IPHE Rejects Science On Hydrogen’s Indirect Warming, Raising Credibility Concerns

The International Partnership for Hydrogen and Fuel Cells in the Economy (IPHE) has created a credibility crisis for itself. Originally established in 2003 as a collaborative intergovernmental initiative to promote hydrogen as a clean energy solution, IPHE has positioned itself prominently within the global energy conversation, claiming neutrality and scientific rigor. Its members include major global players — the United States, China, Japan, Germany, Canada, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, among others.

Given this influential membership and IPHE’s prominent role in shaping international perceptions and policies around hydrogen, one would reasonably expect meticulous adherence to scientific rigor and transparency.

However, recent decisions by the IPHE raise significant doubts about this commitment to science and transparency. The IPHE explicitly announced at the just concluded World Hydrogen Summit in Rotterdam that it would not include hydrogen’s indirect global warming potential (GWP) in International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards. Laurent Antoni, IPHE’s executive director, justified this stance by categorically and falsely stating that “hydrogen is not a greenhouse gas and will not be counted as one in our ISO international standards.”

Hydrogen, although not directly a greenhouse gas, has well-documented indirect climate effects. Scientific literature has consistently highlighted that hydrogen leaked into the atmosphere interacts chemically to extend the lifetime of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and to alter atmospheric ozone concentrations, both of which contribute significantly to global warming. These indirect warming effects are not negligible; multiple peer-reviewed studies underscore the seriousness of hydrogen’s indirect contributions, making it clear that hydrogen’s climate impact extends far beyond simplistic definitions.

Hydrogen’s indirect warming through interference with the decomposition of methane has been understood for decades. It was first identified in 2000. The first quantification was a few years ago. The most recent and robust international study found it had a GWP20 of 37 and a GWP100 of 12. Those are significant numbers.

ISO standards consistently incorporate indirect climate impacts. The GWP values defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and adopted by ISO for greenhouse gas accounting explicitly include indirect warming for several gases. For example, methane’s widely cited GWP of approximately 30 over a 100-year horizon accounts not only for its direct radiative forcing but also for its indirect effects on atmospheric chemistry, including ozone formation. Nitrous oxide and carbon monoxide similarly have their indirect warming effects reflected in internationally recognized GWP calculations. This comprehensive approach aligns with the scientific consensus on greenhouse gas reporting, ensuring accurate, transparent, and comprehensive assessments of climate impacts.

IPHE’s deliberate choice to exclude hydrogen’s indirect warming from ISO standards starkly deviates from established scientific norms and practices. By doing so, IPHE implicitly suggests that hydrogen deserves a special exemption from rigorous scientific scrutiny—a position at odds with its stated commitment to robust and transparent environmental standards. Such selective exemption undermines IPHE’s broader credibility, casting doubt on its ability or willingness to uphold rigorous climate accountability standards in the hydrogen sector.

It raises serious concerns about whether IPHE’s agenda is influenced by political considerations or industry pressures that prioritize a simplified, market-friendly portrayal of hydrogen over comprehensive climate transparency.

The IPHE includes several member states with deeply entrenched fossil fuel interests, notably Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the United States, whose involvement in hydrogen initiatives primarily aims at extending the lifespan and economic viability of their fossil fuel assets through “blue” hydrogen production from natural gas.

While the Trump Administration is clearly focused on fossil hydrogen, its new “Big, Beautiful Bill” which eliminates most IRA incentives except those for carbon capture, a critical component of blue hydrogen, having been whipped through Congress this week, it’s worth casting our eyes back to Biden’s term. That Administration did bring the blue hydrogen tax credits in, which was directly aligned with the US hydrogen strategy.

I assessed the strategy when it was first released and when it was updated and it was broken from the beginning. Congress assigned it to the Department of Energy instead of the Department of Commerce, which deals with industrial feedstocks, meaning its energy role was given pride of place instead of being ignored. The order to the DOE explicitly called for hydrogen to be made from fossil fuels and for reuse of fossil fuel infrastructure. The Trump Administration is merely continuing in the footsteps of Biden on fossil hydrogen.

