thanks for writing about the enormous hype bubble being built around hydrogen production in Canada. It is a message that needs to get to our elected officials loud and clear. I have a couple of comments I want to pass on.

In The “Too Much Hydrogen” section of the article you write that Everwind has signed an offtake agreement with Germany. In fact it was a non-binding MOU that doesn’t require the parties to actually deliver anything. And that will have little to zero effect on final investment decisions. That little bit of Everwind spin slipped by your filters.

Another bit of magical thinking that got through is the assertion by Jens Honnen that hydrogen can be delivered starting the mid 2020’s. We are just about to 2025 and there isn’t a single project making green electricity yet. And when you add the 4+ years it takes to construct a hydrogen plant not to mention the ammonia conversion and shipping bit it looks like closer to 2030 if ever.

While I truly appreciate the article you wrote I miss the days when journalistic critical thinking would evaluate and analyze the information in the sources and interpret it effectively.

And now its time for inflated counter-hype to meet reality. The opening sentence for example.

The major Atlantic project (in Newfoundland) only ‘stalled’ in relation to its own pretend ‘timeline’. And then there is the termination of Fortescue’s “highly touted project” in BC. The practitioner of uber hype carpet bombed the world with “projects”- expecting host governments post extra rich subsidies. Fortescue getting more realistic was predictable and predicted.

The Globe piece linked to is facile. Among other things, it uncritically repeats the fluffed up claims of German consultant Jens Honnen. Hustle is a better label for his mandate from the German government, and his figure of 10 “promising production projects” in the Atlantic provinces is pure fantasy.

Canadian companies seek to export ammonia made from green hydrogen, so Germany is not waiting for these deals to come through before it builds a hydrogen pipeline network. The hydrogen to fill initial pipelines will have to be produced in Europe.

Germany’s hopes for widespread use of green hydrogen as energy source were always headed for a reckoning. Renewables produced hydrogen as a modest but necessary decarbonizing tool- green ammonia and green steel for example- are a different matter. Assessing whether such projects are getting anywhere should not be measured against the predictable deflation of grandiose hydrogen hype.