Alberta’s next trillion-dollar industry EDMONTON — Kabillions and kajillions. Kazillions, even.
It all adds up to ‘ka-ching’ for Alberta’s next resource bonanza in the fast-emerging hydrogen market.
According to Premier Danielle Smith, the opportunity is essentially endless and is quite likely to become Alberta’s — and Canada’s — next trillion-dollar industry.
In an exclusive interview from South Korea, Smith extolled the virtues of the emerging hydrogen economy and Alberta’s unique opportunity to become a world leader thanks to a combination of geography, geology, and technical know-how.
Moreover, it’s something that can be done now, not decades into the future.
That’s the message from Smith, who is presently in Asia to pitch Alberta as a reliable source of the world’s fuel of the future.
“I think there's a major opportunity for Alberta,” she told The Western Standard. “We're already a huge producer of hydrogen.”
That’s because the expertise and infrastructure needed to develop its vast natural gas reserves are already here. The Alberta government’s latest reserve report, released last month, pegs proved, developable resources at 130 trillion cubic feet — that’s just the amount that can be readily connected and produced.
The total amount of gas in the ground is an order of magnitude higher, in the quadrillions of cubic metres, ensuring a virtually endless supply of gas that can be used for all manner of purposes, from heating to power to transportation and, yes, hydrogen.
Hydrogen is abundant, it’s cheap, and it’s clean. And it can be refined, processed, and transported through Alberta’s vast natural gas infrastructure or loaded on ships and sold as liquid ammonia — no pipelines needed — or even as LNG.
Even though Canada is late to the party, it isn’t too late for Alberta to become one of the world’s Top Tier producers.
“We missed the first round, but we should. We really shouldn't be missing any future rounds. We should sort out the regulatory details and some of the indemnification details as well, and then we should look at that (hydrogen) as a brand-new export market.”
Smith made the comments as delegates gathered in Edmonton for the fourth annual Canadian Hydrogen Convention that runs all this week. It’s no coincidence that Alberta’s capital city is considered the epicentre of Canada’s hydrogen universe owing to the efforts of companies like Dow, Heidelberg Cement, and others to make the proliferation of refineries and oil and gas facilities that surround the city net-zero by 2050.
Consumers are also getting a glimpse of what that hydrogen future will mean for them. On Tuesday, delegates toured ATCO’s first fully-powered hydrogen home in Sherwood Park, a suburb just east of Edmonton.
Transportation is sure to follow. Smith said she’s already noticed a proliferation of hydrogen-powered automobiles and filling stations popping up in both Japan and Korea on her trip.
"Korea seems to be a little bit further advanced in rolling out hydrogen fuelling stations. We saw a few of them as we've been driving around the streets here. So that, I think, is interesting to see if we can build on their successes," she said.
To the end of 2024, there was only one operational commercial hydrogen fuelling station in all of Alberta, in Edmonton. Calgary will get its own this year, and plans are in the works to build a network of stations along the QE II corridor.
While EVs have the first-mover edge, Smith said it’s only a matter of time before hydrogen vehicles catch up and even surpass electric cars owing to its convenience and cost.
Just 225 hydrogen cars were sold in the US last year, but Smith says she thinks it makes more sense in Alberta’s cold climate.
A more likely scenario is the conversion of heavy equipment like buses and trucks first, paving the way for broader, widespread adoption.
Another growing area is exports. Smith said governments and companies in both Japan and South Korea are keen to secure all the hydrogen Alberta can supply.
And unlike oil or natural gas, it can be converted into storage mediums like anhydrous ammonia and shipped by rail before being loaded onto ocean-going ships and bypassing the need for expensive — and controversial — pipelines.
“So the Japanese market and the Korean market are very interested in seeing what we can do on that front as well. So I think that's positive,” Smith said.
https://www.westernstandard.news/alberta/exclusive-smith-says-hydrogen-could-be-albertas-next-trillion-dollar-industry/64232