By Seth Cressey — March 27, 2025
“Scientists, engineers, and policymakers must reject symbolic solutions and focus on measurable, scalable, and scientifically robust strategies. Not all gases are equally dangerous, and not all solutions are equally wise.”
My new book No Son, There Won’t Be a Hydrogen Economy is a data-driven critique of the growing hype surrounding hydrogen as a future energy source. Its central argument: while hydrogen may have limited industrial and aerospace applications, the broader vision of a global “hydrogen economy” is fundamentally flawed—technically, economically, and especially environmentally.
The hydrogen movement, in short, can be likened to “cargo cult science”—a term popularized by physicist Richard Feynman to describe efforts that mimic the appearance of scientific rigor without engaging with its foundational principles.
The book dispels the prospects of hydrogen as a miracle climate solution. While hydrogen combustion or fuel cell use does not emit carbon dioxide (CO₂), hydrogen itself is not a primary energy source but an energy carrier. It must be produced using other forms of energy, typically through steam methane reforming (SMR) or electrolysis. Both methods are energy-intensive and often powered by fossil fuels.
Fugitive Emissions
Electrolysis, even when powered by renewables or nuclear energy, demands large quantities of electricity and pure water, and suffers from inefficiencies that undermine its climate benefits. But the most critical flaw lies not in the production pathway—but in what happens when hydrogen escapes.
Technically, hydrogen is incredibly difficult to contain. As the smallest and lightest molecule in the universe, it effortlessly leaks through seals, valves, and pipelines. These “fugitive emissions” are not rare accidents—they are a systemic feature of large-scale hydrogen handling where hydrogen is lost across production, compression, storage, transport, and end use. And once in the atmosphere, leaked hydrogen does not remain inert or harmless—it becomes an invisible climate threat.
Environmentally, this is where hydrogen’s dangers are most under appreciated. Fugitive hydrogen emissions disrupt atmospheric chemistry in a way that amplifies global warming. Specifically, hydrogen reacts with hydroxyl radicals (OH) in the atmosphere—the same radicals responsible for breaking down methane, a potent greenhouse gas. When atmospheric OH is depleted by hydrogen, methane lingers longer, increasing its warming impact. Hydrogen also indirectly contributes to the formation of ground-level ozone and stratospheric water vapor, both of which are significant climate forcers.
Implications
Recent studies have shown that hydrogen can have a global warming potential (GWP) up to 33 times greater than CO₂ over a 20-year timeframe when accounting for these indirect effects. Thus No Son, There Won’t Be a Hydrogen Economy leads to a controversial but scientifically grounded point: carbon dioxide, despite its demonization, is far better understood and less disruptive than hydrogen in key respects. While excessive CO₂ contributes to long-term warming, it does not deplete hydroxyl radicals, and it does not unpredictably alter the lifetimes of more potent greenhouse gases.
My book also documents that atmospheric CO₂ has positive externalities. Increased CO₂ levels have been shown to enhance plant growth through the well-documented CO₂ fertilization effect. This can improve agricultural yields, promote reforestation, and expand the carbon sink capacity of the biosphere—particularly in arid and semi-arid regions. While these benefits do not justify unregulated emissions, they underscore the importance of weighing the net climatic and ecological impact of all gases—rather than simplifying climate policy into binary categories of “clean” and “dirty.”
By contrast, hydrogen offers no such ecological upside. Its fugitive emissions introduce non-linear, hard-to-model disturbances into atmospheric chemistry, contributing to warming via complex and poorly understood feedback loops. This makes the widespread use of hydrogen not just inefficient, but counterproductive. Replacing one kilogram of natural gas with hydrogen—if it results in even modest leakage—can lead to higher net greenhouse emissions, not lower. Hydrogen’s environmental profile is especially dangerous because it escapes detection so easily and lacks regulatory oversight in many countries. Once released, it cannot be easily recaptured or offset, and its impact on the atmosphere can persist long after the initial emission.
Cressey devotes significant attention to the economic impracticalities as well. Green hydrogen currently costs between $4 and $7 per kilogram, far more than the gasoline-equivalent cost of natural gas. Transitioning existing infrastructure—homes, pipelines, industrial boilers, vehicles—to run on hydrogen would require trillions of dollars in retrofits and upgrades. He cites figures such as $4 trillion just to replace U.S. natural gas pipelines, and another $3 trillion to retrofit appliances. Despite these immense investments, hydrogen’s actual contribution to the energy mix remains negligible.
