Hype and hydrogen starting with the same letters isn’t a coincidence

Hydrogen isn’t a natural gas, gasoline or diesel replacement, but the fossil fuel industry wants you to think it is

Covers courtesy EU and Government of Canada

There’s been a recent emergence of the ‘hydrogen economy’ nonsense globally. Governments globally have been creating roadmaps and budgets. Lobbyists from legacy energy businesses have been all over politicians and the media, trying to get a set of policies which support fossil-fuel sourced hydrogen.

This assessment emerged from the recent Columbia University Sustainable Finance Seminar I was asked to provide as part of its series on the subject. Mark Townsend Cox of New Energy Fund II, LP in Manhattan is co-chair of the series, and he asked me to contribute. The title of my 90-minute talk, which turned into closer to 2.5 hours with the excellent questions from participants, was Green washing, sustainability scams and clean cons: How to spot ’em. The slides I spoke to are linked under the title for those interested.

I hadn’t included a slide specifically on hydrogen, an oversight on my part, but did have a slide on an outright hydrogen perpetual motion long con I talked about with Canada’s national broadcaster, CBC, as part of its investigations, and written about in CleanTechnica once the…