Germany, of course, has been a prominent advocate of hydrogen for energy, heavily investing in hydrogen infrastructure and policies. Its aggressive pursuit of hydrogen solutions, particularly in sectors more economically and environmentally suited to direct electrification, has drawn sharp criticism, including from me. The country and its leading agencies continue to suffer from Gruppendenken, although the recent guidance from the country’s top economists, in conjunction with their counterparts in France, that hydrogen for road freight transportation was a dead end and that the countries should focus solely on battery electric trucks, is indicative that the Latourian narrative around hydrogen for energy is collapsing.

As the global community increasingly views hydrogen as a critical piece of the decarbonization puzzle, accurate and transparent emissions accounting becomes ever more vital. IPHE’s current stance, therefore, not only risks distorting public and policymaker understanding but also could lead to significant misallocation of investment and policy priorities globally, potentially exacerbating rather than alleviating climate risks.

As a reminder, hydrogen leaks. It’s the smallest diatomic molecule in the universe, much smaller than methane, and as a result is an escape artist. Until we started trying to make it something other than an industrial feedstock, leaking was mostly a matter of worker safety. In industrial sites, expensive hydrogen detectors and careful operational efforts are put in place to avoid explosions and the problematically invisible but very hot flames of burning hydrogen. Little effort was put into quantifying leakage rates.

Now that many organizations are trying to turn the square wheel of hydrogen into an energy carrier, however, organizations are manufacturing it and distributing it much more broadly. The realization that it was a potent, if indirect, greenhouse gas has led to attempts to quantify leakage across the value chain. Peer-reviewed and governmental reports are now making it clear that it leaks 1% or more at every touch point in the value chain. As there are 5-8 touch points in hydrogen distribution chains to refueling stations, that’s 5% to 10% leakage.

That’s if everything is working well. One station in California was seeing 35% leakage, and only managed to get it down to 5% to 10% after three years of repeated mitigations. That was just from the station. The DOE itself states in publications that liquid hydrogen has a minimum loss of 2% upon transfer to refueling stations.

One absurd “celebration” was announced by Hylium, a hydrogen storage tank manufacturer, this week. It had installed a liquid hydrogen storage tank at the University of Delft, home of the academic perhaps most responsible for Europe’s hydrogen for energy delusions, Ad van Wijk, who has been tirelessly beating the hydrogen trommel for decades. It’s a tossup about whether Jeremy Rifkin or van Wijk is more culpable in the massive European governmental, organizational, and investment farce.

The reason that the celebration was absurd was that the tank was only boiling off 5.49% of the stored hydrogen every day, a record for that scale of storage. While the tank holds less than 8 kilograms of hydrogen, if the tank was topped up daily, the annual emissions would have been six tons of CO2e at hydrogen’s GWP20 of 37. All for a dead end hydrogen hydrofoil boat that van Wijk has convinced a bunch of engineering students to waste their talents on.

For the record, liquid hydrogen boil-off can be captured and dealt with. But that explicitly wasn’t added to the UDelft tank because it was too expensive, per Hylium’s founder and CEO. (Hylium has now been added to my hydrogen for transportation death watch list, with a risk rating of high, indicating that it’s unlikely to be long for this world.)

By maintaining its position that hydrogen isn’t a greenhouse gas in the face of clear evidence to the contrary and evidence that hydrogen leaks constantly, IPHE undermines not just its own reputation but also broader efforts toward credible hydrogen policy globally. If IPHE, a supposed beacon of international hydrogen leadership and expertise, is unwilling to fully embrace scientifically rigorous accounting, it sets a troubling precedent for other entities involved in global hydrogen policy. The collection of agencies involved in hydrogen for energy includes a lot of much more dubious players, such as Hydrogen Europe, which while wholly funded with governmental dollars, is an unabashed and evidence free promoter of the molecule. With the IPHE setting the party line, expect even more denial that hydrogen is a greenhouse gas.

IPHE’s refusal to include hydrogen’s indirect warming effects in ISO standards represents not merely a technical oversight but a significant ethical and scientific misstep. It damages the partnership’s credibility and diminishes trust precisely when clear, comprehensive, and scientifically robust standards are most urgently needed. To regain its credibility and align with the transparency demanded by climate science and policy, IPHE must reverse its current stance. Anything less would represent a continued retreat from its foundational principles of transparency, accountability, and rigorous scientific integrity.