The new report Impact of Green Hydrogen Production warns that green hydrogen would cannibalize the sources of renewable electricity that we desperately need to decarbonize the grid.

Hydrogen also threatens health and safety as the tiny hydrogen molecules escape through hundreds of leaks in our old underground pipelines and into basements and kitchens. Burning it pollutes indoor air with nitrogen oxides (NOx).

Lessons of the 1937 Texas School Explosion

86 years ago, on March 18, 1937 a gas explosion killed 300 people, mostly students, in their new state-of-the-art school. The tragedy of the 1937 Texas School Explosion is a cautionary tale that shows how false economies, willful blindness, and ignored warnings can result in disaster.

To save money the school board substituted 72 gas heaters for the boiler and steam system, ignoring the architects’ warnings that the building was not designed to vent gas. Thirteen minutes before school dismissal a shop teacher in a basement class flipped a switch creating a spark that caused the explosion.

Within days, Texas legislators required a “malodorant” added to the otherwise odorless gas. That is the warning odor Newton residents smell today from hundreds of gas leaks as we walk our children to school.

Please listen to the experts and advocates. Heed the scientists who warn us that piping hydrogen for home heating is an extremely costly, wasteful and deeply flawed idea. Furthermore, its flammable and explosive properties make it an unacceptable high risk, high consequence gas.

— Ellie Goldberg, Campaign for A Future WithOut Gas and For Clean Heat