Some 'green' innovations turned into disappointments in 2022: Here are 4 that faltered
It's not all bad news: some ideas are fading in favor of better ones; some may have another chance to shine in 2023.
Battery-powered electric cars and trucks became more widespread in 2022, wind and solar generation capacity continued to increase and the long-chased dream of clean fusion energy took a giant step toward becoming reality – and those were just some of the high-profile successes of green initiatives in 2022.
But some ideas also fizzled this year, or at least demonstrated they're not quite ready for mass use.
It's not all bad news — some ideas are fading in favor of better ones; some may have another chance to shine in 2023.
Here's a quick look back at several ideas once seen as promising climate-friendly innovations that fell out of favor in 2022:
Crypto tanks, but 'green' crypto hit especially hard
It's no secret 2022 was a bad year for crypto. It was an especially bad year for the notion that digital currency could be good for the planet.
A common knock against cryptocurrency was its vast energy demands at a time when countries are trying to reduce the amount of electricity they generate from burning coal or natural gas. Typically, people earn crypto – called "mining" – by using specialized computers to solve complicated math problems, spawning vast server farms in places with cheap electricity.
But several groups created new low-energy currencies like Algorand, which on Earth Day this year bought more than a dozen giant electronic billboards in New York's Times Square to tout being carbon-negative. Since that stunt, Algorand has lost about 70% of its value, as have other green cryptos like Solana, which has tanked more than 90% this year.
Of course, most cryptocurrencies tanked this year, and federal prosecutors are now targeting Samuel Bankman-Fried following the implosion of cryptocurrency exchange FTX and cryptocurrency trading firm Alameda Research.
Carbon credits for airplanes under scrutiny
For a few years, airlines made a big deal about letting passengers offset the CO2 pollution impacts of their flights by buying "offsets" that claimed to reduce the impact.
But the reality is almost no one actually does it. Last November, the CEO of European discount carrier Ryanair said only 1% of customers actually pay the extra $2.50 to offset their carbon emissions.
Experts say there was also little accountability for how the systems actually worked, or if they even had much of an impact.
After all, even if passengers bought offset credits, the plane was still going to fly. Climate investor and author Ramez Naam told USA TODAY: "Fly less. If you have to fly, buy offsets. They're not perfect but something is better than nothing. But try to fly less."
Some airlines, like United, are focusing more on sustainable aviation fuels, made with algae or hydrogen or even carbon captured from the air.
Legal troubles hamper hemp
The passage of the 2018 Farm Bill was heralded as an opportunity to see the return of widespread hemp farming in the United States, with the plant potentially used to make petroleum-free plastics and more environmentally friendly clothing and paper.
The year after the law passed, farmers planted 128,000 acres of hemp nationally, according to the federal Farm Service Agency. But it dropped to just 20,000 acres this year.
Why? While the bill legally recognized hemp and marijuana as different crops, that didn't stop legal problems for producers.
Hemp contains low amounts of the psychoactive compound THC, while marijuana contains significantly higher amounts. However, the hemp industry quickly found that any kind of processing that even temporarily raised the amount of THC could draw rapid prosecution, making it hard to turn the raw plant into useful products.
"Everybody thought the Farm Bill was going to be the silver bullet," said longtime marijuana industry expert Leslie Bocskor, who is the CEO and chairman of Indoor Harvest Corporation.
So far, that hasn't been the case. But like many hemp backers, Bocskor remains confident the industry will mature: "What we're seeing is the quiet before the good storm of textiles, plastics and paper."
Hydrogen-powered vehicles are losing to battery-powered EVs
Hydrogen-powered vehicles aim to work better than their battery-powered counterparts in cold weather and eliminate the pesky problem of slow charging. But so far battery-powered vehicles continue dominating the green transportation landscape.
There was good reason to be excited about the possibility of hydrogen cars: Like gasoline, hydrogen contains a lot of energy, pound for pound and can be quickly loaded into a fuel tank. You can manufacture hydrogen using water and electricity, and burning hydrogen inside a fuel cell produces only water vapor.
But just as natural gas fueling never really caught on aside from some niche markets, hydrogen fueling remains rare outside of California.
In Colorado, AAA is working to deploy hydrogen-powered tow trucks as a demonstration project – the first of its kind nationally.
But stay tuned: We could see a significant leap in hydrogen fueling in the coming years. This summer's Inflation Reduction Act contains significant incentives for hydrogen production facilities, which are needed to make hydrogen-fuel vehicles a reality. But those hydrogen vehicles will only be "green" if the electricity used to make their fuel itself comes from green sources like wind or solar.
