Hydrogen's Missing Trillions

Despite $360 billion of subsidies targeting clean hydrogen, the world is $2 to $4 trillion short of what would be required to meet the promises of its boosters and the politicians they have fooled.

Cleaning Up Audioblog 13: Hydrogen’s Missing Trillions. Image: Cleaning Up

Over the past four years, around $360 billion of hydrogen subsidies have been announced. In some cases, like the US Inflation Reduction Act or Japan's Hydrogen Society Promotion Act, subsidies can be layered or stacked to create a bonanza for those that get them.

But clean hydrogen is expensive to produce, expensive to transport, expensive to store, expensive to distribute, and expensive to use. So much so that subsidies disbursed this side of 2030 will be between $2 trillion and $4 trillion too little to deliver the 90 million ton target for that year set at last year's Hydrogen Energy Ministerial.

In fact, we are likely to see less than 10 million tons of clean hydrogen globally by 2030, decarbonizing around 10% of current fossil hydrogen use. There is a yawning chasm between the rhetoric of politicians and hydrogen boosters, and reality.

And do tell your mates - particularly that annoying one who doesn't realise he has bet his career on a hydrogen project that will never see the light of day!