Hydrogen vs. Hype: Understanding the True Value of This Sustainable Fuel Source

Many experts position hydrogen as a cornerstone of the clean energy transition. It promises to decarbonise some of the most challenging sectors — heavy industry, shipping, aviation and long-duration energy storage.

However, amid bold headlines and massive public investment, it’s worth asking how much of this momentum is based on hard science and infrastructure readiness and how much is speculative hype.

The Basics: What Hydrogen Can and Can’t Do

Hydrogen is an energy carrier, not a primary energy source. To be useful, it must be produced using other inputs — typically through electrolysis, which is splitting water using electricity, or steam methane reforming. Only the former, when powered by renewables, qualifies as truly zero emission.

Hydrogen is often categorised by colour:

• Grey hydrogen: Produced using fossil fuels, primarily natural gas, without capturing the emissions. This makes up the majority of global hydrogen production.
• Blue hydrogen: Same process as gray, but with carbon capture and storage added. In theory, it lowers emissions, but it isn’t perfect.
• Green hydrogen: Produced via electrolysis using renewable electricity. It’s the cleanest option, but also the most expensive and least available.

Hydrogen’s promise lies in its versatility. You can combust it for heat, use it in fuel cells to generate electricity, or utilise it as feedstock for chemical processes like ammonia or methanol production.

Where Hydrogen Makes Sense

Hydrogen has clear and defensive roles in a net-zero future. Its strength emerges in areas where direct electrification is either insufficient or technologically impractical:

• Heavy industry: Steel, cement and chemical manufacturing require extremely high temperatures and processes that hydrogen can support — either as fuel or feedstock.
• Long-distance freight and shipping: Hydrogen-powered engines have surged in popularity since the introduction of electric vehicles. Battery-electric solutions are impractical for heavy-duty trucking or maritime transport due to weight and range limitations. Hydrogen and hydrogen-based fuels (like ammonia) offer a more scalable alternative.
• Aviation: While direct hydrogen propulsion remains speculative, synthetic fuels made with green hydrogen (e-fuels) could decarbonise flight.
• Grid storage: Hydrogen can store excess renewable power over days or weeks. This is something batteries can’t do economically at scale.
• Metal handling and logistics: In warehouse operations and forklift fleets, hydrogen fuel cells offer clear advantages. Refuelling a hydrogen-powered forklift takes only three minutes — significantly faster than swapping or charging lead-acid batteries. This means more operational uptime, fewer delays and a safer work environment,

Where Hydrogen Doesn’t Make Sense

Despite its wide-reaching hype, hydrogen is often proposed for applications where it’s technically inferior to other options:

• Passenger cars: Hydrogen-powered vehicles are less efficient than battery-powered transport. Battery electric vehicles are already commercially viable, with superior efficiency, infrastructure momentum and market adoption. Hydrogen fuel cell cars are expensive, less efficient and suffer from a lack of refuelling infrastructure.
• Home heating: Proposals to blend hydrogen into natural gas networks or replace boilers entirely are economically and energetically flawed. Heat pumps are far more efficient and scalable
• Power generation: Burning hydrogen for electricity, without a fuel cell, wastes most of the input energy. Direct renewables and batteries are more logical choices for the grid.

Infrastructure and Investment Reality

Hydrogen’s widespread use requires an entirely new infrastructure, which is costly. Pipelines, storage facilities, fueling stations and retrofitted industrial plants are needed for successful adoption. These are multibillion-dollar investments with long lead times.

Electrolysers - the machines that make green hydrogen - are improving rapidly but remain expensive and energy-intensive. Transporting hydrogen is difficult due to its small molecular size and tendency to embrittle metals, making pipelines more complex than for natural gas. Liquefaction, compression or chemical conversion is necessary for long-distance transport, each adding cost and complexity.

Current green hydrogen production accounts for less than 1% of total hydrogen output. Scaling this to meet even a fraction of global energy demand will require unprecedented renewable power and capital investment — often in regions with limited infrastructure or political instability.

Policy, Hype and the Role of Regulation

Governments are right to explore hydrogen as a part of their climate strategies. However, unchecked hype risks creating a policy bubble. Clear guardrails are needed to:

• Prioritise hydrogen use in “no-regret” sectors.
• Restrict subsidies and incentives to green hydrogen, not fossil-derived options.
• Align infrastructure development with realistic supply and demand forecasts.
• Avoid locking in expensive or inefficient solutions that don’t deliver genuine emissions reductions.

Public funding should support technologies that deliver measurable climate benefits. Hydrogen fits that bill when it’s used in the right places.

A Valuable Tool, Not a Universal Fix

Hydrogen’s true value lies in its strategic use in decarbonising sectors that electricity can’t reach. Industries that use it correctly can cut emissions, strengthen energy resilience and drive innovation. When sectors use it indiscriminately, it can waste resources and delay more effective solutions.