Hydrogen

Nikola, with its hydrogen trucks, has finally left the building. The company gained widespread attention after going public via a SPAC merger in 2020, briefly reaching a market valuation of over $30 billion. However, founder Trevor Milton was complicit in the SPAC pump and dump, misleading investors about Nikola’s technological progress—most notably, a promotional video of a truck rolling down a hill presented as a working vehicle.

Hydrogen produced from renewable electricity is a breakthrough climate solution. It can be produced to emit nothing but oxygen, and when used it doesn’t produce carbon dioxide, making it an attractive alternative to the polluting fossil fuels in use today. But like any new technology, myths about its function and applications abound. Here we tackle some of the biggest myths and misconceptions around hydrogen, adapted from our extensive “Reality Check” series.

Four weeks ago, I didn’t know the Canadian Urban Transit Research and Innovation Consortium existed. If I’d seen mention of it, I probably would have assumed it as an innocuous little organization full of pleasant Canadians working diligently for the good of Canadian transit. But the onion keeps being peeled. Today’s subject is the full extent of the conflicts of interest that CUTRIC’s funding model creates for Board members, and how they just keep doing nothing about it.

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.

The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 creates the opportunity for up to $100 billion in federal tax and production credits, known collectively as Section 45V credits. Now, $100 billion is a lot of money, which means those who have no right to it will try to game the system in order to line their own pockets with some of that lovely federal money even if they don’t deserve it. Not surprisingly, two of the world’a largest fossil fuel companies — ExxonMobil and Saudi Aramco — want Uncle Sugar to dole our a big chunk of the money to them so they can make dirty hydrogen from methane.

Earlier this year, MAN trucks’ CEO Alexander Vlaskamp told reporters that it was, “impossible for hydrogen to effectively compete with battery electric trucks.”

He was right then, and he’s still right now. “It’s one thing to have the technology and another thing for the technology to be viable,” Vlaskamp told the magazine Expansión (translated from Spanish). “Green hydrogen is not available for transportation and there is no point in switching from diesel to hydrogen if the energy source is not sustainable.”

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.

Towering ambitions predominate European hydrogen policy. Politicians believe this energy carrier can help greenify the industry, heat houses, and make air and road transport climate-neutral. But these goals are unrealistic, and politicians are being fooled by the fossil fuel industry, says energy analyst Michael Liebreich. ‘The political body has no antibodies. There is no scepticism at all.’

For anyone curious about the origins of all the hydrogen hype that has recently made its way to Canada — including Nova Scotia as the Halifax Examiner has reported extensively — the European investigative publication, “Follow The Money” has a fascinating article called “How one professor made the EU fall in love with hydrogen.”