Real-world hydrogen demonstration projects—like China’s Kuqa facility, France’s Jupiter 1000, and the U.S. HECA plant—are examined with a critical lens. These cases often feature a pattern of high expectations followed by cost overruns, technical malfunctions, underperformance, and ultimately public subsidies to keep them afloat. Electrolyzers frequently cannot handle variable power inputs, fugitive leaks occur regularly, and promised carbon reductions fail to materialize. Cressey argues that the true climate benefit of these projects, once adjusted for leakage and inefficiencies, is negative or marginal at best.
Cressey’s overarching message is that hydrogen’s appeal is largely aesthetic and ideological. It has become a kind of symbolic fuel—clean at the point of use, futuristic in branding, and politically attractive. But when examined through the lens of chemistry and atmospheric science, it reveals itself to be deeply problematic. The hydrogen economy is not just an expensive detour—it may actively worsen the very problem it claims to solve.
Conclusion
There are other problems with hydrogen, including embrittling metals over time. Summed, the enthusiasm for hydrogen does not pass economic or environmental muster. The “clean fuel” narrative collapses under scrutiny—especially once fugitive emissions, atmospheric feedbacks, and the overlooked externalities of CO₂ are fully considered.
No Son, There Won’t Be a Hydrogen Economy calls on scientists, engineers, and policymakers to reject symbolic solutions and refocus on strategies grounded in measurable, scalable, and scientifically robust approaches. In doing so, the conversation goes from hype to hard evidence. Not all gases are equally dangerous, and not all solutions are equally wise.
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Relevant time capsule deposition:
zqzco mznsa msrkr jzgkm wdyha wjrix jazvd vifjn jdqbi yyuvz smocu jemqa xovrr mswhp
ojtvb hlspj klqxg ojpbl vnhnr ijczr hjohw pdfkn gemmu vizdn fwkbx bpmqa gvmyt ehpvc
ldkvs asfnd fbtjl yoagm lbsqc nbvjp cfzjt qfupf ztjuu ntooc ftirk xupgr phgsg whdvw
bxgrl anobu oxstt iddrl gmoxb audzy tascg vrxtp pjlyl vhfuy zyavj ipxdr bpxsy ousqw
gafyv wvnpa herce mtcok fphkv swzuj wy
Another Joe Biden speech Jim?
I’m still trying to decipher the last one 🙂
I think it had something to do with an ice-cream business in China that he had a 10% stake in.
I rather think _Jim was bitten by a majestic Møøse and thus contracted ävien behrd fluuh, so thinking of visiting lövely Sweeten on your next holidays? If you die there yøu might get bjørn ägain.
Well it’s always fun to use Monthy Python just for the fun of it.
My conclusion is whatever he has deposited in that time capsule might too embarrasing for us to know so he’s using some sort of jibberish writing to spare us his true message. Decipher it? A waste of time.
I stopped reading after Electrolysis … demands large quantities of electricity and pure water.
If you are a professional chemist (not pharmacist) it takes little more than the back of an envelope to show that the hydrogen fuels proposal will not work at any useful scale.
If you are a professional chemist who favours the hydrogen fuel proposal, please provide your arguments against the validity of this article by Seth Cressey.
If you are a professional chemist who favours the proposal because others favour it, hand in your professional badge immediately. You are giving chemistry a bad name.
Geoff S
The American Chemical Society is pushing hydrogen regularly. See recent examples below. Of course they went off the deep end on climate change a long time ago.
https://cendigitalmagazine.acs.org/2025/03/14/trillions-of-tons-of-hydrogen-may-be-waiting-under-our-feet-2/content.html
https://cen.acs.org/energy/hydrogen-power/Graphitic-Energy-starts-turquoise-hydrogen-pilot/103/web/2025/03
Let them invest their pension money in the hydrogen economy! Dare them to do that.
An engineer can do the same. One simply needs to add up how many kilowatt-hours per year of energy a family already uses to heat, light and cool their home, and water, power their cars, warm and cool their food, take vacations, and simply live comfortably. Then they need to determine how many acres of solar panels and wind turbines, and kilowatt-hours of batteries that they need in order to live through the dark doldrums of winter and clouds, in order to live comfortably. They then simply need to multiply this by all the families of the world and then factor in all the industrial watt-hours that vastly exceed the family requirements. They will quickly determine that the technology does not exist to do this, particularly when the timing requirement is a few years, not a few centuries.
