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The Prison Fellowship, a faith-based nonprofit serving U.S. prisoners, former prisoners and their families, launched the first Second Chance Month back in 2017. The monthlong campaign — including rallies, events, petitions and social media engagements — aimed to challenge the stigma of criminal justice involvement and champion second chance hiring, housing and other opportunities. 

Thanks to their advocacy, Second Chance Month is now observed nationally every April, with successive White House proclamations over the past six years. So, what are second chance policies, and why are they necessary? Let's take a closer look and explore how major U.S. businesses are getting involved. 

A crisis of justice and a missed opportunity 

Anywhere from 1.7 million to more than 2 million people sit in U.S. prisons and jails at any given time. America's growing carceral system tears families apart and sends ripple effects across the economy and society, with communities of color being most affected: Though the U.S. population is roughly 13 percent Black and 19 percent Hispanic, Black and Brown people make up about half of those imprisoned. 

After decades of mass incarceration, approximately 1 in 3 U.S. adults now has a criminal record that would appear on a routine background screening. Even after serving their sentences, those with criminal justice histories are often turned away by employers, locked out of housing, and deemed too high-risk for loans and other financial services. In over a dozen U.S. states, they can never vote again. 

Though over 650,000 people come home from prison each year, more than half are unemployed a year later, increasing the likelihood they’ll return. 

Numbers like these are particularly tragic as industries across the U.S. complain of labor shortages and some have reportedly turned to child labor in order to stay staffed. 

Second chance hiring takes hold across corporate America

Second chance hiring can take many forms. For example, an employer may remove the checkbox on job applications that requires a person to disclose their criminal justice history, or stop considering criminal justice involvement as a disqualifying factor in the application process. While these concepts are not new — the "ban the box" campaign to remove the disclosure checkbox from first-round applications first started in the 1990s — they've garnered increasing attention from the U.S. business community over recent years.

The Second Chance Business Coalition, for example, launched last year to empower companies with the tools, relationships, and expertise to advance career and economic opportunities for the more than 70 million Americans with criminal records. Its membership has grown to nearly 50 large U.S. employers, from Gap and Ralph Lauren to Visa, NBCUniversal and Allstate. 

Likewise, the recently formed Workforce and Justice Alliance brings businesses together to remove workforce barriers for justice-impacted individuals across the U.S. Formed by the Responsible Business Initiative for Justice (RBIJ), an international nonprofit that works with companies to champion criminal justice reform, the Alliance also includes leadership from Mod Pizza — an early champion of second chance hiring policies. 

For corporate members like these, second chance hiring just makes sense. Such high levels of caging and incarceration have effectively boxed tens of millions of people out of the labor force — increasing rates of poverty, recidivism and community fragmentation at a time when companies need workers more than they have in decades. 

"Second chance hiring is increasingly seen by employers as a common-sense solution to tackle ongoing labor shortages," Maha Jweied, co-CEO of the RBIJ, told TriplePundit. "We also know that access to good jobs is the most important determinant in whether an individual will reoffend, so by giving deserving individuals second chances, businesses are actively making their communities safer."

Ken Oliver of Checkr, which offers solutions for fairer background checks, agrees. He joined Jweied and Shamia Lodge of CEO Action for Racial Equity at a SOCAP event in October to discuss these issues around second chance hiring and why businesses should get involved. Like Jweied, he sees second chances as a fundamental justice issue as well as an economic one. 

“It’s really important from an equity standpoint to provide each and every person — whether they have a record or not — equal access to the American economy and to the middle-class economy, to help fuel decarceration and stop relying so much on punishment and really investing in people," said Oliver, executive director of the Checkr Foundation, who himself was formerly incarcerated. "We’re asking employers not to lower the bar, but to lower the barriers.”

Broad, bipartisan support for second chances

From a cultural standpoint, defining people by their past mistakes is an inherently un-American concept. Americans love second chances. They'll root for the underdog just for the sake of it and never grow tired of a good David-and-Goliath story. So, it's no surprise that second chance hiring, housing and financial policies have broad support among the U.S. public. 

