The right environment exists for commercial nuclear power plants to produce green hydrogen with capital costs making it viable after falling 50% in the past five years, Mohamed al-Hammadi, chief executive officer of Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation, told the Atlantic Council Global Energy Forum this week.

Mr al-Hammadi said Enec might in the future produce green hydrogen from its nuclear reactors. “The future will definitely have a great potential in providing cheaper hydrogen,” he said, adding there is a lot of strong government support for hydrogen with China, Europe, the US, Japan and the UAE all backing plans for hydrogen production.

Depending on the storage method, hydrogen is very dense at around 140 megajoules per kg, making it three times denser than natural gas and 200 times denser than Tesla batteries. This makes it technically speaking transportable and storable, and means it “would solve a big problem we have today with storage”, Mr al-Hammadi said. “So it is technically viable for storage and will be a great product to have.”