Tulips on Mars: Hydrogen Hype vs Engineering Reality

Gavin Smith 06/11/2025

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I was in the process of writing an article about the failed Australian EV-charger start-up “Tritium” (reference: Tritium's rapid rise and collapse is over – goes into administration – Australian Manufacturing Forum) and the vast sums of taxpayer money spent (“wasted”??), when I became involved in a Linkedin “discussion” on the merits (??) of Hydrogen as an energy vector, or as a fuel (another area where vast sums of taxpayer money is spent).

I don’t dispute that we can and currently do use Hydrogen as a fuel. Numerous rocket launches are a testament to the fact that we can and do use Hydrogen as a fuel! What I dispute is the benefits of Hydrogen as an energy vector, or as a fuel for things other than launching rockets into space.

As with growing tulips on Mars, there is no dispute that we could. The question is why would we want to?? Just because one can, doesn’t mean that it is sensible to do so!

The “environmental argument” for Hydrogen seemingly makes little sense, despite it’s perceived popularity, extensive promotion, and the staggering amounts of public monies being made available via grants that are available through various international and national programs – such as the (estimated) €1 billion from the EU Innovation Fund (Reference: Nearly €1 billion awarded to boost development of renewable hydrogen).

Beyond launching rockets into space, and as a chemical feedstock for industrial processes such as ammonia synthesis and oil refining; hydrogen seemingly also serves as a very effective subsidy/grant suck given it’s affinity to attract vast sums of public monies…as did Australian EV-charger start-up Tritium (reference: Tritium awarded funding to develop high-powered EV charging – Energy Source & Distribution). Perhaps there is a parallel here about considering which direction to walk, before running off in all directions?

Here are a few snippets about Hydrogen-:

Hydrogen as a gas isn’t abundant within the earth’s atmosphere, so for the most, it must currently be manufactured via breaking a covalent bond with either oxygen or an organic molecule.

Any Hydrogen manufacturing process you choose will consume more energy than you can get back from the hydrogen at point of use (Readers can reference and research “Gibbs Free Energy” to confirm) – Take your pick from electrolysis of water to Steam-Methane Reforming and the road is the same.

Hydrogen can also be extracted via cracking ammonia (ammonia being a corrosive and toxic substance), however as this ammonia needs to be made (mostly via the energy intensive Haber-Bosch process from natural gas) from a manufactured Hydrogen feedstock, and then the Ammonia cracked via another energy intensive process to produce less of the hydrogen than was manufactured to start with as the feedstock; then to me, this is an all-new level of stupid that I am not going to discuss further.

Most of the hydrogen gas that once did exist on earth has long since drifted into space, or is believed to be trapped within geological formations (often referred to as “white hydrogen”).

Perhaps this “white hydrogen” has a use, as do most magical “white” unicorns??!! My suggestion here is to first validate the existence of these “white” hydrogen reserves, and their viability of extraction and purification before racing ahead with developing technology that utilise Hydrogen that we currently don’t have, and may never see in mainstream use.

Say, as unlikely as it is, that reserves of “white hydrogen” are found (USGS study suggests “a best guess” of about 5 to 6 trillion tonnes in subsurface geological formations – .Reference: Geologic Hydrogen | U.S. Geological Survey) that can be exploited (and that is many “ifs”) as a fuel; then that’s potentially trillions of tonnes of hydrogen and oxygen converted into trillions of tonnes water vapour (that currently doesn’t exist on earth’s surface or atmosphere) that could end up into the atmosphere, potentially amplifying climate change (Steamy Relationships: How Atmospheric Water Vapor Amplifies Earth's Greenhouse Effect – NASA Science).

Are we sure here that we aren’t potentially trading one problem for another? Human history is littered with “magic chemicals” and substances that were going to revolutionise the world as we knew it, but in fact didn’t do so in the way that we were intending (DDT, CFCs, Asbestos, PCGs, etc. etc.). Forewarned is forearmed.

Perhaps one could use this excess water to irrigate those tulips on Mars??!!

Or perhaps white unicorns can be used to mine unobtanium as a fuel source? In any case, the same USGS study as noted above goes on to state “Most of this hydrogen is likely to be “in accumulations that are too deep, too far offshore, or too small to be economically recovered“”.

A view reiterated by Laurent Truche, a professor of geochemistry at Grenoble Alpes University in France who researches natural hydrogen: “There is also still insufficient evidence to prove white hydrogen is even a renewable resource for use at scale” (Reference July 2025 BBC article by Chloe Farand: The precious ‘white gold' fuel buried in the Earth).

Even if (and that’s a big “if”) White Hydrogen can be exploited, and we can engineer out the hazards and challengers, then we still have the laws of physics and thermodynamics against us.

