Is hydrogen better for the environment than gas?

Unlike natural gas, burning hydrogen doesn’t release carbon dioxide - it only releases water. This means that it has the potential to be a zero-carbon fuel; however, the process to create hydrogen can still be carbon-intensive. 

Ironically, most hydrogen is currently made from natural gas through a process called ‘steam reforming’. This process uses a lot of energy, and it actually takes more natural gas to produce the hydrogen using this process than would be required if we just kept using natural gas. 

To counter this, the gas industry is advocating for using carbon capture and storage alongside the steam reforming process - this would mean that natural gas is converted to hydrogen, then the carbon dioxide is captured and stored underground, rather than being released into the atmosphere.

Another method of producing hydrogen is via electrolysis, which uses electricity to create hydrogen from water. This method doesn’t produce CO2, but it’s currently very expensive to run on a large scale. 

Electricity already costs over four times the price of gas per kwh, and with the added conversion losses from making the hydrogen, the hydrogen created could be six to eight times as expensive as natural gas - so not a great option for cutting our energy costs.