President Biden’s climate policy contradictions keep piling up. Witness the family feud that blew up late last week between the renewables lobby and green groups over the Biden Administration’s new proposed rules for the Inflation Reduction Act clean hydrogen tax credit.

The IRA created a new tax credit for producing clean hydrogen from low-emissions sources. The climate lobby envisions clean hydrogen someday replacing fossil fuels in airplanes, long-distance trucking, shipping, and steel and fertilizer manufacturing. The dispute is over how the government should define “clean.” Nearly all hydrogen today is made using natural gas as a feedstock. So-called clean hydrogen can also be produced with electrolyzers powered by solar or wind that split water into hydrogen and oxygen. But this method is three times more expensive. It also isn’t practical since wind and solar don’t provide power 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

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