.8 degrees Celsius if all of the pledges being made at the United National climate conference COP26 were implemented.

Mr Birol revealed the heartening news to Australian energy minister Angus Taylor at a side meeting at the Australia pavilion on Thursday.

He said if all the recent pledges to cut carbon emissions made to COP26 were enacted, especially those pledged by one of the world’s biggest carbon emitters India, as well as the promised reductions in methane emissions, the temperature trajectory would be 1.8 degrees Celsius “which is much better than the trajectory was only a few months ago”.

Leading into the Glasgow summit the IEA had calculated that the temperature increase would be as much as 2.7 degrees Celsius.

Mr Birol added a caveat, noting “there is a big if, here” that the pledges will all have to be carried out to see the slowing of the warming rate, and some of the pledged measures were dependent on funding from richer countries.

Selwin Hart, UN Special Adviser and Assistant Secretary-General for climate change, challenged the IEA numbers and said the battle to reduce global heating was “far from over”.

“Fatih, I heard your numbers, but based on the Nationally Determined Contributions that have been submitted, the world is on a 2.7 degree pathway, a catastrophic pathway, and therefore we are a long way away from keeping the 1.3 degree goal of the Paris Agreement alive,” he said.

Mr Birol told the Australian government that he agreed with Canberra’s position that blue hydrogen, made using gas and having the carbon emissions captured and stored underground, was worth pursuing. He added: “There is a huge discussion about what is low carbon hydrogen. In our view, natural gas and CCS can be a very good source of hydrogen if it is abated in the right ways. Of course the green hydrogen (using renewables) is the quality … we also don’t care about the colours if they are clean, if they are cost effective and if they are helping us to reach our energy level cost.”

Mr Fatih said the key to hydrogen success would be to give demand a boost to reduce production costs.

Meanwhile, Australia has agreed to double the energy efficiency of four key products – industrial motor systems, air conditioners, refrigerators and lighting – in a COP26 Product Efficiency Call to Action led by the British government and the IEA.