Password * Remember me New to Energy Central? Applying for membership with Energy Central allows you to connect with a network of more than 200,000 global power industry professionals. However, whether hydrogen truly has a low carbon footprint hinges on how the hydrogen is produced. Although hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, it is almost exclusively tied up in various compounds. Hydrogen gas is reactive, and thus there do not exist deposits of hydrogen that can be exploited. The vast majority of the world’s commercial hydrogen — over 95% by most estimates — is produced using the steam methane reforming process (SMR). In this process, natural gas is reacted with steam at an elevated temperature to produce carbon monoxide and hydrogen (which is synthesis gas, or simply syngas). A subsequent reaction — the water gas shift reaction — then reacts additional steam with the carbon monoxide to produce additional hydrogen and carbon dioxide.