Colours of hydrogen: Using systems thinking to bring energy transitions and sustainability into the classroom.

Hydrogen gas has the potential to be a vital and expanding piece of the complex sustainability puzzle at the nexus of energy transitions, climate change, production of industrial products and ammonia. And with any promising development come exaggerated claims for what hydrogen can contribute, and sometimes liberal doses of greenwashing. Systems thinking provides tools and approaches to unravel that complexity and to use hydrogen as a rich context to curriculum topics such as thermochemistry, kinetics, catalysis, electrochemistry, climate change and materials. At the King’s Centre for Visualization in Science (KCVS.CA) we have created interactive learning tools to help students map the hydrogen system, make sense of both the promise and challenges of greatly expanded use of hydrogen, and meet learning outcomes for core chemistry content. The interactive hydrogen hub learning tool helps students understand how we currently produce and use hydrogen, the historical milestones of hydrogen research, its proposed future uses in industry, its role as a potential energy carrier, and the effects it could have on the global system. We have mapped this learning tool onto the program of studies for several science courses in the Alberta high school curriculum. We have also just released “the Colours of Hydrogen” game, built using the Unity gaming engine, where users build a hydrogen factory and learn about the sustainability and climate dimensions to the different colours of hydrogen (hydrogen made from different sources). This project has received support from ATCO’s Community Energy Fund. Teachers will come away with a better understanding of the opportunities and challenges for hydrogen as a key part of our energy mix, and concrete ideas for how to map these onto the program of studies for Science and Chemistry course. They will also know that hydrogen is more than a colourless, flammable gas that took down the Hindenburg.