https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/08/verdagy-series-a/

Hydrogen pioneers Verdagy — from “verde” for green, and “agy” for energy — raised $25 million from a fistful of strategic investors in the energy sector in a bid to take a messy, not-that-environmentally-friendly process of making hydrogen and replacing it with an industrially scalable solution with no nasties going into the air.

It turns out that the most common way (more than 90% of hydrogen made in the U.S.) of producing industrial amounts of hydrogen is steam-methane reforming (SMR). In other words: You take methane gas (CH4), and you chuck a load of steam (H2O) at it under high pressure. The chemistry gods do their thing, and you get a bunch of hydrogen (yay!) and a load of CO2. If you’ve been reading about climate change, you might recall that CO2 is something we’re trying to avoid. As you’re cruising your saucy Toyota Mirai, Honda Clarity or Hyundai Nexo into the sunset with a drizzle of water toppling out of the tail pipe, without a trace of CO2 in sight, it’s easy to feel smug. There’s a snag: Unless you know where the hydrogen came from, it’s possible that instead of being thrown out of the tail-pipe of your car, it was instead produced at a big factory somewhere. Whoops. Of course, there’s a chance they capture and repurpose the CO2 at the source, but wouldn’t it be delightful if we didn’t produce it in the first place? Funny you should mention that.