When enviro-terroris ts talk about the wonderful world of Hydrogen, they should really know the various processes to make Hydrogen and how the different paths are described in colors.

GREY hydrogen is all smoke-and-mirro rs regarding CO2 emissions. Currently, this route produces 95% of Hydrogen on the market. Grey hydrogen is produced from natural gas, using steam reformation but without capturing the CO2 made in the process. This has been practiced in oil refiners for years. Steam reformation:

CH4 + H2O (steam) —> CO2 + 3H2

This process is net endothermic (requires heat input to boil water to produce the steam).

The blunt truth is that the CO2 is just emitted but the oil companies are doing this for transferable tax credits and good PR. They claim that they need to keep working on the carbon capture magic while your tax dollars build out the distribution infrastructure for Hydrogen.

ELECTROLYSIS of water, splitting it into Hydrogen and Oxygen with power supplied from such sources as hydropower or nuclear. It is very energy intensive and costly. This route comprises almost all of the remaining 5%.

GREEN Hydrogen provides less than 1% of Hydrogen on the market. It also uses electrolysis but the power comes from wind or solar.

BLUE Hydrogen is the same as GREY Hydrogen but with the aforementioned carbon capture magic. "Sequestration” by injection into the Earth, oceans, etc.

BLACK Hydrogen comes from gasification of bituminous coals. Air at high temperature and reduced conditions (oxygen deficient) is blown through a pulverized coal bed. There is only partial combustion of the coal to produce carbon monoxide then you proceed to steam reformation of CO. Again, this is endothermic to provide steam and preheat the air:

CO + H2O —> CO2 + H2

Ergo, BLACK Hydrogen is essentially the same as GREY Hydrogen but it uses bituminous coal and is more endothermic (greater heat input required).

BROWN Hydrogen is essentially the same as BLACK Hydrogen but uses lignite coal as a feedstock. Lignite (also called Brown Coal) comes from peat bogs or wetlands which were often covered over by pyroclastic ash. The Brown Hydrogen process is a little better than the BLACK process because lignite has some Oxygen in its composition.

TURQUOISE hydrogen uses a process called methane pyrolysis, which directly splits methane – the main component in natural gas – into hydrogen and solid carbon. Also called ‘carbon black’, this byproduct has a variety of industrial applications, including in the production of car tires, coatings, plastics and batteries.

It gets worse from there.