In a major development, Australian green energy engineering company Fortescue Future Industries (FFI) announced in late December that it had designed and built its own electrolyzer to make hydrogen.
Hydrogen is taking off as a new source of clean energy only a decade after a pioneering scheme, the world’s first municipal hydrogen energy project, was launched in Japan.
Let’s put that into context with a little history. As reported at the time by the (now defunct) Japan for Sustainability non-profit news source, the Association of Hydrogen Supply and Utilization Technology (HySUT) started operations at the Kitakyushu Hydrogen Town Project in cooperation with Fukuoka Prefecture and the city of Kitakyushu on January 15, 2011.
Using hydrogen generated as a by-product at local steel plants, the pilot project supplied the gas to residential, commercial and public…