In a 2021 survey, 76 percent of U.S. workers said they'd feel comfortable working for an employer that hires people with criminal justice histories — and 83 percent would be happy to patronize businesses that leverage second chance hiring. A 2022 survey of small business owners also found broad support for second chances: 84 percent of respondents feel that removing criminal justice histories from applicant screenings will benefit small businesses, and nearly 80 percent agreed these policies will benefit communities. 

“Enacting policies that help us tap into a larger pool of candidates only makes sense,” said John Arensmeyer, founder and CEO of Small Business Majority, which conducted the survey, in a statement. "Smaller firms widely support legislation that improves second chance hiring opportunities for justice-impacted individuals, opening the candidate pool to those eager to contribute to their local economy and community." 

As we move through April, TriplePundit will take a closer look at how businesses big and small are embracing second chance hiring policies, as well as efforts to improve access to housing and financial resources for people with criminal justice histories. Watch this spot for more! 

Image credit: Nathan Dumlao/Unsplash

When the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission proposed new rules for climate risk disclosure last year, they were met with an unprecedented flood of public comments. Part of the firestorm could be an effect of partisan politics. However, some commenters raised legitimate concerns, and the SEC is reportedly poised to make some changes in the coming weeks.

The SEC responds to investor trends, not partisan ideology

When the climate disclosure rules were proposed last year, SEC Chair Gary Gensler emphasized the agency's founding mission to ensure that investors are fully informed about risks. "Our core bargain from the 1930s is that investors get to decide which risks to take, as long as public companies provide full and fair disclosure and are truthful in those disclosures,” he said in a press statement announcing the rules, dated March 21, 2022.

Gensler was also quick to note that the proposed SEC climate rules are not derived from partisan ideology. They are based on the clear and indisputable fact that climate disclosures already have broad support among investors.

“Today, investors representing literally tens of trillions of dollars support climate-related disclosures because they recognize that climate risks can pose significant financial risks to companies, and investors need reliable information about climate risks to make informed investment decisions,” Gensler explained.

The proposed rules were also intended to level the playing field by creating a uniform standard for climate disclosures. “Companies and investors alike would benefit from … the clear rules of the road proposed in this release,” Gensler said. More information and more disclosures also allow issuers to meet investor demands for clarity on climate risks, he argued. 

Pushback against new SEC climate rules 

The fact-based genesis of the new SEC climate rules is a stark contrast to the mounting pushback against environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations in business. High-profile public officials have been railing against ESG investing as a threat to the health of public pensions. However, they offer no facts to back up their arguments, which on closer inspection appear to be nothing more than thinly disguised efforts to protect fossil energy stakeholders from competition. The anti-ESG messaging has also become entwined with the rhetoric of right-wing extremism and “anti-woke” posturing, which doesn't help its legitimacy. 

It is no surprise to see well-known conservative lobbying organizations promote anti-ESG messaging in their public comments on the proposed SEC climate rules. For example, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, colored its critique of the rules with a jab at ESG advocates in a lengthy public comment submitted on June 1, 2021, describing them as “increasingly strident” in their efforts to achieve “various social or political objectives.”

“This is being done under the banner of social justice; corporate social responsibility (CSR); stakeholder theory; environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria; socially responsible investing (SRI); sustainability; diversity; business ethics; common-good capitalism; or corporate actual responsibility,” the Heritage Foundation's comment reads.

“The social costs of ESG and broader efforts to repurpose business firms will be considerable,” the group warned. “Wages will decline or grow more slowly, firms will be less productive and less internationally competitive, investor returns will decline, innovation will slow, goods and services quality will decline and their prices will increase,” it added, without substantiation.

