Oil companies sold the public on a fake climate solution -- and swindled taxpayers out of billions

[OKIsItJustMe]

10. As with many things, it's not quite that simple

Pedants love to point out that hydrogen is commonly produced by “reforming” methane. The picture is of a plant spewing out exhaust, while producing a token amount of hydrogen.

However, hydrogen is produced, by combining CH₄ + H₂O producing H₂ + CO₂ (which are mingled together.) To make a salable product, the H₂ must be “purified” (you don’t want to run a mixture of H₂ + CO₂ in a fuel cell.) Purifying the H₂ means separating the gases by one means or another.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-production-natural-gas-reforming

At this point, it’s simply a matter of not releasing the CO₂. Half a century ago, the plants that generated hydrogen for NASA sold the CO₂ for use in carbonated beverages. Today, if we were smart, we would pump it into appropriate underground formations.

https://www.carbfix.com/how-it-works

(Naturally, the oil & gas people prefer to pump it into mostly played out “fields” to produce more oil & gas.)