On the eve of gasworld’s annual Hydrogen Edition, I thought I’d share some thoughts on a very different kind of challenge we face in the transition to a hydrogen society. A challenge in perception that perhaps runs even deeper than we may realise.
I don’t know about you, but I keep seeing the term ‘hopium’ or, to be more accurate, #hopium, as this is largely found on the social media channels we’re all so familiar with today – and that doesn’t just mean it’s something from the wide open forum of Twitter. It’s trending on other networks too.
It’s the terminology for irrational or unwarranted optimism; false hope, essentially. More than that, it’s an apparent ‘addiction’ to those false hopes. A great many in the wider energy sector and particularly the all-electric niche, at least from what I have seen, are taking great pleasure in playing on this term and making the most of simultaneously fusing ‘h’ for hydrogen and hopium. It’s become a hashtag for deriding the notion of the hydrogen economy and all those that believe in it.
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