Green Hydrogen For Energy Was A Story We Told Ourselves

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Bruno Latour as soon as mentioned know-how doesn’t succeed as a result of it really works. It succeeds as a result of sufficient individuals act prefer it does. For almost a decade, that’s precisely what occurred with inexperienced hydrogen as an vitality service. The story was so compelling, the coalition so huge, the urgency so actual, that for a time, it barely mattered that the physics didn’t cooperate. Now, in 2025, the act is ending. Main vitality companies are quietly strolling away. Authorities methods are being rewritten. Even the loudest champions of hydrogen-fueled futures have stopped performing certainty. And Latour would acknowledge each step of this collapse.

Actor-Community Concept, Latour’s signature contribution to science and know-how research, doesn’t look for easy causal chains. It doesn’t ask whether or not a know-how is nice or unhealthy, environment friendly or wasteful. As a substitute, it traces how coalitions of individuals, instruments, insurance policies, expectations, and diagrams—actors, each human and non-human—come collectively to make one thing appear actual, viable, and inevitable. When that community holds, the item turns into “blackboxed.” Its underlying complexity is hidden. Everybody simply makes use of it, funds it, believes in it. When the community fails, the field opens. The myths spill out.

One well-known instance is the case of the pasteurization of milk in France, which Latour analyzed in his guide The Pasteurization of France. He confirmed how Louis Pasteur’s scientific work succeeded not merely due to laboratory discoveries, however as a result of it aligned with the objectives of public well being officers, navy hygienists, farmers, politicians, and media retailers. Pasteur grew to become a central actor in a broad community that collectively reworked microbial concept into nationwide infrastructure. The micro organism weren’t defeated by science alone, they had been defeated by a community that enrolled the whole lot from hospitals to dairies right into a shared protocol of cleanliness and management.

One other instance, extensively analyzed by means of an ANT lens by others, is the adoption of digital medical data (EMRs) in healthcare techniques, one thing I used to be concerned in professionally for a decade. In nations the place EMRs did not take maintain, it wasn’t resulting from poor software program design alone, it was resulting from a failure to align physicians, hospitals, insurers, IT departments, and regulatory frameworks right into a coherent community. The know-how, in impact, had no actors keen to carry out it into widespread use. In distinction, in locations the place EMRs succeeded (like Estonia or components of Scandinavia), the community included robust political will, affected person buy-in, standardized interfaces, and authorized frameworks that made digital data the compulsory passage level for healthcare interactions.

Inexperienced hydrogen’s rise between 2015 and 2022 was a textbook case of such community formation. It started with local weather targets that demanded one thing—something—that would decarbonize hard-to-electrify sectors. Industrial warmth, long-haul transport, seasonal storage, aviation. Every drawback grew to become an actor in want of an answer. Hydrogen, lengthy the bridesmaid of vitality debates after the early 2000s hype cycle, match the invoice. Governments started publishing hydrogen strategies with price targets and gigawatt desires. Electrolyzer companies acquired infusions of capital. Startups promised hydrogen-powered vehicles, ships, planes, even complete economies. Reports from respected agencies forecast dramatic price declines. Roadmaps used 2030 as a form of magical threshold, simply far sufficient away to soak up the uncertainties. The European Fee, the Japanese governmentthe Australians and Koreans, in addition to Californians, all signed on.

On the identical time, oil majors noticed in hydrogen a uncommon alternative to remain related. Shell, BP, TotalEnergies, and others joined industry alliances and launched pilot initiatives. They noticed an opportunity to repurpose fuel infrastructure, rebrand fossil belongings, and safe public subsidies within the identify of local weather progress. The Hydrogen Council, launched at Davos in 2017, grew to become the face of this alignment. A discussion board the place oil CEOs, automakers, and authorities ministers might all agree that hydrogen was the trail ahead. That unanimity wasn’t proof of inevitability. It was proof of enrollment.

In the meantime, a number of non-human actors strengthened the narrative. Electrolyzer prototypes at commerce exhibits. Shiny infographics exhibiting hydrogen pipelines spanning continents. Funding mechanisms with lofty acronyms. Price curves pointing downward with the arrogance of gravity. Coverage paperwork functioned like scripts in a play. Should you had been a policymaker, you needed to say the traces. Should you had been an organization, you needed to audition for funding. Should you had been a journalist, you needed to report the growth. By 2020, inexperienced hydrogen was not only a chance. It had grow to be an expectation. A know-how made actual by means of repetition.