Hydrogen gas is a low energy density gas at atmospheric conditions. To make hydrogen useful as a fuel, it must be either compressed many times over, or (as in the case of space launches) liquefied cryogenically at below -250°C. Even if an abundance of “white” hydrogen is found, this hurdle will remain, as will the following points.
Cryogenic liquification and compression are energy intensive processes, and will remain so.
Use of Cryogenic liquified Hydrogen as a rocket fuel also requires liquified Oxygen as a bipropellant; liquification of Oxygen is itself another energy intensive cryogenic process.
Transportation of Hydrogen in any meaningful mass requires either a 200 barg+ gas storage pressure vessel, where the mass of the pressure vessel is many times the mass of the Hydrogen it contains; or a Helium cooled cryogenic transport vessel – another process that is energy intensive.

Whilst (as stated by NASA –Ultra-Cold Storage – Liquid Hydrogen may be Fuel of the Future – NASA) hydrogen might well be the “fuel of the future” for space flight; here on earth it is unlikely to be useful beyond a feedstock.

Hydrogen is simply too energy intensive to produce, too energy intensive to concentrate and store, and comes with a whole raft of technical, safety and engineering challenges that we would need to solve.

Actually, we don’t “need” to solve these “Hydrogen challenges” given ALARP is clear (The hierarchy of control measures); if you don’t “have” to have the hazard, then don’t! Removing the hazard is preferable to mitigating it. If it is a fuel you want, then there are many (current) alternatives to Hydrogen as a fuel.

If addressing climate change is what drives you, then accelerating phasing out coal as a fuel and slowing human population growth and deforestation would make more of a positive impact to climate change, than would developing Hydrogen as a fuel.

As an engineer, I marvel at the engineering brilliance of the current crop of hydrogen fuelled cars. They are amazing examples of engineering innovation and brilliance – as so often follies are. What they aren’t likely to be, is a window into the future.

There seems little point in spending twice (or more) the amount of energy to manufacture a fuel, than one could ever get back in useful energy from this same fuel. It defies logic to utilise vast amounts of electricity (that could be used elsewhere) to either steam reform methane, or electrolyse water into hydrogen, to then compress it many hundreds of times (or to cryogenically liquify it), to then utilise this same hydrogen to generate electricity in a place remote to its initial manufacture.

Even when Hydrogen fuel cells move beyond their current 60% efficiency, and we find another material to Platinum for use within them (unicorn produced unobtanium perhaps?); it is beyond the currently known Physics and Chemistry of today for it to be possible to return even half of the energy that we need to put into making Hydrogen and getting it to the point of use in a form where it is useful as a fuel.

Breaking this down to the basics; there isn’t an abundant source of either Hydrogen in its gaseous form, nor is there an abundance of Platinum for the Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) within a Hydrogen fuel cell.

Currently, the most common path of producing Hydrogen gas is via high-pressure steam (15+ barg) reforming natural Gas (Steam-Methane Reforming (SMR)), and the second stage water-gas shift reaction with the Carbon Monoxide off-gas.

This process involves reacting scrubbed natural gas (methane rich (CH₄)) with high temperature steam in the presence of a nickel catalyst. It is worth considering that it is SMR, and not electrolysis of water that is industries “process of choice” for generating Hydrogen.

In it’s simplified form (and taking aside the pre and inter gas processing steps), we have two basic reactions:

Reforming Reaction: CH₄ + H₂0 → CO + 3H₂.
Water-Gas Shift Reaction: CO + H₂O → CO₂ + H₂.

In the case of using this Hydrogen as a feedstock, and with an abundance of methane, there is a logical reason to undertake such unit operations here. This “hydrogen as a fuel” argument seems even more curious when one considers that LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas – mostly Propane and Butane) cars have been around since the early 1900s.

I recall they gained some popularity in Australia around the 1990s under the brand “Autogas”[reference: Autogas – Wikipedia]. We are currently also seeing great strides in EV technology. The challenge to “hydrogen as a fuel” also comes from using the Methane directly as a fuel in either combustion engines (as we have and do now with LPG), or in power turbines to generate electricity for use in charging EV batteries.

To take the convoluted path of “Methane to Hydrogen” to achieve the same means (electricity) seems wasteful and unnecessary, especially when considering all the energy intensive processes along the way.

Call this hydrogen any colour of the rainbow you like, it still makes no logical sense to use this hydrogen as anything other than a feedstock (as we currently mostly do). As a fuel, or energy vector it seems illogical; unless someone is paying the manufacturer vast sums of taxpayer funded subsidies or grants to do so, and the interest is solely an economic driver (be it an unsustainable one).

