January 15, 2025

Gaslighting the Energy Transition: Hydrogen cannot prevent investments from putting planet and profits at risk


Shift: Action for Pension Wealth and Planet Health’s (Shift) January 2025 report, Gaslighting the Energy Transition: Hydrogen cannot prevent investments from putting planet and profits at risk, reveals the exposure of Canadian pension funds to significant financial risks through their multi-billion-dollar investments in gas infrastructure companies facing terminal decline as the energy transition accelerates.  

Gas companies downplay their exposure to growing transition risk by talking up plans to repurpose their infrastructure for hydrogen transport – leading to “hydrogen hype” that oversells the limited role that gas infrastructure and hydrogen can actually play in the energy transition. However, these greenwashed claims do not stand up to due diligence. The report details the financial, physical, technical and political barriers which make hydrogen unsuitable as a climate solution and exposes existing gas infrastructure to significant risk of asset stranding.