After which, the disarticulation started. Not suddenly, and never dramatically. That’s not how these networks unravel. As a substitute, they fray. BP quietly dissolved its hydrogen mobility unit. No press launch, only a refined change in path. Airbus delayed its hydrogen aircraft programprobably completely. The maths didn’t work. The infrastructure didn’t exist. British Columbia, which had as soon as flirted with seven main inexperienced hydrogen vitality initiatives, walked away from all of them. In Australia, the federal government shifted from desires of exporting inexperienced hydrogen to Japan and Korea to a more sober focus on domestic industrial use—metal, ammonia, chemical compounds. In Norway, the showcase hydrogen ferry ended up emitting extra CO₂ than the diesel vessel it was meant to interchange. The maritime pivot stayed for now, however the broader transportation ambitions faded.

Then got here the sign strikes in Europe and america. In France and Germany, top-level financial advisory our bodies issued a joint suggestion: stop funding hydrogen in road transport. Deal with battery-electric vehicles as an alternative. The recommendation wasn’t controversial in financial circles. It simply punctured the general public narrative. In america, the Division of Vitality beneath the Trump administration started contemplating cuts to four of the seven federally supported hydrogen hubstogether with the one in California, which had been targeted on hydrogen for transportation. Whether or not motivated by ideology or financial realism, the impact was the identical: one other leg of the hydrogen-for-energy stool kicked out.

Latour wouldn’t be stunned. These weren’t technical failures, strictly talking. Electrolyzers nonetheless electrolyze. Pipelines nonetheless transport. Gasoline cells nonetheless perform. What modified was the willingness of actors to maintain performing the alignment. When the monetary returns didn’t arrive, when the infrastructure prices mounted, when different applied sciences outpaced hydrogen on key metrics, the motivation to remain in character disappeared. The efficiency unraveled.

And with it, the black field opened. Inside was a know-how that made sense for some issues—fertilizer manufacturing, chemical feedstocks, methanol synthesis—however not for lots of the issues it had been promised to revolutionize. The round-trip effectivity remained poor. The fee per kilogram remained stubbornly excessive. The competitors, significantly from electrification, saved advancing. Each authorities that pulled again, each firm that shifted focus, each analyst who up to date projections was a part of the identical Latourian course of. They stopped reinforcing the phantasm. They exited the community.

What stays is a smaller, extra steady model of the hydrogen story. Inexperienced hydrogen continues to be helpful, however it’s not common. It isn’t the Swiss Military knife of decarbonization. It’s a area of interest instrument, acceptable for particular purposes the place no higher different exists. Industrial use, not vitality fantasy. The actor-network will persist in that narrower type. Fewer gamers, fewer speeches, fewer renderings of hydrogen planes and vehicles. Extra spreadsheets. Extra quiet deployments. Much less theater.

There’s a lesson right here, and it’s not that hydrogen is unhealthy or that its supporters had been improper. It’s that techno-economic narratives will not be goal truths ready to be found. They’re constructed, maintained, and sometimes dismantled by networks of aligned actors. When everybody agrees, it’s actually because disagreement has been designed out. And when the story collapses, it does so not with a bang however with a quiet shifting of toes, a number of lacking names on the convention agenda, a line merchandise dropped from the price range.

Inexperienced hydrogen for vitality was a compelling narrative. It enrolled assets, targeted consideration, and gave policymakers a way of path. But it surely wasn’t grounded in aggressive fundamentals. It was carried out into existence, and it’s now being carried out again out. Not as a result of it by no means had worth, however as a result of the worth was all the time contingent on everybody believing directly.

For half a decade I’ve been one of many individuals on the improper facet of the narrative, together with individuals like BNEF founder Michael Liebreich, chemical engineer Paul Martin, street decarbonization knowledgeable David Cebon and plenty of others that I do know. We’ve been attempting to inform individuals what was apparent to us as a result of we regarded on the actuality, not simply the story. However Latourian networks are self-healing. Till they aren’t.

The community is now not holding. The actors are stepping away. And as Latour would remind us, that’s whenever you see what was maintaining the entire thing alive.