Let’s cast our minds back to the turn of the century, when everyone was worrying about the Millennium Bug, blowing their retirement investments on pets.com and partying like the world was ending with helium balloons and dry ice. In Vancouver and Chicago, the transit agencies had another lightweight molecule on their mind, hydrogen. Both trialed fuel cell buses with an early iteration of Ballard’s still-not-fit-for-prime-time technology inside, putting three buses each on the roads.

Unsurprisingly, when it comes to hydrogen, the more real-world data collection and analysis that is done and published, the worse it looks. The latest black eye for the tiny molecule that so many love is in the efficiency of making hydrogen at refueling stations.

With absolutely zero costs in the document, Hong Kong’s ‘strategy’ on hydrogen fails the Rumelt test. The fundamental problem with hydrogen is that in any form, including unabated fossil hydrogen, it’s far more expensive to manufacture, distribute, and use than fossil gases it purports to replace, and it’s far more expensive than electrification full lifecycle. In many cases, it’s just more expensive for initial capital costs. I’m going to stop calling the document a strategy. It’s a hydrogen marketing and climate action delay document. From now on, I’ll refer to it as the hydrogen marketing document.

About 25 years ago, hydrogen was the solution of choice for climate-aware technocrats and politicians, and with good reason. At the time, there really wasn’t much choice in terms of low-carbon energy carriers. Batteries were good enough for laptops and phones, but clearly no one was going to be running transportation, heating or grid storage with them. And besides, you could make hydrogen with electricity, something first done in 1800, and a staple of kids’ science classes as early as grade 4. Easy to make, high energy density and you didn’t even have to burn the stuff. You could use fuel cells, and again, those were really old technology with the first one constructed in 1842, and fuel cells used in Gemini spacecraft as far back as 1962. What’s not to love?

Over the past year or so, as the hydrogen for energy hype bubble has started to leak badly, a clear indicator of the end times for hydrogen energy proponents has started to emerge, anger and hostility. Why is this a clear indicator? Let’s cast our minds back eight years. Sometime before then I’d created the above continuum of climate change denial positions, from utter and mind-boggling refusal to accept reality all the way to the tiny category of people who thought it would be worse than it is going to be. As I noted at the time, Climate Change Deniers Are Getting Angrier & Here’s Why. As I observed, it was all about cognitive dissonance.

So, to sum up, hydrogen refueling stations in the biggest public data set, covering 55 stations over six years with millions of kilograms of hydrogen having been delivered, show that hydrogen stations are out of service 20% more time than they are pumping hydrogen and that annual maintenance costs are 15% of capex, not 4%. Do I expect the ICCT, Daimler, hydrogen refueling vendors and the US DOE to now start using 15%? No, I expect them to recreate the study I’ve just done using California’s data and more real data on capital expenditures, and come up with a number that is much more realistic than 4%. Personally, I’m comfortable with 15% and will be using it and recommending to groups I engage with that they use it.