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For Immediate Release
April, 18 2023, 11:28am EDT
Contact:
Email:,info(at)fwwatch(dot)org,Seth Gladstone -,sgladstone@fwwatch.org
Hydrogen Hype Ignores Substantial Risks
The latest ‘clean’ fuel fad offers danger, no climate benefits
Utilities, fossil fuel companies, and political leaders are increasingly touting the benefits of using hydrogen as a clean fuel source that can reduce climate pollution. But a new Food & Water Watch report reveals that much of this is industry hype that masks the substantial dangers of a switch to hydrogen.
The report – “Hydrogen in Our Homes: A Dangerous Pipe Dream” – documents an array of problems with the push to expand hydrogen. Utilities are promoting plans to either mix small amounts of hydrogen into the fossil gas fuel stock, or blend it into gas that is burned at power plants. Neither option would provide much in the way of climate benefits, and present substantial health and safety dangers.
Utilities also promote the notion that hydrogen could be used in homes in the same way that gas is currently used. This is a dangerous prescription: Piping in hydrogen would lead to an increase in blowouts or explosions; hydrogen is 14 times as flammable as natural gas, and igniting it requires significantly less energy. And current appliances are not compatible with hydrogen.
A related problem would arise from leaks. Hydrogen is the smallest element, and is thus very likely to leak from existing pipelines. That would increase the risks associated with explosion, and have negative impacts for the climate, since hydrogen is a potent greenhouse gas – approximately 33 times as bad as carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.
The supposed climate benefits of hydrogen are minimal. A five percent blend of hydrogen, for instance, results in much less than a 5 percent reduction in emissions, because hydrogen produces less energy than methane when burned. Even hydrogen blends that far exceed that amount result in small reductions in greenhouse gas pollution. And changes to existing infrastructure – either pipelines that carry gas or the power plant turbines – would be extremely costly.
“Fossil fuel companies and utilities are pushing hydrogen because it maintains the fossil fuel status quo,” said Food & Water Watch Senior Researcher Oakley Shelton-Thomas. “Hydrogen is expensive, prone to leakage, and provides basically no climate benefits. Clean renewables like solar and wind vastly outperform hydrogen across the board, so there is no reason whatsoever to divert time and resources into the fossil fuel industry’s phony idea of a miracle fuel.”
Despite the substantial risks linked to hydrogen, the federal government is investing billions in expanding hydrogen production. The 2021 infrastructure law aims to spend $8 billion to support several regional “hydrogen hubs.” The Inflation Reduction Act creates financial incentives for each kilogram of hydrogen that is produced.
Food & Water Watch mobilizes regular people to build political power to move bold and uncompromised solutions to the most pressing food, water, and climate problems of our time. We work to protect people's health, communities, and democracy from the growing destructive power of the most powerful economic interests.
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Israel Escalating Ethnic Cleansing in West Bank 'Before the Eyes of the Entire World': Amnesty
"This is not the work of rogue actors," said the human rights group's secretary general. "What we are witnessing is deliberate, state-led annexation."
Jun 10, 2026
The international community is allowing the Israeli government to carry out an explicit policy of "ethnic cleansing" against Palestinians in the West Bank that is rapidly accelerating, according to a report out Wednesday from Amnesty International.
The human rights group said the world must intervene to stop what it described as a campaign of forcible displacement, rampant state-backed violence by Israeli settlers, demolitions of Palestinian homes, and tightening restrictions on Palestinian access to land and water.
Using United Nations data, Amnesty determined that at least 117 predominantly Bedouin and herding communities faced full or partial displacement between January 2023 and April 2026, with about 45 communities totally depopulated.
Nearly 6,000 people were forced from their homes during that time, roughly 17% of the Palestinian population in the Israeli-controlled Area C's Bedouin and herding communities.
Amnesty found that Israeli authorities demolished more than 3,400 Palestinian homes and structures in Area C during that time, displacing more than 3,000 Palestinians.
The group describes this systematic displacement as explicit Israeli state policy. The government advanced plans for more than 50,000 settler housing units from 2023-25 and authorized 102 new settlements by April 2026, the largest number ever approved by an Israeli government.
This has coincided with a dramatic increase in violence by armed Israeli settlers, who have set fire to homes and farmlands, vandalized schools and agricultural equipment, cut electricity lines and dumped water tanks, and beaten and killed Palestinian residents.
The UN's Office on the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs calculated that four settler attacks have occurred per day on average in the roughly two years following October 7, 2023, and have only grown more frequent this year, particularly after Israel and the US's joint attack on Iran, which was followed by an invasion of Lebanon that has also entailed mass destruction of homes and the forced displacement of over a million residents.
In several documented cases, armed settler attackers have been escorted or accompanied by Israeli soldiers, who have at times taken part in the destruction.
“Over the past three and a half years, Israeli authorities have accelerated a state-sponsored campaign of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, uprooting, dispossessing, and forcibly transferring Palestinian communities," said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary general.
"This is not the work of rogue actors or what the international community has repeatedly labeled as extremist settlers, organizations or one or two ministers," she said. "What we are witnessing is deliberate, state-led annexation, in complete violation of international law unfolding before the eyes of the entire world."