Aussie taxpayers would probably be eager to pass around the hat for someone to read your book to their Minister for Climate Change and Energy (Chris Bowen), who hands out 100s of millions $$$s for grifters with utility-scale “renewable hydrogen” taxpayer-funded propositions.
(I say – “read your book to Bowen” because it is well recognised and accepted that this bloke is a rolled-gold idiot, who couldn’t rationally process and comprehend a 2-short-sentences statement about how to butter a biscuit)
Mr, you wrote –
I believe you are underestimating the gentleman. He is at least a solid 24 ct gold idiot, not a pale gold plated base metal imitation. Give him due credit.
I defer to your more accurate description.
It is a race to the top rung of idiocy between Bow-wow and Millibrain !
There are other problems with hydrogen indeed. Hydrogen’s energy density per cubic foot is a fraction of that of methane. It requires much more energy to compress and to ship. As a measure of its relative insufficiency re existing fuels, it would require on the order of 12 semi tractor-trailer trucks carrying the maximum permissible amount of compressed hydrogen to deliver to a “gas” station the same amount of energy as is presently delivered by a single gasoline tanker and either the truck or station would need a hydrogen compressor to transfer the hydrogen. Shipment as a liquid is impractical because hydrogen must be cooled within about 20 degrees of absolute zero to liquify and must be kept there during the shipment. For many production and management scenarios using hydrogen as a fuel, as much and sometimes more energy will be required for shipment and handling than the fuel contains.
Yeah, it’s amazing that rocket hydrogen fuel tanks operate at 20K, one of the important niches for hydrogen.
I have a tank in my basement for quartz blowing and use it quite often. In any case I wanted to respond to one of the author’s points. With regard to fugitive emissions, the atmospheric concentration of hydrogen is already about 0.5 ppm resulting from volcanic and other natural emissions. Manmade leaks of hydrogen and are and always will be insignificant compared to this.
Absolutely. The “hydrogen economy” is yet more fantasy
When will these people ever learn?
It’s like a roller coaster, hydrogen, biofuels etc, coming in and out of fashion
Each time there is some fanfare and wishful thinking about how these technologies will revolutionise, only to conclude with a certain period that the same damn problems that killed them off in the first place are still there, and still insoluble
Hydrogen cars (fuel cells primarily) were abandoned over 2 decades ago. GM, Ford, Honda etc abandoned it when they realised they were not making progress and were being hoodwinked by the FC developers
I remember BMW also looking at direct hydrogen, only in the end to drop it
The good thing is that the peaks are getting further apart and the amplitude is decreasing
One wonders what is the motivation. Surely the people involved are aware of the inherent flaws. It must be just a ruse to get some public money or venture capital
For governments is a case of throwing a few peanuts at it to make it look like something is happening and probably to help some of their donors and supporters
I doubt they take the hydrogen economy seriously, beyond injecting some into traditional thermal power generation, which I think will not go on for much longer
The motivation could be the already stated deindustrialisation of the west, but even more likely are (1) political power regardless of outcome, and (2) destruction of the west. NB. That really is an ‘and’ not an ‘or’: Socialists in the west are pursuing (1), while Xi Jinping encourages and funds them because he is pursuing (2).
The use of hydrogen in an Internal Combustion Engine, or oxidation in a fuel cell, will produce water vapor, a powerful GHG that is usually dismissed on the excuse that it is a condensing gas. A true but unimportant fact when new water vapor is continuously produced by people. After something like 50 years of trying to eliminate smog, it is still evident in densely populated urban areas, providing evidence that new water vapor will not be dispersed rapidly enough to not create a problem in topographic basins in the lower troposphere, as well as the stratosphere.
The problems will be a trade-off between the inconvenience of draining condensed water daily and reduced mileage (and compromised performance) as the condensed water builds up while driving, and the alternative which is to release the water vapor into the air. If the latter is chosen, then one can expect urban areas and transportation corridors to experience increased humidity with the Urban Heat Island effect exacerbated by an increased Heat Index. Additionally, it should be anticipated that slick roads will result in increased braking distance and more accidents, mold and corrosion where it hasn’t been experienced before, and shortened longevity for cars and buildings.
The advocates for a hydrogen economy are ignoring the unintended consequences of substituting water vapor for carbon dioxide.
