Aug. 18, 2026 5:30 AM PT
To the editor: The report on California’s fading hydrogen ambitions exposes an uncomfortable truth: Los Angeles is clinging to yesterday’s energy system while calling it progress (“Hydrogen failed as car fuel. Now California’s big dollar bet on it for green energy is fading, too,” Aug. 17).
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the City Council and Mayor Karen Bass should accelerate the adoption of proven solutions such as solar, batteries, demand response and virtual power plants. Instead, they are committing ratepayers to new combustion infrastructure designed to keep burning fossil gas while waiting for a green hydrogen supply that may never come.
Why? Our elected officials appear increasingly captured by the priorities of SoCalGas and the gas industry at large, which is fighting to preserve its pipelines and business model. That isn’t climate leadership. It’s greenwashing.
Los Angeles promised a transition away from fossil fuels. We should not accept an expensive shell game that preserves dirty, inefficient technology by giving it a cleaner-sounding fuel.
The future is clean electrons. City Hall needs the courage to embrace it.
Andrea Leon-Grossmann, Los Angeles
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To the editor: The “hydrogen blues” were vividly expressed recently when I met a woman driving a fuel-cell (i.e., hydrogen-fueled) Toyota in a Costco parking lot. I asked innocently, “Where do you get it fueled?”
She rolled her eyes and replied, “Would you like this car? I’ll sell it to you right here!”
“Thanks, but no thanks,” I responded, rolling my own eyes.
Spencer Grant, Laguna Niguel