Most global transport and heavy industry still rely on fossil fuels; for these hard-to-abate sectors, decarbonisation hinges on the development of low-carbon alternatives.
Green hydrogen, ethanol and synthetic fuels are seeing some limited adoption, but cost-competitiveness and scalability remain challenging. Across the solar, wind and tidal sectors, researchers are working to push the needle towards commercial viability.
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Discussing the work that could shape the future of low-carbon fuel alternatives are four researchers and experts: Maren Cordts, co-founder of photreon; Motiar Rahaman, assistant professor at the University of Liège; Catrin Garrett, energy systems engineer at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) and Alessandro Giampieri, research associate at Durham Energy Institute.
Bright ideas: research into solar for low-carbon fuels
Cordts’ team have developed photoreactor panels that produce hydrogen from water and sunlight without using electrolysers, electricity or grid connection. “Our photoreactor panels use light directly to split water solar chemically,” she explains.
“The sunlight is absorbed by the photocatalyst that sits inside the photoreactor panel, submerged in the water. In this excited state, the sun’s energy is used to facilitate the chemical reaction to split the water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen.”
She says adoption of the panel would drive overall system costs down, offering a lower levelised cost of hydrogen, compared to existing production pathways.
As production scales, photreon intends to keep costs down by leaning on existing manufacturing capacity. “These include polymer extrusion to produce the panel or evaporative coating to apply on the reflective surfaces,” says Cordts, adding that “the photocatalyst needs to be produced in large quantities of powder. We think there are also industrial processes already applied that might be usable too.”
Also in solar, Rahaman is developing artificial leaves for ethanol production.
“While natural leaves produce oxygen and sugars through photosynthesis, an artificial leaf produces oxygen and multi-carbon alcohols as renewable fuel that can be used in our daily life,” he explains.
The ‘leaf’ contains a photocathode and photoanode, which reduces carbon dioxide into fuel, and oxidises water to produce oxygen, respectively. It operates without using electricity, as both the reduction and oxidation sides contain light-absorbing materials that capture sunlight and generate photovoltage; they also contain catalysts to accelerate the chemical processes.
Rahaman says that the Cambridge research team focused on the development of ethanol specifically because “there is a growing trend towards ethanol gasoline blends, like with e10 (10% ethanol and 90% gasoline mixture) being one of the most widely adopted fuels”.
Making waves: tidal energy for low-carbon fuels
EMEC is a world-leading facility for testing and demonstrating wave and tidal energy technologies in real-sea conditions, based in Orkney. Over the years, Garrett has observed research trends in her role and notes that “there is a general understanding that, with renewables, we need to look at locating industrial scale use, particularly when this can absorb the extra electricity that would otherwise be being curtailed”.
She notes that cost per kilowatt hour has been the biggest challenge in the space, particularly for hydrogen. As a result, she has seen a shift towards producing ammonia, methanol and other e-fuels “that are less complicated to move around”.
The research site has contributed to several world firsts, including the first aircraft flight powered by synthetic fuel in 2021. IGTL (now Zero Petroleum) has also used EMEC’s hydrogen produced from tidal power for a temporary synthetic gasoline demonstration plant at its onshore test facilities at Bilia Crew.
More recently, EMEC also integrated Orbital Marines’ tidal turbine with vanadium flow batteries and an electrolyser, combining the three technologies in another first-of-its-kind. The batteries served to smooth power input, and Garrett says the project showed that “we can harness that predictability to overcome those grid constraints and keep a constant flow of electricity”.
“That really opens up a new world of offtake opportunities, and hopefully paves the way for a new resilient, responsive energy system.”
Winds of change: research into wind for low-carbon fuels
In 2025, Giampieri worked with colleagues to publish a techno-economic assessment of different offshore wind to hydrogen scenarios. They compared simulation models to understand the advantages and challenges of using offshore wind power to power onshore electrolysis, compared to producing green hydrogen at offshore wind farms and transporting it back to shore.
Giampieri says that for onshore hydrogen production, in transporting electricity back to shore, especially for longer distances, converting alternating current to direct current could incur losses which translate into a reduction of produced hydrogen. In comparison, offshore hydrogen production means “you use the power right where it is produced with less conversion losses”.
There are inevitable trade-offs, however. “Offshore production increases complexity”, he says. “An onshore electrolyser is easier to run and maintain, while offshore, one of the problems is the availability of space and the weight of the electrolyser and the system, particularly if large storage tanks are needed.”
Where hydrogen is produced offshore, the critical question lies in transport. Some oil and gas infrastructure could be repurposed for pipeline transport of compressed hydrogen, but this presents new challenges. Hydrogen makes steel brittle and carries less energy for the same volume relative to gas, meaning more compression is required.
Tanker transport is the alternative, currently-more-expensive method. “Producing liquid hydrogen requires a liquefaction unit, which is energy intensive, and our study estimates this accounts for up to 20% of the total production cost,” says Giampieri. “In addition, it requires insulated tanks to store liquid hydrogen, which let some of the liquid hydrogen over time boil off.”
He points out that there is significant opportunity in curtailment, which currently costs the UK, for instance, around £1.5bn ($1.98bn). For onshore hydrogen production, Giampieri says that intermittency means that “sizing an electrolyser around curtailment would run only just a few hours per year, and it would be too expensive”. However, offshore, “the picture changes” because “the electrolyser is integrated into the normal operation of the wind farm, where hydrogen or hydrogen carriers can make use of the few hours of very cheap electricity because of curtailment.” This, he says, uses otherwise-wasted energy and drives down the final cost of the produced hydrogen.
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