Miracle Fuel Hydrogen Can Actually Make Climate Change Worse

A world desperate for a climate-friendly fuel is pinning its hopes on hydrogen, seeing it as a way to power factories, buildings, ships and planes without pumping carbon dioxide into the sky.

But now scientists are warning that hydrogen leaked into the atmosphere can contribute to climate change much like carbon. Depending on how it’s made, distributed and used, it could even make warming worse over the next few decades, even if carbon poses the bigger long-term threat. Any future hydrogen-based economy, they say, must be designed from the start to keep leaks of the gas to a minimum, ...