PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Energy Res.
Sec. Energy Efficiency
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenrg.2025.1674809
This article is part of the Research TopicEnergy Management, Energy Efficiency Policies, and Energy System StudiesView all 12 articles
The Lack of Systems Thinking and Interdisciplinarity is killing the Hydrogen Economy
Provisionally accepted
- Kungliga Tekniska Hogskolan Kemiteknik, Stockholm, Sweden
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Hydrogen's promise as a transformative energy solution has been consistently unfulfilled. This perspective article suggests that the primary barrier is not technological, but a systemic failure to apply holistic systems thinking and genuine interdisciplinary collaboration. Through historical analysis and contemporary case studies, we argue that only by integrating technical, economic, policy, and social expertise within a holistic systems framework across the entire value chain can hydrogen overcome its boom-and-bust cycles and become a foundational component of the low-carbon energy future.
Keywords: Hydrogen, systems thinking (ST), interdiscipinarity, hydrogen economy, Multidisciplinarity
Received: 28 Jul 2025; Accepted: 09 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Marnate. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Kumail Marnate, Kungliga Tekniska Hogskolan Kemiteknik, Stockholm, Sweden
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.