Hydrogen’s detour persisted because incumbent assets, skills and institutions had reasons to keep the molecule economy politically viable after the economics weakened.
In 2023, a senior executive responsible for decarbonizing a major transportation company asked me, with some exasperation, what drove the “madness on hydrogen.” Hydrogen proposals kept arriving for applications where the energy balance and economics looked dreadful. That conversation became What Drives This Madness On Hydrogen?, an attempt to explain … [continued]
Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas and the second-largest contributor to global warming after carbon dioxide (CO2). Methane traps heat in the atmosphere more efficiently than CO2, but has a significantly shorter lifespan, fading after just a few decades. Therefore, reducing emissions of methane — a gas primarily produced by agriculture, fossil … [continued]
"Plant-Based Dishes, Raw Food (29103285347)" by Ella Olsson from Stockholm, Sweden is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
One principle of media literacy involves stepping back from a favored topic and doing a deep dive to figure out what motivates our interest in that topic. Known as metacognition, gaining such critical distance asks us to reflect on our self-knowledge and evaluate the sources that contribute to our perspectives. … [continued]
Africa’s solar imports, rooftop imagery and customer-side market channels are beginning to reveal deployment that official capacity statistics miss.
Africa officially added about 4.5 GW of solar in 2025. It also imported about 18.2 GW of solar modules. Those numbers cannot simply be substituted for one another — panels sitting in warehouses or ports are not operating solar systems — but the gap is too large to dismiss as … [continued]
CUTRIC’s institutional conflict is now the core issue: transit agencies should verify independently, while members decide what their participation endorses.
CUTRIC has a credibility problem that extends well beyond its long enthusiasm for hydrogen buses. The underlying issue is whether an organization whose mission includes commercializing technologies should receive a presumption of neutrality when it advises transit agencies on investments worth hundreds of millions of dollars. After reviewing CUTRIC’s strategy, … [continued]
Empowering women through greater access to finance could “strengthen” households’ resilience to “climate shocks,” according to a new study. Published in Climate Risk Management, it analyses the impact of financial access on “women-headed households” in sub-Saharan Africa. The study finds that where women had formal financial access — such as … [continued]
The word “science,” according to Wikipedia, is derived from the Latin verb “scire, meaning ‘to know,’ specifically its present participle sciens, meaning ‘knowing.’” The root word scire is also connected to English words like conscience — shared knowledge of right and wrong — and omniscient — all-knowing. My, how times … [continued]
Hydrogen and electrification occupy surprisingly similar amounts of attention despite radically different levels of physical deployment.
Hydrogen occupies an unusually large share of the energy-transition information stream for the amount of physical deployment behind it. Fuel-cell trucks, buses, trains, ships, storage projects, demonstrations and records recur through corporate releases, government announcements, trade publications and mainstream reporting, creating the impression that hydrogen remains a substantial parallel pathway … [continued]
Coal is falling rapidly as a source of Polish electricity, but dependable coal capacity remains part of the reliability calculation through the transition.
Poland’s coal transition is moving much faster than the country’s reputation suggests. Coal supplied 72.5% of Polish electricity in 2021. By 2025 it was down to 52.7%, while renewables reached 31.4%. Coal supplied less than half of generation in five separate months, and in June renewables generated more electricity than … [continued]
I have been a fellow of the Media Education Lab (MEL) at the University of Rhode Island for a couple of decades. That means I’m part of a community of international, national, and regional leaders who promote media literacy. I’ve run MEL conferences, delivered workshops, co-authored white papers, and collaborated … [continued]