So your argument is not “it won’t work” but actually it’s WORSE than CO2 ? So you’ve bought into the CO2 warming cargo cult but reject the hydrogen cargo cult …
Hydrogen will continue to have an important role as rocket fuel, where its top energy density by mass justifies all the hassles of handling it in liquid form. For all other uses it’s a non-starter.
More energy per unit mass than other fuels? Yes. It seems that this is the thinking that leads NASA to use it. However, Space X uses liquid hydrocarbon fuel and launches for a fraction of the cost of comparable NASA launches. Perhaps one reason is that Space X avoids the cost of hydrogen and the weight of the special tanks and machinery needed to handle it. Bot I know next to nothing about rocket engine design. Is there a rocket engineer out there who can explain the issues to us with some authority?
On the Apollo (lunar landing) project we found the best designs of multistage rockets used LOX/rocket fuel (kerosene) for the first stages where gravity made thrust more important and LOX/ Hydrogen for upper stages where specific impulse was more important. The upper stages with hydrogen were lighter with hydrogen for the same impulse.
Denis:
SpaceX chose liquified natural gas (LCH4) with the raptor for a number of reasons; it’s really the best compromise between the easier-to-handle/lower specific impulse RP-1 (highly refined kerosene) and the much harder-to-handle/higher specific impulse liquified H2. SpaceX are betting they can improve the combustion efficiency of their raptor engine enough to make up most of the difference. That plus their intended launch frequency greatly multiplies the difficulties of using liquified H2. The well-proven SpaceX Merlin engine uses RP-1/LOX.
Natural gas is abundant, cheap, easy to handle and not difficult to liquify. The boiling point of LCH4 is fairly close to LOX ( -162C vs -183C), which eliminates the need for extensive insulation between the two tanks. Liquified Hydrogen boils at -253C; placed next to LOX, the LH2 will boil and the LOX will freeze.
“specific impulse” is a measure of thrust efficiency for a given mass of fuel+oxidizer. Where this is really important (typically second stages), LH2/LOX rules. As Jimmy Dollard notes, the Apollo upper stages used it, as does the current Blue Origin BE3 second stage engine and quite a few others. See here and sort by specific impulse.
Did not the Russians and NASA for the Space shuttle use solid fuels eg Solid-propellant rocket – Wikipedia
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Stopped reading right there.
They also say..
“While excessive CO₂ contributes to long-term warming,”
This statement is totally without any scientific backing.
a)… There is NOT an excess of CO₂, there is currently a deficit.
b)… There is no real scientific evidence that CO₂ contributes to long-term warming.
Made one for that too:
Made one for that too:
Very nice, lots of important information written in plain English.
What AM I missing here!? We already have a hydrogen economy, where most of the world’s energy is provided by hydrogen, wisely mixed with carbon in varying proportions for safety! The major goal of GangGreen is to destroy our access to these plentiful and beneficial fuels by limiting their availability, and removing the safety factors inherent in hydrocarbon utilization.
No intelligent being could possibly believe that an advanced society could run on unreliable energy sources alone, ergo they are trying to destroy advanced civilization, and possibly ALL life on Earth!
Climastrology is a nihilistic death cult, trying to hide inside the sheep’s clothing of environmentalism!
All energy labeled green sustainable or (my absolute favourite) renewable (what simple physics deprived brainless stoner came up with that idiotic term?). Here on earth you can’t neither produce energy nor renew energy, you can only transform it.
Hydrogen isn’t Nitroglycerin that can be easily with a cheap and smart idea controlled and so put to good use…so still waiting for the next Nobel, or shat we better call him Hobel ? 🤪
Batteries, hydrogen, wind or solar etc. …all looking good on paper, should be printed on a roll of toilet paper. So you could do with it the only thing what you should do with it.
Wipe or shove, the choice is individually yours.
Unfortunately, nitroglycerin contains both carbon and nitrogen therefore it must be classified as a pollutant with a zero threshold limit.
/sarc
Renewable: (of a natural resource or source of energy) not depleted when used:
The context that is forced into the renewable definition is that earth’s natural resources are not used to supply the fuel.
I do not them Sam-I-Am. I do not like green
eggsenergy and ham.The Hindenberg disaster remains the best illustration of the effects of leaky hydrogen.
Hydrogen had almost zero to do with what happened to the Hindenburg. It was the coating on the outer fabric that ignited with the spark from the tower. It was extremely flammable
Sorta like the Titanic, it was the high Sulphur steel, not the Iceberg wot dunnit….
