Zero emission by 2035 in Canada

[blue_or_die]

Hydrogen is amazing, but like propane and LNG it is pretty volatile as a vehicle fuel.  Transport and storage worry me.

And I think there is a societal concern since the Hindenberg...

What about storage and transport is concerning? That it's compressed and could explode?

Nothing is perfectly safe of course, but note that there are very well developed standards and technologies for storing and moving hydrogen, largely given the fact that it's existed as an industry for over a century to support ammonia for fertilizer, chemical production, oil upgrading, etc. It's a matter of translating these fundamentals for the transportation industry, where the economics are trickier, especially given zero-emission vehicles (especially fuel cell-propelled) are super fledgling.

I'd be more concerned about thermal runaway in lithium ion batteries.

[markf]

Oh oh.

" The last 30 days marked a particularly rough period for hydrogen advocates, with a striking series of cancellations and project halts around the globe. The cumulative scale of these decisions underscores how challenging and economically vulnerable the hydrogen-for-energy sector has become.

Over the span of approximately four weeks, projects valued at tens of billions in multiple countries have collapsed or been shelved indefinitely, erasing significant planned hydrogen production capacity. These reversals are not merely isolated incidents. They represent a broader recognition by industry leaders and governments that hydrogen, particularly for transportation and energy export, is confronting fundamental economic and technical barriers that optimism alone cannot overcome."

Details here:  https://cleantechnica.com/2025/07/07/hydrogens-brutal-month-billions-lost-as-mega-projects-collapse/

[blue_or_die]

Oh oh.

" The last 30 days marked a particularly rough period for hydrogen advocates, with a striking series of cancellations and project halts around the globe. The cumulative scale of these decisions underscores how challenging and economically vulnerable the hydrogen-for-energy sector has become.

Over the span of approximately four weeks, projects valued at tens of billions in multiple countries have collapsed or been shelved indefinitely, erasing significant planned hydrogen production capacity. These reversals are not merely isolated incidents. They represent a broader recognition by industry leaders and governments that hydrogen, particularly for transportation and energy export, is confronting fundamental economic and technical barriers that optimism alone cannot overcome."

Details here:  https://cleantechnica.com/2025/07/07/hydrogens-brutal-month-billions-lost-as-mega-projects-collapse/

Just as an FYI, cleantechnica is essentially a tabloid written by bloggers with an agenda and nothing else. I used to read it circa 2017-2019 and it's gone to complete crap ever since. I clicked the link and it's yet another whine piece by my good buddy Mike Barnard. It's the National Enquirer of this topic.

[J5V]

Hydrogen is only the most plentiful element in the universe. lol

[markf]

Just as an FYI, cleantechnica is essentially a tabloid written by bloggers with an agenda and nothing else. I used to read it circa 2017-2019 and it's gone to complete crap ever since. I clicked the link and it's yet another whine piece by my good buddy Mike Barnard. It's the National Enquirer of this topic.

You may not think much of him, but

Are any of his facts wrong?

Cause it outlines  a lot of cancellations of investment.

Also..... I just remembered reading "the hype about hydrogen" by Joe Romm. ( quite a while ago, so, I forgot)

He updated it:  " In 2003, energy expert Joesph J. Romm wrote The Hype About Hydrogen to explain why hydrogen wasn't the panacea we were promised—and may never be. In this newly revised and updated edition, Romm builds an even stronger case, explaining the barriers hydrogen faces, from its inefficiency as an energy carrier to the "chicken-and-egg" problem in infrastructure development and the risk of increased global warming from hydrogen leaks and emissions. In a series of significant updates, Romm breaks down the latest methods of production, including "green" hydrogen, hydrogen made with nuclear power, geologic hydrogen, and "blue" hydrogen from natural gas with carbon capture and storage (CCS), laying out the challenges with each. He then explores the limitations of suggested applications of hydrogen, including e-fuels made with direct air capture of CO2, hydrogen cars, and heating in buildings and industry. "

If you try to tell me that Joe Romm is a hack, I'll stop taking you seriously lol.

[blue_or_die]

You may not think much of him, but

Are any of his facts wrong?

Cause it outlines  a lot of cancellations of investment.

Also..... I just remembered reading "the hype about hydrogen" by Joe Romm. ( quite a while ago, so, I forgot)

He updated it:  " In 2003, energy expert Joesph J. Romm wrote The Hype About Hydrogen to explain why hydrogen wasn't the panacea we were promised—and may never be. In this newly revised and updated edition, Romm builds an even stronger case, explaining the barriers hydrogen faces, from its inefficiency as an energy carrier to the "chicken-and-egg" problem in infrastructure development and the risk of increased global warming from hydrogen leaks and emissions. In a series of significant updates, Romm breaks down the latest methods of production, including "green" hydrogen, hydrogen made with nuclear power, geologic hydrogen, and "blue" hydrogen from natural gas with carbon capture and storage (CCS), laying out the challenges with each. He then explores the limitations of suggested applications of hydrogen, including e-fuels made with direct air capture of CO2, hydrogen cars, and heating in buildings and industry. "

If you try to tell me that Joe Romm is a hack, I'll stop taking you seriously lol.

I just mean you have to be careful about your sources and how you deal with the information overload that is the world wide web. This goes for all topics but science more than all due to it being complex and gatekept, requiring "translation" into bite-sized content in layman's terms. There is fair criticism and plenty of verifiable facts out there everywhere including in a cleantechnica blog, but "facts" can be collected in a selective fashion and used in a way to deliver a pre-determined message. That also doesn't make it wrong, but if you (not "you" as a person, but in general) only read content in a specific place and written by specific people and interact with other members of that audience who also do the same thing, this is how an echo chamber happens and you miss the bigger picture. To put it another way, I could scan the web and find equally compelling content to rebuke all this - mostly because there's endless info online.

Someone legitimate like Joe Romm will also be armed with plenty of legitimate facts but like all humans, he has his biases, just like there are plenty of scientists just as decorated on the other side of it belting their story from the rooftop. When you're being objective no one is necessarily 'wrong', but there's a whole other side to it that's just as legit that one would be missing if they stuck to the same source.

This is actually part of larger feelings I have towards the internet and how we get information and the news nowadays.

Anyway, I didn't mean my comments personally against you. I also recognize that it's challenging and frustrating for people with great intentions but not versed in a topic to try and learn about it when you have endless amounts of facts out there that are presented in translation. While this is a topic I'm very close to, I come up against the exact same issues for things I'd like to learn about that are out of my wheelhouse too and it's very frustrating figuring out "what's right"

[markf]

Apropos zero emission, climate change:

British Columbia:

"Over the past two fire seasons the province says wildfires have burned more forest area in the region than in the previous 60 years combined, for a total of 10 per cent of the region's land area"


https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/a-third-of-prince-george-fire-centre-might-get-scorched-1.7583455