Another look at the SEC climate rules 

All in all, Heritage dismissed the entire effort as a pointless, politics-driven exercise. “When all is said and done, climate change disclosure requirements will have somewhere between a trivial impact and no impact on climate change,” its comment reads.

In contrast, other commenters underscored the extent to which ESG principles and ESG reporting have already been adopted as a matter of business, not ideology. “The impacts of the climate crisis on our lives and our livelihoods are worsening at a dramatic rate,”  the nonprofit B Lab — which operates the voluntary B Corp certification for responsible businesses — and the B Corp Climate Collective wrote in a joint comment to the SEC, in just one example 

Commenters also noted that the economic landscape is fraught with physical risks from climate impact, as well as bottom-line risks involving changes in regulatory, technological, economic, and litigation scenarios as the economy shifts to net-zero.

“The risks can combine in unexpected ways, with serious, disruptive impacts on asset valuations, global financial markets, and global economic stability,” the B Corp groups argued, in making the case for stronger, more detailed disclosure rules based on the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). 

The SEC has some changes in store

The SEC has yet to announce a decision on what will be included in the revised rules. However, in a recent interview with CNBC, Chairman Gensler reminded the public of the agency’s investor protection mission. “I like to say we’re merit-neutral, whether it’s crypto or climate risk,” he told the outlet earlier this year. “But we’re not investor-protection-neutral or capital-formation-neutral."

He reiterated that the new SEC climate rules are "about bringing consistency and comparability to disclosures that are already being made about climate risks," adding that "investors seem to be, today, making decisions about this information."

Some SEC observers anticipate that the agency will propose easing the original rules, in order to prevent unreasonable burdens on companies that are already engaged with climate disclosure.

That may be so. However, it is unlikely that the revised rules will provide a cloak of invisibility for companies that have not made plans for transitioning to a low-carbon economy. 

In the CNBC interview, Gensler emphasized that the proposed rules don’t force companies to make a climate transition plan if they don’t already have one. “If a company doesn’t have a climate transition plan, that disclosure was: ‘We don’t we don’t have that such a plan or target,’” he explained.

That sounds simple enough. If that feature of the proposed rule remains in place when the SEC announces the revisions — which are expected later this month — investors will have a clear, accessible way in which to assess which companies are preparing to respond to the massive risks posed by climate impacts, and which still have their heads in the sand.

U.S. President Joe Biden used the first veto of his presidency last week. The reason? ESG investing. On March 27, President Biden moved to reject a bill, approved by the House and Senate, that sought to overturn a new Department of Labor rule allowing U.S. retirement fund managers to take environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations into account in their investment decisions.

The latest chapter in an ongoing political battle over ESG in the U.S., Biden’s veto came just a few days after more than 270 companies and investors signed an open letter pushing back against anti-ESG policies.

In the letter, investors and companies emphasized the need to consider all financial risks and opportunities — including those associated with the climate crisis — in order to make smart investments. Calling their movement Freedom to Invest, these capital market leaders urged federal and state policymakers to protect their freedom to invest responsibly, noting they must be free to consider all material financial risks and opportunities in order to plan for the long-term.

“Managing risk and opportunities is our job as investors,” said Anne Simpson, global head of sustainability for Franklin Templeton, one of the letter’s signatories, in a statement. “Our duty and our loyalty are with the people who entrust us with their money. If we don’t pay attention to the accelerating frequency of severe weather disasters and the hundreds of billions of dollars they cause, nor to scientists’ forecasts for severe risk of more of that, and to entrepreneurial companies’ innovations for solving the resulting market needs, then we are not fulfilling our fiduciary duty." The leaders noted that ESG considerations are not political nor ideological, but rather prudent risk management and investment considerations.

The skyrocketing price tag of anti-ESG policies

Anti-ESG legislation in a number of states is poised to cost taxpayers and retirees billions. State legislatures have been forced to roll back bills that sought to limit ESG investing practices, citing financial harm to state pension funds. Texas and Florida are continuing to push for anti-ESG legislation, even as Texas' anti-ESG policies have already cost the state millions. Pension funds in the state are warning the legislature that the most recent round of anti-ESG proposals could cost retirees in Texas $6 billion over the next 10 years. 