The Titanic sinking was not due to a single cause.
Multiple engineering trade offs in the design.
Multiple navigation and command errors.
Ego and greed and the chasing of a record (fastest Atlantic Crossing).
Inadequate sea trials.
Then there is the insufficient number of life boats due to aesthetics.
Hydrogen containing gas supplied to houses all over the UK until the 1970s, fires were not a problem due to the rapid diffusion of Hydrogen leading to non-flammable mixtures. It became a problem after it was replaced by natural gas and nation-wide changes to the piping system had to be made.
Exactly true. Hydrogen did not cause the Hindenburg to burn.
But that flaming fabric did ignite the hydrogen, making the disaster much worse.
The best illustration of the effects of leaky hydrogen?
Out of control wildfires encroaching on the pipelines, etc.
Lightning strikes near the leak.
If you think the Hindenberg was bad (it was), wait until a hydrogen processing facility goes up. It will make lithium battery fires look like a girl scout camp fire.
The only viable hydrogen economy is the one where the hydrogen is chemically bound to carbon or carbon chains. If the world had not given us hydrocarbons, we would have to have invented and synthesised them. Without them, no civilisation, that is, serfdom for the masses and wealth for the few with the guns.
So what about the myth of the so-called “Green Energy” economy?
Go into your bathroom.
Flush the toilet.
The effect you see is the world’s economy under the control of “Green Energy.”
the question Is with all the natural hydrogen they are claiming to be finding is it practical for electricity generation?
I doubt much of the climate issues with this article. The practical issues are dead on.
The short answer is no.
Discounting a much hyped solution i.e. hydrogen to solve an imaginary issue i.e.CO2 induced climate change is an exercise is pointless musing.
We need to solve real problems not entertain ourselves with nonsense solutions being rejected as nonsense by technical reality.
If anxiety about fossil fuel derived climate change was a real concern, then nuclear power provides a ready and well understood solution.
And after 50 plus years of alarmism, we would be living in a nuclear energy age.
I’ve been involved in stuff related to the upcoming “hydrogen economy” for over 20 years. There will be a hydrogen economy, but it won’t be what most people calling for a “hydrogen economy” predict. Hydrogen will be produced and used, but it will be used to “sweeten” poorer grades of oil to broaden and augment available oil supplies.
There was a group of top tech people, who used to meet in Calgary in the 1980’s to advance a perceived coming hydrogen “industry”. I believe their conclusions and yours coincides…and of course, hydrogenation is a common refinery unit. Now, forty years later the Alberta government subsidized a couple of hydrogen projects, but when you really look, it was a taxpayer subsidy to the heavy oil industry for production of more synthetic crude… with some green-looking icing on top.
refocus on strategies grounded in measurable, scalable, and scientifically robust approaches
I submit for consideration that engineering be added to that statement.
Much, most, if not all of the hydrogen deficiencies described require engineering solutions and there is serious concern that such solutions are impractical if not impossible.
Seth, you say:
“Recent studies have shown that hydrogen can have a global warming potential (GWP) up to 33 times greater than CO₂ over a 20-year timeframe when accounting for these indirect effects.”
Links? Thanks.
Next, you haven’t mentioned the recent discovery of underground reserves of hydrogen.
Finally, your comments on fugitive hydrogen combining with the OH radical to reduce the global amount are most fascinating. I took a quick cruise through atmospheric chemistry on Grok, asking what a ten-fold increase in H2 would do to OH, which gave me this:
Given H2’s tiny amount in the atmosphere (0.55 ppmv) it seems like a tenfold increase is not unlikely. And a 30%-40% decrease in OH, known as the “atmosphere’s detergent”, seems like it could pose significant problems.
Thanks for a most fascinating article.,
w.
Still waiting for “the hydrogen highway” to start working in California since 2004.
“No Son, There Won’t Be a Hydrogen Economy”
Perhaps not but major players are investing in site specific applications and so project an attractive ROI. For example, INOX Air Products commissioned a green hydrogen plant today that feeds a glass manufacturer with upwards of 95 t/y for 20 years.
This objection to hydrogen really is not only utterly unscientific but also laughable and of course representative of today’s false science.. Do these so called experts not realise that the Town Gas that provided under street piping of energy and lighting to nearly all cities and towns in Victorian times was around 70% hydrogen? Get real.