The report comes just a day after a group of Western nations—including the UK, Canada, France, Australia, New Zealand, and Norway—announced coordinated sanctions against Israeli individuals and organizations accused of financing and enabling settler violence in the West Bank.
However, Amnesty argued that these measures were too narrow.
"These limited measures are woefully insufficient to address the state campaign of ethnic cleansing and the systemic violations that have been rapidly increasing before the eyes of the international community,” Callamard said.
She said states, "particularly those with influence over Israel," including the US, the UK, Germany, Italy, and other European Union and Arab States, needed to "ban all trade, investment, and any form of cooperation or financial assistance that contribute to Israel’s unlawful occupation, system of apartheid, and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians."
Callamard added that states "must impose targeted sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes, against Israeli officials directly implicated in these acts." She included Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and far-right settler politicians like Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, as well as settlers who have allegedly committed acts of murder, like Yinon Levi, who was filmed last year shooting and killing human rights activist Awda al-Hathaleen and was released from custody after a day.
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As soccer fans from across the world travel to the United States this month to cheer on their countries' teams at the 2026 FIFA World Cup, a poll released Wednesday by Data for Progress suggests Americans don't believe many visitors have warm feelings toward the host country after a year-and-a-half of President Donald Trump's leadership.
Overall the poll found that 62% of American voters think the country's reputation has deteriorated under Trump, with just 32% saying it's gotten better.
Republicans were the only political faction to believe Trump has improved global views of the US, while Independents and Democrats overwhelmingly said the president has made them worse.
The poll also found 52% of US voters believed Trump's mass deportation policies have hurt the country's image in the world, with just 34% saying the deportations have helped.
Trump's immigration policies collided with the World Cup earlier this week when Somali referee Omar Artan, who was selected by the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) to work at the celebrated event, was barred from entering the US despite having a valid visa.
A Trump administration official claimed Artan had an "association with suspected members of terror organizations," but provided no evidence for the allegation. US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) called his treatment by the US "a disgrace."
Polling data published last year by Pew suggests that Democrats and Independents are more accurately measuring global public sentiment of the US under Trump's leadership than Republicans.
Specifically, Pew found that net positive perceptions of the US dropped by 10 percentage points or more among residents in a dozen countries between 2024 and 2025, including in key allies such as Canada, Mexico, Germany, and France.
What's more, Pew found only five countries where the United States' reputation has improved since Trump's election: South Africa, India, Israel, Nigeria, and Turkey.
Trump during his second term has taken a number of actions that have sparked anger from foreign governments, including making repeated threats to seize Greenland as a US territory, invading Venezuela and abducting its president, imposing an oil blockade on and threatening to take over Cuba, launching a global trade war, and waging an illegal war of choice on Iran.
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Lawsuit Aims to Halt Trump Giveaway of Wildlife Refuge to Appease Elon Musk's SpaceX
"We’re not letting Trump and his political cronies lock the American people out of Texas’ cherished public lands just to give Elon Musk another payday.”
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Several environmental organizations are suing the US Fish and Wildlife Service to stop the agency from handing over hundreds of acres of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge to Elon Musk's company SpaceX.
The complaint—which was filed by the Center for Biological Diversity, Save RGV, the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas, and South Texas Environmental Justice Network—alleges that the government is violating federal law that requires any transfers of wildlife refuge lands to private ownership to result in net conservation benefits.
Instead, the complaint says the proposed deal with SpaceX would lead to a loss of more 715 acres of wildlife refuge land in exchange for 683 acres of private land.
Bekah Hinojosa, co-founder of the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, expressed particular concerns about SpaceX building facilities on the land given that the company's rockets regularly cause environmental damage by exploding.
"Elon Musk has built his explosive SpaceX facility in the middle of a major wildlife corridor home to endangered and threatened species like ocelots and wetlands," said Hinojosa. "There was never supposed to be space rockets blowing up here."
Laiken Jordahl, national public lands advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, accused President Donald Trump's administration of handing over vital public lands to "the world’s richest man, who could trash them while playing with his exploding rockets."
"We’re not letting Trump and his political cronies lock the American people out of Texas’ cherished public lands," added Jordahl, "just to give Elon Musk another payday.”
Mary Angela Branch, board member at Save RGV, said that SpaceX's presence in the area has already been an "unmitigated disaster" for the local environment, and she warned the land transfer plan would "permanently sever the very heart of the wildlife corridor established by Congress in 1979."
"This corridor, running along the Rio Grande... is prime wildlife habitat, and nothing gained in this ‘swap’ will be equal," Branch emphasized. "This will be a huge loss."
In addition to opposition from the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, the proposed transfer to SpaceX has drawn significant opposition from some local residents. According to a report published last week by the San Antonio Express-News, more than 3,400 letters have been submitted to the US Fish and Wildlife Service expressing opposition to the transfer.
Musk, who on Wednesday was accused by politicians in the UK of stoking racial hatred that led to violent pogroms in the city of Belfast, is aiming to become the world's first trillionaire ty making SpaceX a publicly traded company this month.
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