The innovative Extreme E electric SUV racing series transformed into Extreme H this weekend, signaling a switch from battery-electric power to hydrogen. This isn’t just a shift from one new energy source to another, however. It also signals a major refocusing of the competition’s goals in sustainability. I talked to Chief Scientist Professor Carlos Duarte about where Extreme H was heading in the post-E era.
The Disunited Colors Of Hydrogen
Duarte has been working with Extreme E since 2019, before the first race, which took place in Saudi Arabia in 2021. He’s a marine scientist at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in the Middle Eastern country, and was brought on board to help shape the “legacy” activities of Extreme E. While Extreme E was a car racing series, its goal was to publicize climate change while presenting solutions for it. Battery-electric vehicles were only part of this. Adjacent programs like assisting the lifecycle of salmon in Scotland in the Hydro X Prix in 2023 have been a major element too.
“Extreme E came with a vocation to show the world how new technologies and new sustainability standards can help us repair the planet,” says Duarte. Since he started working with Extreme E, it has had five successful years of raising awareness and promoting solutions. But he sees the new direction as signaling an important move forward in its environmental quest. “Going from E to H is significant. The next step is hydrogen, because hydrogen is the currency of energy in nature.”
Hydrogen as a fuel for use in transportation has been a controversial topic for years. BMW remains interested, and has recently announced it will have a series production version of its X5 SUV available by 2028. Toyota has been backing hydrogen with its Mirai fuel cell car for a decade. However, one concern raised by hydrogen’s detractors is whether it really is a green fuel, because so much of it is generated from fossil fuels. This leads to the rather confusing array of colors associated with this transparent gas.
Grey hydrogen is extracted from methane, while brown or black comes from coal. Both have significant CO2 emissions. “Then there is blue hydrogen that is produced from fossil fuels, but the carbon can be captured, and it becomes greener,” says Duarte. Turquoise hydrogen also comes from methane but produces solid carbon rather than CO2. Pink hydrogen is generated by using nuclear energy to electrolyze water into its separate components of H2 and O (oxygen).
“Then there is green hydrogen that is produced from renewable energy,” says Duarte. Like pink hydrogen, green hydrogen is generated by the electrolysis of water, so is completely carbon-free. “But in the last two years, the world has realized that there’s a new form of hydrogen called orange hydrogen.” Although hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, making up nearly 74% of the Milky Way Galaxy’s mass, obtaining it in its natural form isn’t as straightforward as it should be for something so ubiquitous. It does occur in pockets underground, which has been given yet another colorful nomenclature of white hydrogen. Some estimates put the global reserves of white hydrogen at trillions of tons. However, most of this isn’t economically viable to extract, and even where it is looking promising, such as the 46 million tons of white hydrogen estimated in the Loire Valley in France, commercial extraction is still in very early stages and is unlikely to satisfy even current demands, let alone future projections.
Orange Is Not The New Black (Hydrogen)
Orange hydrogen offers a more controllable active process for generating hydrogen. The technique involves injecting CO2 and water into iron-rich rock formations, stimulating a reaction that creates iron oxide and hydrogen. Not only does this produce a useful energy source (hydrogen), it can also sequester CO2 underground, making it potentially carbon negative.
“The potential to harvest hydrogen directly from the ground, from the ocean and soils, is huge,” says Duarte. “We might not need all this technology. We could directly harness hydrogen produced from iron oxidation. That is a huge resource that is going to catalyze as soon as we can develop the technology to pump it. It’s a very clean drilling technology. Then there’s going to be a revolution of hydrogen. Saudi Arabia is going to play a major role by repurposing some of the technology it uses to drill and extract fuels from the ocean floor and land for orange hydrogen.”
“The reason why it’s called orange hydrogen is that the outcome of oxidized iron is an orange color,” adds Duarte. At the Saudi Arabian location of the Extreme H World Cup, the orange hue of the mountains is from the oxidized iron held within them, making these land masses a fitting backdrop for Duarte’s enthusiastic promotion of this new hydrogen color. However, currently the potential of orange hydrogen is hypothetical because the process of collection and extraction has not yet been industrialized.
Extreme H’s racing is intended to put a spotlight on this potential, by showing the viability of hydrogen in the most grueling of conditions. Hydrogen is used to power the cars, and it’s used to generate electricity for the off-grid site for the track, along with a temporary solar array and battery storage. However, Andy Welch, Extreme H’s Global Hydrogen Development Manager, admitted that there was no guarantee that all the H2 in use for the race weekend was carbon free, although Saudi Arabia is set to open the world’s largest green hydrogen plant in the Oxagon floating industrial hub in Neom. This is expected to produce 600 tons of green hydrogen daily when it comes online in 2026, and 1.2 million tons of green ammonia annually.
Extreme H As Catalyst For Hydrogen Revolution
Whether carbon-free hydrogen is green or orange, Duarte sees a key role for Extreme H in promoting its viability. “Extreme H is the natural catalyzer of that transition,” he says. “As we metamorphosed into Extreme H, there is the new fuel that is used to run the cars in the overall racing series, but there’s also a change in mission. Extreme E was focused on drawing awareness of the impacts of climate change on degraded ecosystems around the world, but with Extreme H, the focus is now on technological development, to bring to life the hydrogen revolution.”
Duarte doesn’t think battery electrification is the solution for decarbonized transport, due to the environmental impact of extracting the minerals needed to make the cells. He cites the irony of the races Extreme E held in the Atacama Desert in Chile. “It’s part of the lithium triangle, the area between Argentina, Chile and Bolivia in the Atacama Desert that provides about a third of the global lithium supply,” he explains. “The main demand from lithium comes from batteries. Extracting lithium from these vulnerable ecosystems has a huge impact on biodiversity.” However, there are companies developing battery technology that doesn’t rely on lithium, such as the UK’s Eqonic.
He also worries about the impact from recycling batteries at the end of their useful life. This can be a highly polluting process, although there is a lot of work being done on reducing this, as well as manufacturing batteries in a way that facilitates more sustainable recycling. British company 24M’s Lithium Forever technology, for example, is already being commercialized by Kyocera to make batteries more easily recycled in an environmentally friendly way.
According to Duarte, hydrogen renders none of this necessary, however. “Hydrogen is free of all those elements of pollution,” he argues. “Hydrogen is extremely clean, and the outcome of running the cars is water. There are huge benefits in driving the energy transition towards hydrogen, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is positioning itself and making investments to become the largest provider of hydrogen to the world.”
Even though batteries have become successful for cars, commercial vans and even trucks, they remain problematic for shipping and aviation, due to the their weight. MSC Group’s Explora Journeys cruise shipping company is adding two liners, the Explora V and VI, that utilize hydrogen fuel cells for zero-emission in-port power. Green ammonia is also being used in ships, such as Fortescue’s Green Pioneer, on show at the COP28 UN conference. Aviation is likely to opt for Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAFs) with an agricultural origin, such as the grass-origin hydrocarbons being developed by Alder Fuels. Keeping an open mind about the options is essential, and that is the spiritual core of Extreme H.
“Extreme H is an ecosystem that catalyzes technology development and partnerships through something that is very fun and exciting – motorsports,” concludes Duarte. “Sport is a big unifier. It reaches the world and creates messaging beyond the bubble of sustainability. Sports fans are not the audiences that typically read about sustainability, but now through Extreme H, they’re learning about it and the future of fuels and mobility. It’s an eclectic, non-partisan way of driving and catalyzing necessary change in the world.” Whether this will make hydrogen more popular in cars remains an open question, but Extreme H certainly helps raise awareness of its potential.