ESG is good for business

Climate change, social injustices, and environmental catastrophes all threaten workforces, supply chains, global markets and long-term economic growth. At the same time, “strong climate action will bring tens of trillions of dollars in additional value to the global economy along with millions of new jobs in the coming decades," the financial leaders wrote in their letter.

Their claims are backed up by strong evidence. One recent study, for example, showed that companies with robust ESG programs saw a 9.7 percent revenue boost between 2019 and 2022, compared with a 4.5 percent boost for companies without ESG programs. The same study showed that 84 percent of companies that embrace ESG principles find it easier to attract investors and raise funds. 

The group of Freedom to Invest signatories highlighted the business case for ESG in their letter, writing: “Our consideration of material environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors is not political or ideological. Incorporating these issues into financial decision-making represents good corporate governance, prudent risk management, and smart investment practice consistent with fiduciary duty. We factor financially material considerations, including the impacts of climate change, into our standard investment and risk management decisions, in order to protect our operations and our investments.” 

Even as ESG investing is facing backlash among some policymakers, ESG investing principles are growing in popularity. Almost $8.5 trillion in assets are currently managed by ESG-friendly investors, which is about an eighth of all total assets under management globally, and demand for sustainable funds is higher than for those that do not include ESG considerations. 

Image credit: Patrick Weissenberge/Unsplash

In the last part of this two-part article series, we took a closer look at some of the different types of hydrogen — from grey and brown hydrogen to blue, turquoise, pink and red — how they're produced and the challenges with these methods. Today, we evaluate the differences between green hydrogen and everything else, as well as some questions to consider in proposed use cases. 

Consider life cycle analysis to evaluate types of hydrogen

Even if methane rather than coal is used as a starting point to produce hydrogen, life cycle analyses show many flaws in the system. Considering a life cycle analysis approach provides a more helpful big picture. We need to consider what it takes to drill for fossil fuels, process them, and transport them to the place where methane gets burned from CH4 into C (carbon) or CO2 (carbon dioxide) and H2 (hydrogen).

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, natural gas is the main source of methane for creating hydrogen industrially. Although methane can be captured from landfills, drilling for methane along with other hydrocarbons like oil and gas is more common.

So, how do we get natural gas? Primarily from drilling and fracking, or hydraulic fracturing of shale. Fracking creates vast amounts of wastewater, leaks methane in the process (contributing to global warming), releases toxic air pollutants and generates noise. 

As noted by the Yale School of Public Health: "Studies have shown these gas and oil operations can lead to loss of animal and plant habitats, species decline, migratory disruptions and land degradation. They have also been associated with human health risks. Studies have reported associations between residential proximity to these operations and increased adverse pregnancy outcomes, cancer incidence, hospitalizations and asthma. Some fracking-related operations have been located near lower-resourced communities, worsening their cumulative burden of environmental and social injustices." 

Methane is an even more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide: It is 86 times worse over 20 years than CO2, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). And it leaks when: a well is drilled, a well is fracked, the extracted gas is compressed into pipelines, it is transported by pipeline, and after wells are plugged or abandoned.

Using steam methane reforming for gray hydrogen ignores environmental justice 

The people most impacted by drilling for fossil fuels are poor people of color. Populations living near fossil fuel extraction sites experience elevated rates of diseases like cancer. Is this really what we want to keep doing, using fossil fuels like methane to create supposedly lower-carbon fuels like hydrogen?

The economics of green hydrogen

Green hydrogen comes from using renewable electricity to power electrolysis, a process that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen. Electrolyzers are a technology. Historically, technology gets way better — if not exponentially better — as we figure out better ways of doing things. Twenty years ago, floppy disks had 1.44 megabytes of storage on them. Now, a photo you take on an iPhone can use even more memory than that. Solar cells have also gotten way better and cheaper in the last 20 years. This is why it’s worth investing in actual green technology (read: electrolyzers) to create green hydrogen from water.

