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Transitioning to hydrogen-burning turbines in power plants threatens to increase air pollution, because burning hydrogen produces substantially more nitrogen oxides — which harms health and contributes to smog — than burning methane.

Burning hydrogen in power plants is also extremely inefficient, ultimately wasting about two thirds of the energy required to make it.

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Contrary to spin from oil and gas companies, burning hydrogen in home appliances designed for methane gas risks polluting the air in our homes, embrittling pipes, leaking from gas lines, and explosions.

Electric heat pumps are more efficient (and cleaner and safer) than burning hydrogen for heat. It takes about five times more electricity to heat a home with green hydrogen than it takes to heat the same home with an efficient heat pump.

A technician solders an air heat exchanger, the heart of a heat pump, at a manufacturing facility in Germany. (Roberto Pfeil / picture-alliance / dpa / AP)

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In contrast to an electric car, you would need two to three times as much renewable energy to power a hydrogen car.

This is one reason hydrogen would be much more expensive than directly charging with clean electricity in a carbon-free economy and risks wasting our still-growing amount of renewable energy to displace less fossil fuel.

✔️ You’re correct — with some big caveats.

The only form of hydrogen that has a role to play in our climate future is green hydrogen, which is produced in an energy-intensive process with renewable energy, and could have a role to play in parts of the economy that currently use dirty hydrogen made from fossil fuels, like fertilizer manufacturing, or that we may not otherwise be able to electrify, like steelmaking.

Congress has created generous subsidies for hydrogen projects. Recently, the Department of the Treasury proposed new rules that get it right by setting strong criteria around new, major tax credits to encourage truly clean hydrogen that is produced using only new sources of zero-carbon electricity. Some companies are lobbying hard to try to weaken Treasury’s good rules so they can reap the lucrative credits for their dirty hydrogen production.

Earthjustice is urging Treasury to hold the line to ensure that funding doled out from the Inflation Reduction Act goes to projects that are truly clean. We are also working to prevent the $8 billion Hydrogen Hub program created under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law from propping up projects that would hurt our communities and climate.

Earthjustice is fighting for an electric, zero-emissions future through our Right to Zero campaign, helping communities better understand hydrogen projects being proposed nearby, and encouraging policy makers to look under the hood of hydrogen projects through our report, “Reclaiming Hydrogen for a Renewable Future.”