The Hydrogen Opportunity: How Waste-to-Hydrogen Could Power the Clean Energy Transition

Hydrogen is emerging as a cornerstone of the clean energy future. Here’s how TYRO’s Co-Pyrolysis process contributes to the hydrogen economy — and why waste is the feedstock nobody saw coming.

Hydrogen is having a moment. 

After decades of existing primarily as an industrial feedstock — used in oil refining, fertiliser production, and chemical manufacturing — hydrogen has moved firmly into the centre of the global clean energy conversation. Governments are publishing hydrogen strategies. Billions of dollars are flowing into hydrogen infrastructure. Industries that have never thought seriously about hydrogen are now planning their transition to it. 

The reason is straightforward. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. When used as a fuel, its only by-product is water. It can be stored and transported. It can generate electricity through fuel cells. It can provide high-temperature industrial heat that electricity struggles to deliver. It can power vehicles, ships, and aircraft. It can decarbonise industries — steelmaking, cement, chemicals — that have few other credible pathways to net zero. 

The clean energy potential of hydrogen is real. The challenge is producing it. 

The Hydrogen Colour Spectrum: Why Not All Hydrogen Is Equal 

Before understanding where waste-derived hydrogen fits in the clean energy picture, it helps to understand the language the hydrogen industry uses to describe different production methods — a spectrum of colours that has become the standard shorthand for hydrogen’s environmental credentials. 

Grey Hydrogen The vast majority of hydrogen produced today — approximately 95 percent globally — is grey hydrogen, produced through a process called steam methane reforming. Natural gas is combined with steam at high temperature, producing hydrogen and carbon dioxide. The CO2 is released into the atmosphere. Grey hydrogen is cheap and abundant. It is also a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions — producing approximately 10 kilograms of CO2 for every kilogram of hydrogen. 

Blue Hydrogen Blue hydrogen uses the same steam methane reforming process as grey hydrogen, but captures and stores the CO2 emissions — carbon capture and storage. In theory, blue hydrogen dramatically reduces the carbon footprint of hydrogen production. In practice, the carbon capture process is expensive, energy-intensive, and not always as effective as claimed. Blue hydrogen remains controversial and its role in the long-term clean energy transition is actively debated. 

Green Hydrogen Green hydrogen is produced through electrolysis — splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen using renewable electricity. The process produces no direct carbon emissions, and when powered by genuinely renewable electricity, the lifecycle carbon footprint approaches zero. Green hydrogen is the long-term goal of the clean hydrogen economy. It is also currently expensive — significantly more expensive than grey hydrogen — because of the cost of renewable electricity and electrolysers. Production at scale remains limited, though costs are falling rapidly. 

Turquoise, Pink, and Beyond The colour spectrum extends further — turquoise hydrogen from methane pyrolysis, pink hydrogen from nuclear-powered electrolysis, and others. The proliferation of colours reflects the diversity of approaches being explored and the intensity of debate about which pathways are genuinely clean and which are greenwashing in a different form. 

What this colour spectrum reveals is something important: the clean hydrogen economy is not yet operating at scale. Green hydrogen — the genuinely clean version — is expensive and limited in supply. Grey hydrogen — cheap and abundant — is environmentally costly. The gap between where hydrogen production is today and where it needs to be to deliver on its clean energy promise is significant. 

Into this gap comes an opportunity that the hydrogen industry has been slow to fully appreciate: waste-derived hydrogen. 

How TYRO’s Process Produces Hydrogen 

TYRO’s Co-Pyrolysis process is primarily designed to produce Very Low Sulphur Fuel Oil and near-zero sulphur carbon black. These are the two primary commercial outputs — the commodities with the largest, most immediate market demand. 

But co-pyrolysis also produces something else. 

When tyres and plastics are thermally decomposed in TYRO’s sealed, oxygen-controlled reactor, the process generates non-condensable gases as a by-product. These gases — a mixture of hydrogen, methane, and other light hydrocarbons — are currently recycled back into the reactor to provide the energy that powers the Co-Pyrolysis process itself. This closed-loop energy model is one of the features that makes TYRO’s process genuinely self-sustaining and energy-efficient. 