We can’t “science our way around” physics and thermodynamics:

Looking at my now quite tattered 1980s copy Rogers and Mayhew (and assuming that I am reading it correctly (?!?!?!)), then the specific enthalpy of Steam at or above 15barg, from that of water at its boiling point (100°C) means that circa 3000 kJ/kg is needed for 15 barg saturated steam.
With a source of Methane (CH₄) at the start, rather than burn this Methane to generate 15+ barg steam, to then use this same steam in an endothermic process to produce Hydrogen from more Methane; then we can burn this methane in a power turbine and directly generate electricity from it via CH₄ + O₂ → CO₂ + 2H₂O.
Transporting “energy” in the form of electrons, as we currently do with electricity is vastly more efficient to doing similar with an associated proton as in the form of Hydrogen!
The Green lobby may decry burning methane to produce electricity and carbon dioxide; however, Steam-Methane Reforming (SMR) does so as well (!?!?!), given it is an energy intensive process with numerous process steps that in themselves require process equipment and energy to run (as well as Nickel as a catalyst). In any case, we ARE STILL extracting and burning Methane, and can’t avoid generating more Carbon Monoxide and Carbon dioxide.

It is curious that the US department of Energy (DOE) state (reference – Hydrogen Production: Natural Gas Reforming | Department of Energy) the following:

“Reforming low-cost natural gas can provide hydrogen today for fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) as well as other applications. Over the long term, DOE expects that hydrogen production from natural gas will be augmented with production from renewable, nuclear, coal (with carbon capture and storage), and other low-carbon, domestic energy resources.

Petroleum use and emissions are lower than for gasoline-powered internal combustion engine vehicles. The only product from an FCEV tailpipe is water vapor but even with the upstream process of producing hydrogen from natural gas as well as delivering and storing it for use in FCEVs, the total greenhouse gas emissions are cut in half and petroleum is reduced over 90% compared to today's gasoline vehicles.”

Most of what is said in the above statement by the DOE isn’t untrue, however I find it curious that the DOE states their expectation of the continuation of natural gas production and use as well as coal production and use!

Even with unproven and untested at scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology “a possibility”, I would deviate 180° from the DOE in including coal fired power generation as part of the solution to climate change when it is clearly very much a big part of the cause!

In my view, rather than wasting vast sums of money perusing the dead end that is “Hydrogen as a fuel”, we need to be hastening phasing out coal, not increasing its use as highlighted in the 2025 Global Energy Review (Reference: Coal – Global Energy Review 2025 – Analysis – IEA)) and the opening statement.

“Global coal demand grew by 1.2% in 2024 in energy terms, rising by around 67 million tonnes of coal equivalent (Mtce) (or in physical terms by 1.4% or 123 million tonnes). The growth rate has been declining since the strong rebound in 2021 following the end of Covid-19 lockdowns in many countries.

The electricity sector continues to drive coal demand, accounting for two-thirds of global consumption.”

I would wonder if the DOE has more of an interest in maintaining a future for the oil and gas (and coal) industry under the ruse of promoting a “clean energy solution”, than it does in addressing climate change?

A cynic might suggest that this illogical promotion of “hydrogen as a fuel” is simply a Trojan Horse given this “suggestion” from the DOE (“Reforming low-cost natural gas can provide hydrogen”) still requires the extraction and processing of Oil and Gas, and the use of vast sums of energy that is currently provided with the USA by Coal, Oil and Gas.

The same DOE provides us the following energy source breakdown (FOTW #1365, October 21, 2024: U.S. Net Generation of Electricity Relied on Record Use of Renewables while Coal Use Dropped to a Record Low in 2023 | Department of Energy).

Tulips On Mars: Hydrogen Hype Vs Engineering Reality

Does it not make more sense to simply use the Methane to generate electricity directly via a power turbine (or for optimised “Autogas”), rather than to go down the route of using part of this same methane (the other part goes to fuel the boiler that generates the steam) to generate Hydrogen that then goes to generate electricity via additional energy burden?

As I once read from an Electrical Engineer (Anon), “The Hydrogen atom is the simplest atom we know of; composed of a single proton in the nucleus and a single electron. It’s an awful lot simpler, and efficient to simply utilise just the electron in the form of electricity as we do today, and have done for a long time”.

If any Engineers or scientists wish to present a Material and Energy balance that shows Hydrogen to be a useful medium as a fuel, then I’d very much like to be proven wrong. There is an awful lot to like about Hydrogen as a fuel, but for the “snippets” noted at the beginning of this article.

Shame that facts, evidence, and data get in the way of a good idea and turn it into folly – as they so often do!

This Hydrogen debate does highlight the problem that there is simply no money to be made from consuming less, polluting less, deforesting less – all things that would be better for our planet than driving a hydrogen fuelled car “just because you can”.