Green Hydrogen Isn’t a Silver Bullet 

In the race for the clean energy revolution, Washington is betting big on a gas cloaked in both hype and skepticism: hydrogen.

The Biden administration injected new momentum into its push this month by pouring nearly $48 million into clean hydrogen research and development initiatives, the latest in a drumbeat of moves aimed at developing the sector. Beyond its most recent campaign, Washington has also funneled up to $7 billion into building as many as 10 nationwide clean hydrogen hubs as part of its Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, alongside a slate of juicy tax credits in its Inflation Reduction Act.

“Hydrogen is having a little bit of a moment,” said Joseph Majkut, director of the Energy Security and Climate Change Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law here in the U.S. are set to make pretty significant investments in clean hydrogen production and use.”

This moment is global, too. With German Chancellor Olaf Scholz dubbing hydrogen the “gas of the future,” the United States is just one of more than 40 countries—including China and Japan—that see clean, or green, hydrogen as the next big thing. But what is it, really—and how much of this is hype?

What is hydrogen, and why is it so important? And is it green?

For the last few thousand years, the next big energy source was always a fuel in its own right—from wood to coal to oil. Hydrogen isn’t. But it is an energy carrier, an Uber for energy, that, depending on how it is produced, can lead to reduced greenhouse gas emissions, aiding governments in their push for net-zero climate policies.

“It’s not an energy source like coal, oil, or gas; it’s an energy carrier that you make from something else,” said Samantha Gross, director of the Energy Security and Climate Initiative at the Brookings Institution. Hydrogen acts like a fuel—it can be burned, transported, and stored—but it can, done right, do so cleanly.

“It is an energy carrier that you can make from renewables or other sources of zero-carbon electricity that walks and talks like a fuel,” she said. Part of the appeal of hydrogen is that it acts like dirty old fuels, which can be moved all over with ease, while retaining the good-housekeeping seal of the clean energies that hopefully created it.

The trick is making hydrogen in the first place, and doing so without creating a raft of additional harmful emissions. Today, the majority of hydrogen production relies on a process called steam-methane reforming to produce hydrogen from natural gas. That releases carbon dioxide and results in what is widely known as “gray hydrogen,” a dingier, dirtier version of what could be a very clean bundle of energy.

In the transition away from fossil fuels, governments are eyeing other paths to production. The first, and cleanest, option produces what is known as “green hydrogen,” where renewable energy is used to split water into its component hydrogen and oxygen molecules; the second is “blue hydrogen,” which uses natural gas to produce hydrogen and carbon dioxide that is then captured and stored.

“The world is planning toward heading toward net zero, [and] the point is to remember that hydrogen is a means of helping us get there,” said Martin Tengler, the head of hydrogen research at BloombergNEF. “So should the hydrogen that we use for that be blue or be green or be pink or be turquoise? It shouldn’t matter so long as the emissions from it are zero, or as close to zero as you probably can.”

Is this hype new? 

Nope. The allure of clean hydrogen has entranced governments and the public for decades, although it has never gained enough steam to fully take off.

“There’ve been many different waves of interest in hydrogen throughout history,” said Tengler, who pointed to the 1970s, when the global oil crisis sent shockwaves through the global economy and companies looked to hydrogen as a potential alternative. Attention returned again in the early 2000s, he said, as interest surged in hydrogen cars and hydrogen companies’ stock prices skyrocketed. This momentum was driven in part by then-U.S. President George W. Bush, who poured $1.2 billion into a hydrogen fuel initiative in 2003.

Two decades later, the race to net zero, backed by billions of dollars in government investment, has infused the conversation with fresh momentum. “I think the difference is this time it’s all about net zero, it’s all about reaching climate targets, and hydrogen being one of the pathways that can help us get closer to that goal,” Tengler said.

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So what can it be used for, and how much of this is hype? 

From Bill Gates to U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, proponents of hydrogen have billed it as the “Swiss army knife of zero-carbon technologies”—a versatile energy carrier that can be used to power everything from hydrogen fuel cell vehicles to domestic heating.

But skeptics and other experts stress that it is important to differentiate between what hydrogen can be used for and what it should be used for. “There’s no net zero without clean hydrogen,” said Michael Liebreich, the CEO of Liebreich Associates and founder of BloombergNEF, who noted that hydrogen is essential for sectors such as fertilizer production. “But that doesn’t mean that we need to put hydrogen into scooters or buses or trains or boilers, [where] there are much, much better solutions.”

While a Swiss army knife can technically be used to cut hair, prune a branch, or slice a steak, Liebreich added, there are often better ways of accomplishing the same task. “In each of the cases, and most of the things that you can think of doing with a Swiss army knife, there is something which is cheaper, safer, and more convenient,” he said. “And that’s why hydrogen’s the Swiss army knife—because almost always there’s something cheaper, safer, and more convenient than hydrogen.”

For both cars and heating, there already exist cheaper alternatives than using hydrogen, Tengler said. Battery-powered cars are cheaper to run, he noted, while heat pumps are both more cost-effective and efficient than their hydrogen alternatives. Other experts are similarly pessimistic on hydrogen’s home heating prospects: The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that demand for building heating derived from hydrogen will be nonexistent by 2050, while British researchers have concluded that it is an unsuitable alternative. 

“We always need to keep the goal in mind, which is reducing emissions—not increasing the use of hydrogen,” Tengler said. “Increasing the use of hydrogen could be the best way to reduce emissions in some situations, but potentially not in others.”

Why are fossil fuel companies so eager to carve out a stake in the industry? 

Even though green hydrogen is seen as key to phasing out fossil fuels, that very industry has refused to be left out of the hydrogen race—and the Biden administration’s lucrative tax credits. Eager to cash in, giants like Exxon Mobil plan to expand operations for blue hydrogen and have reportedly even ramped up efforts to lobby the Biden administration about subsidies.

Many of these companies have been “lobbying like crazy,” Liebreich said. “Either they can play in hydrogen, or they can slow down the alternatives. So why wouldn’t you fuel the hype?”

Majkut said that many of these companies are well-positioned to capitalize on the hydrogen boom. “Fossil fuel companies have a lot of the technical know-how, the infrastructure that we know we’re going to need for a hydrogen economy,” Majkut said.

How hard will it be to see this through? 

An IEA report released last week warned that while political momentum behind clean hydrogen is robust, rising costs and insufficient government support are obstructing the global campaign for clean hydrogen.

Beyond issues of scalability, there’s also the physics challenge: Hydrogen is flammable, and there have been cases of hydrogen-powered cars catching fire. “You’ve got to start with the physics,” Liebreich said, and “the physics of hydrogen are really, really cruel.”

“We’re always looking for silver bullets, and there aren’t any,” Gross said. “I worry that we sometimes flip too hard to being like: ‘Hydrogen will fix everything,’ and you don’t want that. It doesn’t make a lot of sense from an energy point of view.”