Well, that was fast. From a standing start, hydrogen became the fuel of the future then a passé dud at remarkable speed. So trendy was it that Canada’s Prime Minister sent Europeans seeking natural gas packing two years ago with the patronizing pat on the head that there was no business case for selling it instead promising hydrogen export terminals powered by windmills. But now the whole thing seems to be doing a Hindenburg.

Robert Bryce writes that “The Hydrogen Bust is Here” and adds that:

“Nine H2 projects in Europe & US have gone up in smoke since August. Harvard analysis savages Bill Gates’ claim that ‘cheap, green hydrogen’ will be the Swiss army knife of decarbonization.”

And in case Bryce is dismissed as a dreaded “skeptic” in an era that favours gullibility, Canary Media concedes unhappily that:

“One year in, US clean hydrogen hubs face questions – and have few answers/ There’s little detail available on the $7B federal program to jump-start U.S. clean hydrogen, leaving environmental advocates concerned the projects may be off track.”

Even to the American government $7 billion is a lot of money, or so you’d hope. And it did buy the usual hype, giving $7 billion to seven consortiums scattered across the country who were, according to the plan, going to take all that federal largesse and “attract tens of billions more in private-sector investment” to jumpstart stuff the private sector has, ah, zero interest in doing. Resulting in the usual flops and coverups thereof:

“There’s still little publicly available information to indicate whether these ‘clean hydrogen hubs’ are likely to attract the needed private sector investment, however. Just as opaque are their potential community and climate impacts.”

Canary Media deserves credit for being fairly clear-eyed about the debacle and its implications:

“The hydrogen hubs are a cornerstone of not only the Biden administration’s clean hydrogen strategy, but its overall approach to clean energy. Without the hubs, the U.S. may not be able to supply the tens of millions of tons per year of clean hydrogen needed to decarbonize key industries in the decades to come.”

But never fear: “Though it may be early days for the hubs, advocates say the projects could be operating in a much more transparent way.” Or maybe they are being transparent, albeit accidentally, about the fact that they aren’t operating because the stuff just doesn’t work.

Meanwhile Canada’s grand plans to export energy we don’t have while quashing the stuff we do have are failing badly. The Globe & Mail recently reported that:

“Canada and Germany first signed a memorandum of understanding to develop a transatlantic green hydrogen corridor in 2022, as Germany looked to cut its dependence on fossil fuels imported from Russia and decarbonize its heavy industries. But just months before the end of the 2024, no green hydrogen facilities in Atlantic Canada have been completed, financial terms with German companies remain elusive and infrastructure in Europe is far from ready.”

Oh dear. And you said it would be easy. What was easy was funnelling hundreds of millions of dollars to firms claiming to be able to turn on the hydrogen cornucopia. But where’s the hydrogen?

According to the old joke hydrogen is the fuel of the future and always will be. One of us was, decades ago, temporarily enthralled by the promise of fuel cells that would separate water into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity, then recombine them in car engines. But then we did some actual research (despite being in journalism) and found that this kind of fuel cell was invented in 1838 and had been about to take off ever since including being commercialized only 94 years later. They do exist but they’re just not that special, to put it mildly. You’ve probably never seen or used one and there’s a reason.

Specifically inefficiency. It takes a lot of energy to split up water, and then hydrogen is surprisingly nasty stuff to handle, store and transport and it doesn’t give much bang for the buck when it gets where it’s going compared to, say, gasoline or natural gas. (It does by mass but not by volume.) Thus in the piece mentioned above, Bryce quotes “energy analyst Steve Brick” that hydrogen is a “thermodynamic obscenity”.

One problem, brewing for some years now, is that producing hydrogen isn’t a very green process. Because of the aforementioned inefficiency the production of it can use up a lot more energy, and create a lot more GHGs, than you get back. The GHGs are less of a problem if you happen to be blessed with an abundance of hydro power so great you don’t need it for other things, or if you’re big on nuclear, refine the hydrogen on site, then send it somewhere else. Or if wind and solar really turn out to be so productive they’re practically free, and hydrogen could get around the problem of them generating at inconvenient times by storing the power up and releasing it as needed. But irony of ironies, until that marvellous world emerges shimmering from the sky, the main way hydrogen is separated from oxygen is with natural gas, precisely the fuel it was intended to displace. Since much energy is lost in the conversion process, you end up burning more methane to get the hydrogen out then burn it up again than it would take to generate the same energy directly via methane.

Hence the recent surge of enthusiasm for “green hydrogen” from renewables rather than just any old mucky “blue hydrogen” from natural gas. Except for the problem that if getting hydrogen from methane is inefficient, getting it from wind is far worse. Imagine the footprint involved with all those bird- and bug-blending turbines, or vast acres of solar panels blotting out trees, crops and habitat. As we said, there’s a reason hydrogen has not taken off in the marketplace, and when things can’t fly unaided, government efforts to glue on wings generally only lead to ugly expensive crashes.

In fact, Canary Media adds:

“Less than 1 percent of global hydrogen production today is low-carbon. Of the roughly 90 million tons per year produced globally and 10 million tons per year in the U.S., almost all is derived from fossil gas.”

Not good. But they never get into the sheer impracticality of the scheme in principle, which is the big problem with getting it going and, in some ways, also to coming clean about how badly it’s proceeding.

Canada’s state broadcaster wants you to believe anyway:

“The Canadian and German governments are taking the next step to launch Atlantic Canada's hydrogen export industry, announcing a multimillion-dollar commitment Wednesday for projects in Eastern Canada. Ottawa is investing up to $300 million to support hydrogen exports to Germany, Europe's biggest economy, while the German government is matching the contribution. ‘The announcement being made today is a big deal,’ said Energy Minister Jonathan Wilkinson in Cape Breton, N.S., citing the potential of the investment to create jobs, lower greenhouse gas emissions, and provide energy security for Germany. ‘It is a win, win, win.’”

Just not power, power, power:

“Wilkinson, Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, says this announcement delivers on the commitment of the Canada-Germany Hydrogen Alliance signed a few years ago. The $600-million announcement comes as the war in Ukraine has disrupted the global energy supply…. Several projects in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland that would convert wind energy into what some call "clean hydrogen" are in the planning stages. It's hoped these and others will play a significant role in fighting climate change. Unlike other sources of hydrogen that use fossil fuels, these projects would use wind turbines to create hydrogen from water. Wilkinson has been a driving force behind the federal government's hydrogen strategy, often mentioning that he drives a hydrogen-powered vehicle. He conceded at Wednesday's news conference, however, that the technology is still too expensive.”

And always will be. Still, what price photo op?