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Bruno Latour as soon as mentioned know-how doesn’t succeed as a result of it really works. It succeeds as a result of sufficient folks act prefer it does. For almost a decade, that’s precisely what occurred with inexperienced hydrogen as an vitality service. The story was so compelling, the coalition so vast, the urgency so actual, that for a time, it barely mattered that the physics didn’t cooperate. Now, in 2025, the act is ending. Main vitality companies are quietly strolling away. Authorities methods are being rewritten. Even the loudest champions of hydrogen-fueled futures have stopped performing certainty. And Latour would acknowledge each step of this collapse.
Actor-Community Principle, Latour’s signature contribution to science and know-how research, doesn’t look for easy causal chains. It doesn’t ask whether or not a know-how is nice or unhealthy, environment friendly or wasteful. As a substitute, it traces how coalitions of individuals, instruments, insurance policies, expectations, and diagrams—actors, each human and non-human—come collectively to make one thing appear actual, viable, and inevitable. When that community holds, the item turns into “blackboxed.” Its underlying complexity is hidden. Everybody simply makes use of it, funds it, believes in it. When the community fails, the field opens. The myths spill out.
One well-known instance is the case of the pasteurization of milk in France, which Latour analyzed in his e-book The Pasteurization of France. He confirmed how Louis Pasteur’s scientific work succeeded not merely due to laboratory discoveries, however as a result of it aligned with the objectives of public well being officers, navy hygienists, farmers, politicians, and media retailers. Pasteur grew to become a central actor in a broad community that collectively remodeled microbial principle into nationwide infrastructure. The micro organism weren’t defeated by science alone, they have been defeated by a community that enrolled all the things from hospitals to dairies right into a shared protocol of cleanliness and management.
One other instance, extensively analyzed via an ANT lens by others, is the adoption of digital medical data (EMRs) in healthcare methods, one thing I used to be concerned in professionally for a decade. In international locations the place EMRs didn’t take maintain, it wasn’t resulting from poor software program design alone, it was resulting from a failure to align physicians, hospitals, insurers, IT departments, and regulatory frameworks right into a coherent community. The know-how, in impact, had no actors keen to carry out it into widespread use. In distinction, in locations the place EMRs succeeded (like Estonia or elements of Scandinavia), the community included robust political will, affected person buy-in, standardized interfaces, and authorized frameworks that made digital data the compulsory passage level for healthcare interactions.
Inexperienced hydrogen’s rise between 2015 and 2022 was a textbook case of such community formation. It started with local weather targets that demanded one thing—something—that would decarbonize hard-to-electrify sectors. Industrial warmth, long-haul transport, seasonal storage, aviation. Every downside grew to become an actor in want of an answer. Hydrogen, lengthy the bridesmaid of vitality debates after the early 2000s hype cycle, match the invoice. Governments started publishing hydrogen methods with price targets and gigawatt goals. Electrolyzer companies obtained infusions of capital. Startups promised hydrogen-powered vans, ships, planes, even total economies. Stories from revered companies forecast dramatic price declines. Roadmaps used 2030 as a type of magical threshold, simply far sufficient away to soak up the uncertainties. The European Fee, the Japanese authorities, the Australians and Koreans, in addition to Californians, all signed on.
On the identical time, oil majors noticed in hydrogen a uncommon alternative to remain related. Shell, BP, TotalEnergies, and others joined business alliances and launched pilot initiatives. They noticed an opportunity to repurpose gasoline infrastructure, rebrand fossil belongings, and safe public subsidies within the title of local weather progress. The Hydrogen Council, launched at Davos in 2017, grew to become the face of this alignment. A discussion board the place oil CEOs, automakers, and authorities ministers might all agree that hydrogen was the trail ahead. That unanimity wasn’t proof of inevitability. It was proof of enrollment.
In the meantime, a number of non-human actors bolstered the narrative. Electrolyzer prototypes at commerce exhibits. Shiny infographics exhibiting hydrogen pipelines spanning continents. Funding mechanisms with lofty acronyms. Value curves pointing downward with the boldness of gravity. Coverage paperwork functioned like scripts in a play. For those who have been a policymaker, you needed to say the traces. For those who have been an organization, you needed to audition for funding. For those who have been a journalist, you needed to report the increase. By 2020, inexperienced hydrogen was not only a risk. It had turn into an expectation. A know-how made actual via repetition.
