According to the Pew Research Center, 67% of U.S. adults prioritize the development of alternative clean energy sources, such as solar, wind, and hydrogen power, over producing fossil fuel energy. 

With such an apparent demand for clean energy, it seems inevitable that renewable energy sources like hydrogen fuel will grow in the future. 

Yet many are still skeptical about hydrogen fuel as an alternative.

“I don’t think that hydrogen fuel will have a large place in the future. And if I’m proven wrong, and it turns out that it powers all of our cars and all houses and every electronic in the future, then that’s great, but I wouldn’t think that’s going to happen because of the disadvantages,” said Jaziel Salomón, a Carlmont AP Environmental Science and Physics teacher.

The looming threat of fossil fuel emissions on environmental well-being urgently calls for a solution; a solution traced back to hydrogen.

Hydrogen production occurs through two main processes: steam-methane reforming and electrolysis. Through steam-methane reforming, hydrogen molecules are separated from methane through temperature steam, releasing carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide as byproducts. 

According to Salomón, this process is the most common but not favorable.

“When people mine for natural gas, they can use the methane in that, combine it with steam, and that generates hydrogen. But in doing so, they’re drilling for natural gas and putting fossil fuel energy into the process,” Salomón said.

As a result, this method releases high amounts of carbon dioxide, which contributes to global climate change, given that it is a primary greenhouse gas with an extended atmospheric residence time compared to other greenhouse gases such as water vapor. 

The implication of this points towards electrolysis, the future of not only hydrogen production, it has the potential to revolutionize energy production in commercial sectors across the globe. 

Electrolysis uses nuclear, biomass, or renewable energy sources which split water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen molecules.

“When hydrogen is used as a fuel because it’s combining with oxygen, the only thing it’s releasing is water vapor, which is technically a greenhouse gas, but it will quickly disappear from the atmosphere,” Salomón said.

Electrolysis through renewable energy sources such as wind, geothermal, or solar energy emits water vapor as a byproduct, making it a green fuel energy source compared to less favorable carbon and natural gas alternatives. 

Given that most commercial sources of hydrogen form through steam-methane reforming, which continues to emit greenhouse gases, the viability of hydrogen fuel energy as the ideal emission source is preferable only if it has a global future through renewable energy-sourced electrolysis.

In 2021, hydrogen fuel demands reached 94 million tonnes (Mt), about 2.5% of global final energy consumption.

Most of these demands come from traditional usage in fields such as refining and industry, but new applications have increased tremendously. Demand for new applications grew to 40,000 tonnes, up 60% from 2020.

“Shell has been working with hydrogen for some time as it is used in some refining processes. For my line of business specifically, it is believed that if we truly want to make hydrogen a scalable fuel source for the future mobility market, we need to work on the development of the heavy-duty market,” said Benjamin Conger, a Shell Fields Operations Manager.

From a manufacturing perspective, the impracticality of hydrogen production poses a barrier to market interest.

“Hydrogen is not the type of renewable energy that you’re immediately going to use because you have to use some other type of energy to collect the energy for electrolysis. Hydrogen should be thought of more as a battery because you’re storing the energy you collect,” Salomón said. 

Hydrogen is the smallest and lightest element, posing a transportation barrier, given that it must undergo pressure or liquefaction to transport a significant amount. This compares to gasoline, whose mass is 3000 times heavier, making it easier to transport long distances. Hydrogen must also be transported in specific vehicle pipelines where demand is high. 

Although hydrogen’s low density limits its transport and storage, companies such as H2clipper prevail past this limitation. 

H2clippers seeks to combat the high cost and inefficiency barriers within hydrogen transport through renewable energy sources. Initiatives such as this one aim to facilitate access to hydrogen so that it can dominate as the primary global energy source. 

Beyond a manufacturing standpoint, a significant influence on hydrogen fuel’s viability stems from consumers’ interest in investing in this technology. 

When Chloe Zhao, a Carlmont junior, first learned how to drive, she used a Toyota Mirai hydrogen vehicle. Over a year later, this car continues to be her mode of transportation. 

The car is an ideal beginner-friendly car with its zero carbon emissions and advanced features.

“The driving is very smooth, and the car has a lot of cameras and sensors. It’s the car I learned how to drive on, which I like as well,” Zhao said. 

Though ideal, the car’s practicality comes into question regarding fueling. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, as of 2024, there were 54 hydrogen stations open in the U.S., consolidated in California and Hawaii. 

“To fill it, I need to go to a hydrogen station, and there are only a few in the Bay Area. So I usually go to Mountain View, which is about 30 minutes away, and it only fills up to 200 miles,” Zhao said.

These small proportions limit consumer interest. According to Zhao, gasoline prices per gallon are half what a hydrogen user pays. With this in mind, Toyota, a major manufacturer of hydrogen vehicles, incentivized consumers to buy the Toyota Mirai by issuing complimentary fuel for a three-year car lease or lasting for six years after the car was purchased.

