Most Clean Hydrogen Is Actually Made From FOSSIL FUELS

Hydrogen is sold as a clean fuel, but most of it is made by burning fossil fuels.

If hydrogen only produces water when you actually use it, how can making it possibly be dirty?

The catch is where the hydrogen comes from. Around 95 percent of it is pulled out of natural gas, in a process that blasts the gas with super-hot steam. That strips hydrogen atoms off the methane, but it leaves behind carbon, which escapes as carbon dioxide. So for every kilogram of this hydrogen, several kilograms of CO2 are released into the atmosphere.

It's called gray hydrogen, and it's the cheap default. Truly clean, green hydrogen, made by splitting water with renewable electricity, is still only a tiny slice of the total. The clean fuel of the future is, for now, mostly a fossil fuel in disguise.

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