Because electrolysis requires a lot of clean energy, the European Union is requiring green hydrogen to come from newly built renewable plants, so hydrogen production doesn't compete with other power needs.

More specifically, the EU defines green hydrogen as: "coming from water electrolysis that’s powered by newly built renewable electricity generation equipment. An electrolysis plant with an onsite solar or wind farm would count. But a grid-powered plant would need to purchase renewable electricity from a nearby source that was built no more than 36 months before the hydrogen plant came online. It would also need to match volumes of hydrogen with corresponding renewable wattage on an hour-by-hour basis."

Another way to think about the economics of making green hydrogen is to account for the fact that fossil fuels got $5.9 trillion in subsidies in 2020 — or roughly $11 million every minute — according to a new analysis from the International Monetary Fund. Thus, the cost of using methane to create hydrogen is actually not the full cost. Indeed, 47 percent of natural gas and 99 percent of coal is priced at less than half its true cost.

How hydrogen is produced matters. The good news is that in the U.S., the Department of Energy's Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office is focused on developing technologies that can produce hydrogen at $2 per kilogram by 2026 and $1 per kilogram by 2031 via net-zero-carbon pathways. The aim supports the Hydrogen Energy Earthshot goal of reducing the cost of clean hydrogen by 80 percent to $1 per 1 kilogram in a decade ("1 1 1").

Additionally, the Inflation Reduction Act passed in 2022 is bringing in a $3/kilogram production tax credit, making green hydrogen from electrolyzers more competitive and spurring more innovation that will help lower the cost of green hydrogen, just like solar panels. Indeed, 2022 modeling from S&P Global Commodity Insights found that “green hydrogen produced from industrial hubs on the U.S. Gulf Coast would have been cheaper than gray hydrogen made from fossil gas for over half of trading days over the past 12 months had President Joe Biden’s new maximum $3/kg production tax credit (PTC) been in place," Recharge News reported. 

Where should we use hydrogen for a clean energy economy, and which type?

Let’s look to environmental organizations, not the fossil fuel industry, for what to do to address climate change. The first priority for addressing climate change should be reducing emissions. The Sierra Club, for example, only supports the use of green hydrogen that is made through electrolysis powered by renewable energy. Even green hydrogen comes with caveats, however.

One thing to note is that the presence of hydrogen in the lower atmosphere — whether it came from green sources or not — prevents atmospheric methane from breaking down, and methane is a potent greenhouse gas. The Sierra Club also recommends that these additional conditions be met for green hydrogen to be a good idea.

• Green hydrogen is a promising solution only for uses that cannot otherwise directly rely on clean electricity, which is much more efficient. (For example, electric cars rather than hydrogen fuel cell cars.)
• Green hydrogen should not be used to justify a buildout of facilities that otherwise increase pollution or fossil fuel use. (We need to benefit the planet, not the oil industry.)
• If green hydrogen is being used, the goal should be to switch to 100 percent green hydrogen once the technology is available. We should not support projects that label themselves as “sustainable” because their fuel source includes a small fraction of hydrogen when most of it is fracked gas. (Again, we need to stop using fossil fuels in order to mitigate the worst of climate change.)

