In 1974, Alberta premier Peter Lougheed — backed by industry, academia and Ottawa — established the Alberta Oil Sands Technology and Research Authority, unlocking the oil sands’ economic potential. The crown corporation developed and promoted new technologies — registering valuable patents along the way — and helped turn the oil sands into a juggernaut.
It remains so today, with analysts projecting 3.5 million barrels of oil to be produced in Alberta each day this year, a number expected to grow 11 per cent by 2030.
But the oil sands have negative environmental effects. What if there was a similar opportunity that could burnish the province’s green credentials instead of dragging them through the tailings ponds? Enter hydrogen power.
Hydrogen is a simple element with a huge future. Made from natural gas or water, it can be stored, transported and converted into heat or electricity. When burned, it produces only water and heat — no climate-warming CO2. It’s the energy carrier that could fuel Alberta’s next big play.
Alberta — and the Edmonton region in particular — has a number of strengths in this market: abundant, inexpensive natural gas; the underused Alberta Carbon Trunk Line for the storage of carbon dioxide; and a concentration of major industrial hydrogen users around Fort Saskatchewan. “Lots of parts of the world are trying to shift to a hydrogen economy,” says Brent Lakeman, executive director of the Edmonton Region Hydrogen Hub. “But it’s difficult if you don’t have those big established industrial sectors that are already using hydrogen. That helps you de-risk a project because you have someone to sell it to who needs it in their own process.”
More than 30 local companies are now developing hydrogen technologies and applications, and the region is already one of the world’s top hydrogen producers, responsible for most of Alberta’s 2.5 million annual tonnes — a fair share of the roughly 100 million tonnes produced globally. At current prices, that’s worth about $10 billion. While it’s a fraction of the $88 billion Alberta’s oil and gas sector added to GDP in 2024, demand is expected to rise steadily through the 2030s and beyond. Soon, Air Products’ $1.6-billion Net-zero Hydrogen Complex will add another 500,000 tonnes annually — part of the $30 billion in hydrogen investment Edmonton Global expects by 2030.
Industry has long relied on hydrogen for power and to make fertilizer, but global demand is rising as the world seeks clean, portable energy. But all this growth brings a critical question: How clean is Alberta’s hydrogen future if production requires the burning of large amounts of natural gas? To make a real dent in climate change, it must either be made with renewable power or paired with carbon capture and storage. Several industries in the Edmonton region now use the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line, but it has excess capacity and can be expanded. Ensuring that the hydrogen economy aligns with climate goals will be one factor in determining how competitive Edmonton becomes on the world stage.
Every hydrogen-use case will add incrementally to demand, but the University of Alberta’s Amit Kumar, director of the Centre for Hydrogen Innovation, Workforce Development and Outreach, says the biggest opportunity lies in export. Take Japan’s needs: “They are a net importer of energy and their decarbonization plan includes the use of a lot of hydrogen,” he says, “but their geology does not allow them to sequester CO2, so imported hydrogen gives them a good option.”
Shipping hydrogen to Asia would require a pipeline to tidewater — a heavy lift but one that Lakeman believes is feasible because of strong support in the private and public sectors to fuel the hydrogen economy. The opportunity may not rival the oil sands, but it’s still immense, and it would be a green win.
Lougheed united disparate stakeholders behind a single vision in 1974; unlocking hydrogen will demand similar leadership and teamwork.
This article appears in the January/February 2026 issue of Edify
