What Is “Clean Hydrogen”?

This story was originally published by Grist and has been republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The report mentions Danskammer, an upstate New York energy company that has proposed building a new natural gas–fired power plant and argued it is in line with climate goals because the plant will be capable of burning a blend of clean hydrogen and natural gas, which would lower emissions and could eventually be converted to run fully on hydrogen. Michael Liebreich, an independent energy analyst and adviser, said home heating is the “front line in the hydrogen culture wars.” “There’s enormously heavy lobbying for hydrogen in heating,” he said, “because it would use the gas distribution network, and that’s a very expensive asset we built over many, many decades, and the companies who own it don’t want to walk away.” In the U.K., where Liebreich lives, gas utilities have been promoting a full switch to hydrogen since at least 2016, when an industry- In the U.S., gas utilities in New York, Massachusetts, California, and other states have said that clean hydrogen could be part of a low-carbon fuel mix they could deliver to customers in the future to meet climate goals. Liebreich, who has famously ranked the potential uses of clean hydrogen into a “ladder” based on which he thinks are most likely to succeed, doesn’t see much of a future for hydrogen in buildings. There’s no guarantee that the $2 billion or so the U.S. might spend on a residential heating “clean hydrogen hub” would otherwise go to electrification or any other climate solution.