Question to ask when you hear about “lower-carbon hydrogen” 

• Who is paying for the content you are reading?
• Who is sponsoring the think tank or speaker at the conference? 
• Does the think tank publish where they get their money from and how they spend it?
• What economic incentives do they have to promote a specific technology?
• Who is being left out or not considered conversations about the project and its potential harms?
• Has the think tank consulted people typically left out, such as Indigenous peoples, people of color, women and people with disabilities?  
• What policies or incentives can help make green hydrogen more affordable and stimulate innovation?
• Which elected officials are supporting clean energy innovation, and which are supporting polluters? 
• Does this project prolong the use of existing fossil fuel infrastructure? 
Note that existing infrastructure for “natural gas” or methane cannot accommodate hydrogen at concentrations higher than a few percent, which could prolong ongoing methane use without substantially reducing associated emissions. Additionally, the costs associated with building specialized, hydrogen-compatible infrastructure may point to applications that involve onsite generation and use (e.g. for steel production) rather than large-scale distribution networks. Hydrogen makes steel brittle, which can make it hard to transport.

Green hydrogen companies to watch

Here are a few companies that are creating green hydrogen from renewable-energy-powered electrolysis:

• Plug Power
• ITM Power
• Nel Hydrogen
• Sunfire 
• Enapter
• Hydrogen Pro
• Ecolectro
• Electric Hydrogen 

Land Acknowledgment: Katharine is a Mayflower descendant who lives and works in unceded Lisjan Ohlone territory, what is now known as Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda, Piedmont, Emeryville and Albany, California. The Sogorea Te’ Land Trust is an urban Indigenous women-led land trust that is today working hard to restore traditional stewardship practices on these lands, heal from historical trauma, and facilitate the return of Indigenous land to Indigenous people. May they be successful in their work!

A dire new report from the United Nations warns of a looming world water and sanitation crisis. Businesses can help alleviate the problem by supporting work on new desalination technologies that leverage renewable energy, with broader implications for grid reliability and stability as well.

The world water crisis continues to loom...

The new U.N. 2023 Water Development Report follows decades of tracking global water resources and sanitation issues. It was released in advance of the U.N.’s first conference on water resources in almost 50 years, held last week.

The report was prepared by the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which warned: “The accelerating pace of change to water systems is creating new and ever-greater risks to society.”

“In parallel, demand for water is intensifying not only when it comes to domestic use but also in other sectors such as agriculture, energy and industry,” UNESCO added in the report. Even as demand is rising, climate change and pollution are adding new stressors, raising new obstacles to progress.

Overall, the report notes that the water and sanitation access described in U.N. Sustainability Goal 6 is off track. “According to the latest figures from 2020, 26 percent of the world’s population (2 billion people) did not have access to safely managed drinking water services…and an estimated 46 percent (3.6 billion) lacked access to safely managed sanitation,” the report reads.

…but businesses can contribute to progress

While the overall situation is dire, the report does take note of progress in the area of global water use efficiency, an element of SDG 6. Improvements in that area can cover a wide range, from repairing leaky pipes to planting different crops and investing in new technologies.

“Water savings are also often associated with energy savings, as less water needs to be extracted, treated, transported and heated,” UNESCO noted.

The report cites a three-year period from 2015 to 2018 in which water use efficiency rose by an average of 9 percent overall. The global industrial sector over-performed the average by a wide margin, achieving a 15 percent improvement during that period.

New technologies for the energy-water nexus

While past performance does not necessarily indicate future progress, all indications are that the technology factor will provide the force needed to sustain and accelerate progress on water use efficiency. 

One emerging example is the deployment of new, more efficient technologies to collect water vapor from the air. Desalination is another pathway. The expense and energy intensity of desalination facilities has been an obstacle to widespread use, but technology improvements can help overcome those challenges. That includes improvements to renewable energy technologies that have allowed for a sharp drop in the cost of wind and solar power in recent years.

A new twist on the energy-water nexus

A drop in the cost of energy for desalination is just one water efficiency factor related to renewable energy. Another factor is the potential value of desalination facilities in contributing to the stability and reliability of a grid that depends heavily on wind and solar power.

In past years, the use of wind and solar power was limited by weather and time-of-day factors. However, new grid management and energy storage technologies are smoothing out those intermittent bumps, and the U.S. Department of Energy has spotted an opportunity to add desalination facilities to the mix.

