The Power of Hydrogen: The emergent eco-social relations of the capitalist hydrogen economy

Abstract: The production, use and trade of hydrogen fuels as an energy medium across different sectors – the hydrogen economy – is being articulated as a vision of the future by various global energy actors. Hydrogen’s spatio-temporal profile makes it suitable to integrate into the fossil fuel landscape and reproducing the economic power embedded within it. Through a thematic analysis of documents shaping the emergent hydrogen economy, we can see the integration of fossil fuels and their infrastructure into this economy, producing a dynamic of mitigation deterrence, as well as an entrenchment of relations of ecologically unequal exchange in the global distribution of the economy. Ultimately, the hydrogen economy is understood to embody extractivist eco-social relations. Building a political movement and alternative economic vision through ecosocialism is argued as key to challenging the power of this emergent economy.