Why is the oil industry so keen to promote hydrogen as the fuel of the future?

A recent LinkedIn post by Jan Rosenow, European program manager of the Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP), a global team of highly qualified energy experts, highlighted the gas industry’s push to promote hydrogen for domestic heating. This prompted me to post the first comment in his article, and also to delve deeper into the subject and share a more structured commentary.

The oil industry is determined, by hook or by crook, to position hydrogen as a technology capable of salvaging its business model. The rationale seems straightforward: hydrogen, a by-product of oil and gas production, could leverage existing infrastructure to be sold as a “clean” alternative. Being flammable, hydrogen could potentially replace gas in many applications.

However, there’s a glaring issue: hydrogen derived from fossil fuels is far from clean. In fact, it’s highly polluting — a false solution at best, and at worst, a blatant scam. Currently, over 97% of hydrogen on the market comes from such processes, which explains the oil companies’ vested interest in developing this market.

We’re being told a big fat lie, and a dirty one at that. The hydrogen push mirrors the industry’s previous rebranding of methane as natural gas — a marketing ploy designed to present a fossil fuel as clean…