On March 22, the Energy Department announced funding for a suite of 12 new projects aimed at increasing the efficiency of water desalination and reuse technologies. Three of the projects are focused specifically on balancing the energy use of industrial-scale desalination facilities with the availability of intermittent resources on the grid.

The basic idea is to time the operation of desalination facilities to take advantage of excess wind or solar power. Having a dedicated, industrial-scale electricity consumer taking up the slack during periods of low demand could also help motivate additional renewable energy development.

“Desalination plants can draw large amounts of electricity from the grid and have the potential to become flexible or intermittent power users to increase grid stability and reliability,” the Energy Department explained in its announcement.

The University of California will lead one of the projects in partnership with the Chino Basin Desalter Authority in San Bernardino County and the water engineering firm Irvine, Hazen and Sawyer. As described by the Energy Department, the partners are tasked with developing a framework for estimating the value of deploying desalination plants as flexible power users. The partners will also spot potential obstacles that could impede flexibility.

Stanford University will head up a second project in partnership with the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, the National Energy Technology Laboratory and the city of Santa Barbara in California. This project takes note of an existing degree of flexibility in operating desalination plants.

“In some parts of the U.S., operators of desalination facilities can participate in demand-response energy supply contracts where they pay lower electric rates but are also required to lower energy use during periods of high grid demand,” the Energy Department observes. The team will use an assessment platform developed by the public-private National Alliance for Water Innovation research program to identify opportunities for upgrading desalination plants and optimizing their schedules around the use of low-cost, low-carbon energy resources.

A third project pairs the Electric Power Research Institute with Colorado State University, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the not-for-profit Salt River Project utility district in Arizona. The team will take a broad look at energy availability and water management to identify high-impact opportunities for desalination flexibility in the context of the electrification trend.

The desalination fight has only just begun

The other nine Energy Department projects involve advanced technology improvements in other areas of desalination plant operations, including the treatment of brine left over from the process.

One example is a new treatment system that deploys three different electrochemical processes — electroosmosis, electrophoresis and electrodialysis — to treat a range of contaminants in desalination brine, including pesticides, boron, heavy metals and PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, often called “forever” chemicals).

New solutions and public-private partnerships like these dovetail with the new United Nations report, which calls for a renewed focus on collaboration, partnerships, new technologies, and the sharing of data and information.

U.S. businesses can help accelerate progress by lending their voices in support of federal resources for tackling the water crisis, including more resources for electrification and renewable energy development.

Hydrogen is used in a variety of industries. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, nearly all of the hydrogen consumed in the United States is used by industry in oil refining, treating metals, making fertilizer and processing foods. It has the potential to decarbonize hard-to-electrify industries like steel-making and the manufacture of industrial chemicals like ammonia and methanol. It may also be useful for decarbonizing heavy industry, shipping, aviation and heavy-duty transport, according to the IEA.

But where does hydrogen come from? Let's take a closer look at how most hydrogen is currently produced and the challenges with these methods. 

How is most hydrogen currently produced? 

Nearly all hydrogen produced today is not green, which is to say, it’s not environmentally sustainable. At the end of 2021, almost 47 percent of global hydrogen production was made from methane, 27 percent from coal and 22 percent from oil (as a by-product), according to the International Renewable Energy Agency. Only around 4 percent came from splitting water apart with electricity, called electrolysis.

As a result, making hydrogen is responsible for around 830 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year, equivalent to the CO2 emissions of the U.K. and Indonesia combined. Since only about a third of electricity globally is produced from renewables, that means only about 1 percent of global hydrogen is green — as in, made with renewable energy. 

This matters because if we want to meet the Paris agreement target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, we need to stop using fossil fuels. Ending fossil fuel dependence also includes stopping the use of fossil fuels to make hydrogen — and investing more in technologies that are powered by renewables. 

What is gray hydrogen? 