But those gases contain hydrogen. And as the hydrogen economy develops — as the infrastructure for capturing, purifying, storing, and distributing hydrogen matures — the opportunity to extract and sell that hydrogen as a commodity becomes increasingly real and increasingly valuable. 

The hydrogen produced through co-pyrolysis of waste tyres and plastics occupies an interesting position in the colour spectrum. It is not green hydrogen — it is not produced through electrolysis powered by renewable electricity. It is not grey hydrogen — it does not use steam methane reforming of natural gas. It is derived from waste materials that would otherwise be landfilled, incinerated, or stockpiled — materials with no other productive use. 

The lifecycle carbon profile of waste-derived hydrogen reflects the avoided emissions from not landfilling or incinerating the feedstock, offset against the emissions associated with the Co-Pyrolysis process itself. The net calculation is significantly more favourable than grey hydrogen — and increasingly competitive with blue hydrogen as the methodology for lifecycle carbon accounting of waste-derived fuels develops. 

The Scale of the Hydrogen Opportunity 

To understand why waste-derived hydrogen matters to the clean energy transition, it helps to understand the scale of what the hydrogen economy requires. 

The International Energy Agency estimates that achieving global net-zero emissions by 2050 requires hydrogen production to increase from approximately 90 million tonnes per year today to over 500 million tonnes per year by 2050. The vast majority of that increase needs to come from low or zero-carbon sources. 

Green hydrogen — the primary long-term solution — faces significant scaling challenges. Electrolysis capacity needs to expand by orders of magnitude. Renewable electricity generation needs to grow dramatically to power it. The cost of electrolysers needs to continue falling. Infrastructure for hydrogen storage, transport, and distribution needs to be built largely from scratch. 

This scaling challenge will not be solved overnight. In the interim period — the decade or two between now and when green hydrogen is available at scale and at cost — the clean energy transition needs every credible source of lower-carbon hydrogen it can find. 

Waste-derived hydrogen is one of those sources. It is not the ultimate answer. But it is a real, available, and increasingly valuable contribution to a transition that urgently needs diverse inputs. 

The Industries Waiting for Hydrogen 

Understanding the demand side of the hydrogen equation helps clarify why waste-derived hydrogen matters commercially. 

Industrial Heat Many industrial processes require high-temperature heat that is difficult to electrify. Cement kilns, glass furnaces, and ceramic production facilities operate at temperatures that electric heating struggles to achieve economically. Hydrogen combustion can provide this heat with zero direct carbon emissions. As industrial decarbonisation becomes a regulatory and commercial imperative, hydrogen as an industrial heat source represents a significant and growing market. 

Steelmaking Green steel — produced using hydrogen rather than coal as the reducing agent in iron ore processing — is one of the most discussed applications of hydrogen in heavy industry. Traditional blast furnace steelmaking uses coking coal to strip oxygen from iron ore, producing pig iron and significant CO2 emissions. Hydrogen-based direct reduction replaces the coal with hydrogen, producing water instead of CO2. Major steelmakers globally are investing in hydrogen-based production. The demand for hydrogen feedstock in steelmaking is structurally growing. 

Transport Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles — cars, buses, trucks, trains, and ships — use hydrogen to generate electricity through a chemical reaction, producing only water as exhaust. While battery electric vehicles have dominated the passenger car market, hydrogen fuel cells offer advantages in applications where range, refuelling time, and payload matter — particularly heavy freight, long-distance transport, and maritime applications. The development of hydrogen refuelling infrastructure is accelerating in multiple markets. 

Power Generation and Grid Storage Hydrogen can be used to generate electricity through fuel cells or combustion turbines, and can be stored for extended periods — addressing one of the fundamental challenges of renewable energy, which generates power intermittently. As renewable energy penetration increases, the demand for long-duration storage solutions — of which hydrogen is one of the most promising — is growing. 