After which, the disarticulation started. Not unexpectedly, and never dramatically. That’s not how these networks unravel. As a substitute, they fray. BP quietly dissolved its hydrogen mobility unit. No press launch, only a delicate change in course. Airbus delayed its hydrogen plane program, probably completely. The mathematics didn’t work. The infrastructure didn’t exist. British Columbia, which had as soon as flirted with seven main inexperienced hydrogen vitality initiatives, walked away from all of them. In Australia, the federal government shifted from goals of exporting inexperienced hydrogen to Japan and Korea to a extra sober give attention to home industrial use—metal, ammonia, chemical compounds. In Norway, the showcase hydrogen ferry ended up emitting extra CO₂ than the diesel vessel it was meant to switch. The maritime pivot stayed for now, however the broader transportation ambitions light.
Then got here the sign strikes in Europe and america. In France and Germany, top-level financial advisory our bodies issued a joint suggestion: cease funding hydrogen in street transport. Give attention to battery-electric vans as an alternative. The recommendation wasn’t controversial in financial circles. It simply punctured the general public narrative. In america, the Division of Vitality below the Trump administration started contemplating cuts to 4 of the seven federally supported hydrogen hubs, together with the one in California, which had been targeted on hydrogen for transportation. Whether or not motivated by ideology or financial realism, the impact was the identical: one other leg of the hydrogen-for-energy stool kicked out.
Latour wouldn’t be stunned. These weren’t technical failures, strictly talking. Electrolyzers nonetheless electrolyze. Pipelines nonetheless transport. Gasoline cells nonetheless operate. What modified was the willingness of actors to maintain performing the alignment. When the monetary returns didn’t arrive, when the infrastructure prices mounted, when various applied sciences outpaced hydrogen on key metrics, the inducement to remain in character disappeared. The efficiency unraveled.
And with it, the black field opened. Inside was a know-how that made sense for some issues—fertilizer manufacturing, chemical feedstocks, methanol synthesis—however not for most of the issues it had been promised to revolutionize. The round-trip effectivity remained poor. The price per kilogram remained stubbornly excessive. The competitors, significantly from electrification, stored advancing. Each authorities that pulled again, each firm that shifted focus, each analyst who up to date projections was a part of the identical Latourian course of. They stopped reinforcing the phantasm. They exited the community.
What stays is a smaller, extra steady model of the hydrogen story. Inexperienced hydrogen continues to be helpful, however it’s not common. It’s not the Swiss Military knife of decarbonization. It’s a area of interest software, applicable for particular functions the place no higher various exists. Industrial use, not vitality fantasy. The actor-network will persist in that narrower type. Fewer gamers, fewer speeches, fewer renderings of hydrogen planes and vans. Extra spreadsheets. Extra quiet deployments. Much less theater.
There’s a lesson right here, and it’s not that hydrogen is unhealthy or that its supporters have been improper. It’s that techno-economic narratives usually are not goal truths ready to be found. They’re constructed, maintained, and sometimes dismantled by networks of aligned actors. When everybody agrees, it’s actually because disagreement has been designed out. And when the story collapses, it does so not with a bang however with a quiet shifting of ft, a couple of lacking names on the convention agenda, a line merchandise dropped from the finances.
Inexperienced hydrogen for vitality was a compelling narrative. It enrolled sources, targeted consideration, and gave policymakers a way of course. But it surely wasn’t grounded in aggressive fundamentals. It was carried out into existence, and it’s now being carried out again out. Not as a result of it by no means had worth, however as a result of the worth was at all times contingent on everybody believing without delay.
For half a decade I’ve been one of many folks on the improper aspect of the narrative, together with folks like BNEF founder Michael Liebreich, chemical engineer Paul Martin, street decarbonization skilled David Cebon and lots of others that I do know. We’ve been attempting to inform folks what was apparent to us as a result of we seemed on the actuality, not simply the story. However Latourian networks are self-healing. Till they aren’t.
The community is not holding. The actors are stepping away. And as Latour would remind us, that’s whenever you see what was conserving the entire thing alive.
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