The Hype About Hydrogen, Revised Edition: False Promises and Real Solutions in the Race to Save the Climate

by Joseph J. Romm

For decades, we’ve been promised that a hydrogen economy is just around the a high-tech Eden in which our cars, homes, and industries would be powered not by fossil fuels but by hydrogen from pollution-free sources. After billions in investment, hydrogen has failed to live up to these overblown promises. Yet it is as hyped as ever, a target of media enthusiasm and hefty investment from government and industry. Is it time to accept that the "fuel of the future" may never arrive? 



In 2003, energy expert Joesph J. Romm wrote The Hype About Hydrogen to explain why hydrogen wasn’t the panacea we were promised—and may never be. In this newly revised and updated edition, Romm builds an even stronger case, explaining the barriers hydrogen faces, from its inefficiency as an energy carrier to the “chicken-and-egg” problem in infrastructure development and the risk of increased global warming from hydrogen leaks and emissions. In a series of significant updates, Romm breaks down the latest methods of production, including "green" hydrogen, hydrogen made with nuclear power, geologic hydrogen, and “blue” hydrogen from natural gas with carbon capture and storage (CCS), laying out the challenges with each. He then explores the limitations of suggested applications of hydrogen, including e-fuels made with direct air capture of CO2, hydrogen cars, and heating in buildings and industry. 



The Hype About Hydrogen is essential reading for anyone who hopes that hydrogen will be a major solution to the climate crisis. The good news? We don’t need it to be. With advancements in renewables and battery technology, electrification offers us a path forward that is cleaner, safer—and can be implemented today. 

240 pages, Paperback

Published April 22, 2025

About the author

Dr. Joseph Romm is the editor of Climate Progress and a Senior Fellow at the American Progress. In 2009, Time magazine named him one of the “Heroes of the Environment″ and “The Web’s most influential climate-change blogger.”

Romm was Acting Assistant Secretary of Energy for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy during the Clinton Administration where he directed $1 billion in research, development, demonstration, and deployment of clean energy and carbon-mitigating technology. He holds a Ph.D. in physics from MIT. In 2008, Romm was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for “distinguished service toward a sustainable energy future and for persuasive discourse on why citizens, corporations, and governments should adopt sustainable technologies.”

In 2007, TIME named Climate Progress one of the “Top 15 Green Websites,” writing that “Romm occupies the intersection of climate science, economics and policy…. On his blog and in his most recent book, Hell and High Water, you can find some of the most cogent, memorable, and deployable arguments for immediate and overwhelming action to confront global warming.” In 2009, Rolling Stone named Romm #88 on its list of The 100 “people who are reinventing America” calling him “America’s fiercest climate-change activist-blogger.”

In March 2009, The New York Times‘ Tom Friedman wrote that Romm is “a physicist and climate expert who writes the indispensable blog climateprogress.org.” In April, U.S. News & World Report named Romm one of the 8 “most influential energy and environmental policymakers in the Obama era,” writing, “In terms of his cachet in the blogosphere, Joe Romm is something like the climate change equivalent of economist (and New York Times columnist) Paul Krugman.”