Chemicals and Fertilisers Hydrogen is already a major industrial feedstock in chemicals and fertiliser production — primarily as grey hydrogen. The transition from grey to lower-carbon hydrogen in these existing applications represents a significant and immediate market opportunity, requiring no new end-use development — just a change in the source of the hydrogen. 

Australia’s Hydrogen Ambition 

Australia has positioned itself as a potential major player in the global hydrogen economy — with significant ambition and some genuine structural advantages. 

The Australian Government’s National Hydrogen Strategy identifies hydrogen as a priority sector for economic development and has committed significant funding to hydrogen projects through the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. State governments — particularly Western Australia, South Australia, and Queensland — have developed their own hydrogen strategies and are actively courting hydrogen investment. 

Australia’s advantages are real. Abundant renewable energy resources — solar and wind — provide the foundation for green hydrogen production at competitive cost. Existing relationships with major energy-importing nations in Asia — particularly Japan and South Korea, which have identified hydrogen as central to their decarbonisation strategies — create a ready export market. Infrastructure expertise from the liquefied natural gas industry provides a foundation for hydrogen liquefaction and export. 

But green hydrogen at export scale requires enormous investment in electrolysis capacity, renewable energy generation, and export infrastructure. That investment is coming — but it will take time. 

In the interim, every credible source of lower-carbon hydrogen that can contribute to Australia’s domestic hydrogen economy — whether for industrial applications, transport, or export blending — has value. Waste-derived hydrogen from TYRO’s Co-Pyrolysis plants, deployed at scale across Australia’s tyre and plastic waste streams, represents a meaningful contribution to that interim supply. 

The Compounding Value of Co-Pyrolysis 

One of the most commercially compelling aspects of TYRO’s hydrogen output is that it doesn’t come at the cost of the primary outputs. 

In a dedicated hydrogen production facility — whether electrolysis or steam methane reforming — the entire capital cost, operating cost, and feedstock cost is borne by the hydrogen output. The economics of standalone hydrogen production are challenging at current market prices, which is why green hydrogen remains more expensive than grey. 

TYRO’s Co-Pyrolysis process produces hydrogen as a co-product of a process that is already economically justified by its primary outputs — VLSFO and carbon black. The capital cost of the plant is shared across three revenue streams. The feedstock — waste tyres and plastics — arrives with a gate fee rather than a purchase price. The operating cost is substantially covered by the value of the fuel oil and carbon black outputs. 

This means that TYRO’s hydrogen can be produced at a cost structure that standalone hydrogen production cannot match. As the infrastructure for capturing, purifying, and distributing the hydrogen from TYRO’s process develops, the economics of extracting it as a saleable commodity rather than using it solely to power the reactor become increasingly attractive. 

The hydrogen is, in a real sense, a bonus — produced from waste, at marginal cost, as part of a process that pays for itself through its other outputs. 

What Comes Next 

The hydrogen economy is not fully formed. Infrastructure is still being built. Pricing mechanisms are still being developed. The regulatory frameworks that will govern hydrogen certification, carbon accounting, and trade are still taking shape. 

But the direction is clear. The demand is real and growing. The policy commitment — in Australia and globally — is significant and accelerating. And the window for establishing hydrogen supply relationships, infrastructure positions, and market presence is open right now, before the market matures and competition intensifies. 

TYRO’s approach to hydrogen is consistent with our approach to everything we do: build it on proven science, produce it from waste, verify the impact, and scale it globally. 

The hydrogen that comes from our Co-Pyrolysis process is not a promise. It is a by-product of a process that is already operating — already turning waste tyres and plastics into fuel oil and carbon black with zero emissions and zero residue. 

The hydrogen is already there. The question is what happens to it next. 

We know the answer. 

Want to understand how TYRO’s hydrogen output fits into your clean energy strategy or industrial decarbonisation plans? 

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