Russia will have to adjust the comprehensive program for the development of hydrogen energy taking into account the “current situation," says a representative of the Russian Ministry of Energy regarding the ongoing Russian invasion into Ukraine and new sanctions against Moscow.

“The reorientation of individual projects from foreign markets to domestic ones due to the limitation of technology imports [will be examined],” he said to Russian newspaper Vedomosti. “Also, a new assessment of the possible volumes of hydrogen consumption in Russia will be required.”

The Russian Ministry of Energy didn’t reply to Kallanish’s request for comments before the deadline.

The draft program developed earlier by the ministry assumed that Russia would concentrate its efforts on exporting hydrogen to China, Japan, South Korea and Germany. By 2030, it was planned to supply these countries with 2.2 million tonnes/year of hydrogen. 

According to Russian Ministry of Energy, in the baseline scenario in 2030, the consumption of green and blue hydrogen in the world will be about 60m t/y. China, Japan, Korea and Germany can import 9.5m t/y of hydrogen by 2030 and Russia planned to cover 23% of this import, but this was before the war in Ukraine.

In the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade in 2021, almost 33 Russian hydrogen and ammonia projects were listed. In the draft program of the ministry, only the most significant in the five hydrogen clusters are noted. These are the projects of Rosatom, Novatek, En+ and the North-Eastern Alliance.

According to Russian analytics, due to a sharp reduction in the potential of the hydrogen export market, Russia will have to shift its focus to the development of the domestic market and the export of technologies. Japan and Korea will no longer be considered as potential markets, they add.

Potential markets are Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, but the cost of transportation there is high, and equipment and technologies can be exported to these countries.

Russian public transport and cargo transportation could become the main driver of the Russian hydrogen market, the analysts say. However, converting 10% of the fleet to hydrogen will require more than 2m t/y of this fuel.