Gray hydrogen is made from methane (CH4), a fossil fuel. The International Energy Agency has noted that 6 percent of global methane (natural gas) production goes to making hydrogen. When you burn methane with oxygen in the air, you produce carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, and water. 

What is black or brown hydrogen?

This kind comes from coal, accounting for 2 percent of global coal production, according to the International Energy Agency. You can turn coal into a gas in a process called gasification. Since coal has a lot of impurities in it compared to methane, including sulfur and nitrogen, burning coal yields nasty stuff like carbon monoxide (CO), hydrogen sulfide, as well as ammonia. Hydrogen sulfide and ammonia are very reactive, and when they are emitted into the atmosphere, they contribute to acid rain. You can read more about the chemistry of gasification here. 

What is blue hydrogen? 

Blue hydrogen made from methane, just like gray hydrogen, but the resulting carbon dioxide emissions are supposedly captured. However, captured carbon is most commonly used for enhanced oil recovery — accounting for about 75 percent of all captured carbon use in the U.S. and about 88 percent globally. 

The problem is: If you capture carbon dioxide and use it to produce more fossil fuels, you’re actually enabling more carbon dioxide emissions, furthering global warming. Even if you purified the CO2 and put it in soft drinks, for example, the carbon dioxide just bubbles back into the atmosphere, and all that work to capture it is kind of a waste.

For these reasons, blue hydrogen won't actually help to address global warming. Additionally, fossil fuel companies are paying lobbyists to support blue hydrogen, like in this U.K. example. We need to pull carbon dioxide out of the air and store it permanently, underground, not continue to use carbon capture and utilization as an excuse for delaying getting off fossil fuels.

What is turquoise hydrogen?

If you burn methane in a low-oxygen environment through a process called pyrolysis, you can make just carbon rather than carbon dioxide as a result, along with the desired hydrogen. While this might seem better than the other approaches because carbon is easier to store than carbon dioxide, you still have to use methane as a starting point.

Starting with methane means you need to separate the methane from the source where it’s drilled from: natural gas, other hydrocarbons, water, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, oxygen and some sulfur compounds. (If you remember from earlier, sulfur and nitrogen compounds in fossil fuels contribute to acid rain.) And, who benefits from methane extraction? The fossil fuel industry, because fracking or drilling for hydrocarbons including methane lets them keep doing what they’ve been doing for decades. 

What is pink or red hydrogen?

Pink or red hydrogen is created from breaking apart water through electrolysis using electricity supplied by nuclear energy sources. While nuclear energy has some proponents for it being helpful for reducing our greenhouse gas production, it fails the test of climate justice. If you watch this training from the Midwest Building Decarbonization Coalition, a climate justice network, nuclear is still a climate justice concern.

Today, nuclear waste is largely stored onsite where it’s generated. Where do we think we’ll put that waste when the storage room runs out? If current pollution trends continue, it’s likely  to be near where Indigenous people or people of color live. That’s not right. Using nuclear energy is attempting to fix this generation’s carbon problem by punting the pollution to future generations. 

Meanwhile, a Stanford University study found there is plenty of wind to provide half the world’s power by 2030, and BloombergNEF thinks wind can power half the world by 2050. Why are we running on nuclear power when we can run on renewables? For those who argue “well, we need more base load power and the sun doesn’t shine and wind doesn’t blow all the time,” consider pumped hydro or building more wind turbines near electrolyzers, and the hydrogen itself can store the energy. 

In this second part of this two-part article, we examined things to look for related to disinformation and greenwashing and dive deeper into the differences between hydrogen that is green — and isn't. Click here to read it. 

Land Acknowledgment: Katharine is a Mayflower descendant who lives and works in unceded Lisjan Ohlone territory, what is now known as Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda, Piedmont, Emeryville and Albany, California. The Sogorea Te’ Land Trust is an urban Indigenous women-led land trust that is today working hard to restore traditional stewardship practices on these lands, heal from historical trauma, and facilitate the return of Indigenous land to Indigenous people. May they be successful in their work!