Move over carbon, we may need a global hydrogen budget too

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2025-12-18 03:00

Australia; International; NSW; VIC; ACT

CC-0. Story by Dr Joe Milton, Australian Science Media Centre

Hygrogen is often touted as a 'greener' replacement for fossil fuels, and while it's true that it isn't a direct greenhouse gas, it does warm the climate indirectly by boosting the impact of other powerful greenhouse gases, such as methane. International and Australian experts say these interactions with other gases mean hydrogen could potentially cause warming of around 11°C over 100 years, so switching from fossil fuels to hydrogen may be risky. They looked at hydrogen sources and sinks between 1990 and 2020, and developed a hydrogen budget for 2010 - 2020. They found sources of hydrogen have risen since 1990 due to atmospheric processes, generation by legume plants (think beans and lentils), and leaks from hydrogen production, but so have sinks. During the period, East Asia and North America contributed the most hydrogen emissions from fossil fuels, while the largest sources and sinks were found in Africa and South America. The authors estimate that hydrogen warmed the planet by around 0.02°C between 2010 and 2020. How much warming hydrogen causes in the future depends on how we use it, how much leaks, and how much methane we generate, they conclude.

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Journal/
conference: Nature

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: CSIRO, Western Sydney University, University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Stanford University, USA

Funder: R.B.J. acknowledges support from the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, GCP Global Methane Office of Stanford, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, grant GBMF11519. Z.O. acknowledges support from the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, and the College of Forestry, Wildlife and Environment at Auburn University, and the Gulf Research Program of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (SCON-10001693). E.K. was supported by the ERTDF (JPMEERF24S12206) of the ERCA by the Ministry of the Environment of Japan. G.P. was supported by NOAA cooperative agreements NA17OAR4320101 and NA22OAR4320151. G.P.P. was supported by the Research Council of Norway project TRIFECTA (334811). A.T.A. was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC NE/X010236/1). M.W.J. was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC, NE/V01417X/1). F.G. was supported by DOE DE-SC0020480 and thanks J. Roscioli, E. Lunny and J. Shorter for guiding the experimental setup. C.W. was supported by the US Department of Energy (DOE) National Energy Technology Laboratory under grant no. DE-FE0032285. T.G. and D.H. were supported by the Horizon Europe research and innovation programme of the European Union under grant agreement no. 101137582 (HYway). C.M. was supported by the LEMONTREE (Land Ecosystem Models Based on New Theory, Observations and Experiments) project, supported by Schmidt Sciences. N.C. and P.K.P. are funded by the ERTDF (JPMEERF24S12205) of the ERCA by the Ministry of the Environment of Japan. P. Smith acknowledges funding from UK NERC grant no. NE/X013464/1. C.D.J. was supported by the Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme funded by DSIT.

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