“We have a card that Toyota gave us when we bought the car, and we haven’t had to pay for hydrogen fuel yet and we’ve had it for a couple years,” Zhao said.

Initiatives such as this one appeal to consumers whose biggest concern is the accessibility to hydrogen fuel.

“The car could be popular in the future, but there have to be improvements, including the cost of fuel and the amount of stations. The reason no one wants it right now is because it’s inconvenient,” Zhao said.

Unlike many other vehicles, FCEVs’ environmental impact doesn’t come from their exhaust but rather from fuel production.

“When discussing environmental impact, if you are looking at the vehicles, they are zero-emission vehicles; if you are looking at the supply chain as a whole, you have several different pathways; some are more environmentally friendly than others,” Conger said.

Steam-methane reforming releases pollutants like carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. According to the Green Hydrogen Organization, 11.1-13.7 kilograms of carbon dioxide are released for every kilogram of hydrogen produced. This method of Hydrogen fuel production is often dubbed gray hydrogen. 

“The way that you get hydrogen, you have to put energy into the process. It’s not like we can just mine hydrogen,” Salomón said

Another method of hydrogen fuel production is through coal gasification. During coal gasification, coal reacts with oxygen and steam to produce a gas mixture called syngas, which can be further processed to extract pure hydrogen gas. This method of hydrogen production also emits CO2, sulfur dioxide (S02), nitrogen oxides (NOx), and mercury, according to How Stuff Works. However, coal gasification is more environmentally friendly than processes such as coal combustion because it is easier to control gasification emissions than combustion, according to the National Energy Technology Laboratory. This method of hydrogen production is called black or brown hydrogen. 

Another alternative Hydrogen fuel production method is blue hydrogen. This hydrogen is produced through the same method as gray hydrogen; however, some of the CO2 is captured rather than released and stored underground or reused. 

With the various types of clean energy available today, including nuclear, solar, wind, hydropower, and geothermal, it may seem like clean hydrogen fuel is an unnecessary addition. However, hydrogen plays a key role in various industries and has considerable advantages over other fuel alternatives. 

“Some of the challenges being faced are the advancement and push of the electric market, with some believing that it is the solution needed for zero-emission vehicles when, in fact, what we need to be doing is diversifying our zero-emission vehicle market and not pigeonhole ourselves into one market for the future,” Conger said. 

Various industries already rely on fossil-based hydrogen fuel, so switching to green hydrogen would be the most feasible option. For example, the petroleum refining and fertilizer production industries consume over 90% of the hydrogen fuel produced today. According to the World Resources Institute, switching to green hydrogen could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 30 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in the U.S. alone.

In other heavy industries such as aviation, steel, freight, long-distance shipping, and long-term energy storage, other technologies may not be able to support decarbonization measures because they require high-energy mass fuel or intense heat.

“Staying within automotive, it could be a fuel source for busses because that’s where natural gas has been coming in. For other transportation, even not automotive, it could work for a ship, maybe even the electrical power on a ship,” Salomón said. 

However, there are fields where green hydrogen isn’t the best solution. For example, blending hydrogen with natural gas for power generation reduces emissions by 10% in the best-case scenario. Still, it can increase emissions by 70% in the worst-case scenario, according to the World Resources Institute.

“The thing with hydrogen is that, with other renewable energy sources, they’re generally already available. It’s easy to say there’s a river here, but we can build a dam. Or it’s windy here, let’s build wind turbines. If you drive down Central Valley or Las Vegas, you see all the wind turbines on all the hills because there’s a lot of wind there. So it’s easy to go and immediately capture that energy, whereas, with hydrogen, it’s the same thing I said before; you have to put energy into the process,” Salomón said.

Global atmospheric temperature is rapidly rising, posing a threat to ecosystems and biodiversity. Even as renewable energy becomes accessible, the continual reliance on fossil fuels as an energy source has already altered atmospheric conditions.

Shifting from traditional fossil fuel reliance to a 100% renewable energy source can be achieved if consumers, governments, and manufacturers invest in renewable energy to preserve and restore the Earth’s environment. 

“Hydrogen production is a self-fulfilling prophecy because it becomes that people don’t want to buy the cars, or companies don’t want to make those fuel stations, and then there’s not that many fuel stations, so people aren’t buying them,” Salomón. 

Combatting hydrogen accessibility is the key to popularizing the source. Even beyond hydrogen-fueled cars, the use of hydrogen for aviation, steel, and shipping, all of which require significant fuel density, would eliminate a present primary source of fossil fuel emissions. 

“If hydrogen companies want it to expand nationwide, then other state governments either need to step in or the federal government needs to step in and fund some hydrogen. So if the government would subsidize hydrogen, I could see it becoming a primary energy source in the future,” Salomón said.