The hope vs. hype is a common theme in hydrogen, where it's being pushed as either silver bullet or complete scam. I think it'll end up fulfilling a role similar to geothermal or hydrogen: key asset where and when it's viable, but not necessarily scalable everywhere for a number of reasons. 

The real challenge is the timing, since the benefits that would likely come from hydrogen are needed now and waiting a decade or two is simply too long for clean energy action. 

"The pro-hydrogen narrative is heavily influenced by the natural gas industry. Pipeline owners and regulated gas network operators are keen to maintain utilisation rates and avoid writing down the value of their assets. Regulators almost certainly won’t let them jack up per-unit rates to compensate for fewer volumes flowing through their assets if net zero squeezed demand — so hydrogen ‘blending’ is a great way to shield gas industry incumbents from the economic threat posed by decarbonisation."

Seb, I've never seen it summed up so well. Your description cuts to the core of why we're even considering this volatile, low-density element, one that in its pure form is non-existent in nature, as a viable source of energy.

Hydrogen is all about selling more natural gas - 100% hype.

Shell Aims to Be the World's Biggest Electric Producer, Using Natural Gas?

The scam is the product of the green energy movement, not the natural gas industry. Green energy is unreliable and intermittent  while not particularly suitable for grid reliability. In order to get around that defect, the green scammers are pushing batteries and hydrogen to store their product for use by the grid when the energy is needed. Both of those options further drive up the cost of green energy. 
 

From a thermodynamic standpoint, creating energy from hydrogen is not efficient and makes little economic sense. Clearly, this scam is being aided and abetted by politicians who get a lot of re-election money from the green energy mafia. Industry and utilities are complacent in the scam because they can sell equipment and products by going along. I rather doubt the gas pipeline folks are that involved as they already do quite well, particularly with US liquefied natural gas being sold in huge amounts overseas.

In my view, the article is pretty shallow and more consistent with the deliberate mis-direction frequently used by the green energy mafia to deflect shinning the light of truth away from their widespread corruption.