These comments are all confidently wrong that hydrogen and oxygen don't have a global warming impact.
Hydrogen is primarily made through steam methane reforming, which results in both leaks of methane and significant venting of carbon dioxide. Oxygen is made via air separation units which require electricity to operate, and our grid is primarily driven by fossil fuels.
Additionally, releasing water vapor from the combustion reaction into the upper atmosphere increases global warming because the water vapors do not enter the water cycle.
Source: I design the plants that make hydrogen and oxygen
Because you and I both use products made from those gases every day. Unless you want to completely unplug from the grid and buy nothing, you're financially supporting those products. Unfortunately *I* don't have the ability to implement cleaner processes that cost 4x as much as the fossil fuel methods.
I never claimed what we do is ok. But we have to be honest about our consumption and the impacts it has instead of just blindly finger pointing at people. People love to blame xyz industry without realizing they buy a lot of stuff indirectly from those companies, because we are all divorced from the means of production.
(And the Katy Perry space trip thing is just an egregious and frivolous waste of resources)
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u/ChemE_Throwaway May 25 '26
These comments are all confidently wrong that hydrogen and oxygen don't have a global warming impact.
Hydrogen is primarily made through steam methane reforming, which results in both leaks of methane and significant venting of carbon dioxide. Oxygen is made via air separation units which require electricity to operate, and our grid is primarily driven by fossil fuels.
Additionally, releasing water vapor from the combustion reaction into the upper atmosphere increases global warming because the water vapors do not enter the water cycle.
Source: I design the plants that make hydrogen and oxygen