The outlook for hydrogen-powered vehicles is improving after decades of unfulfilled hype, Joann reports, thanks to unprecedented federal support and increased private investment.

Why it matters: Hydrogen fuel cells produce electricity by mixing hydrogen and air, with water vapor as the only byproduct. That makes them a promising climate solution — especially as a replacement for noisy, soot-spewing diesel trucks and industrial equipment.

• They offer a longer driving range than electric vehicle batteries, and refueling is much faster than recharging, so they could be appealing in passenger cars too.

Catch up quick: Despite its reputation as an abundant and pollution-free energy source, hydrogen has failed to take off as a fuel for many practical reasons.

• For starters, it's currently derived mostly from natural gas, which undermines its environmental benefits.
• Cleaner hydrogen, made from renewables, is expensive to produce. Plus, there's no nationwide distribution network.

What's happening: Two recent U.S. policy moves to boost hydrogen are resurrecting optimism for fuel cell vehicles.

• In October 2023, the Biden administration awarded $7 billion from the 2021 infrastructure law to establish seven regional hubs for hydrogen production.
• In December 2023, the U.S. Treasury Department proposed rules for companies to claim lucrative tax credits for clean hydrogen production under 2022's Inflation Reduction Act. The IRA also includes tax incentives for fuel cell vehicles, hydrogen infrastructure and energy storage.
• The Biden administration expects all that government spending to spur tens of billions more in private hydrogen investment.

The latest: General Motors and Honda have started producing fuel cells at a factory near Detroit, to power a new plug-in hybrid fuel cell version of Honda's CR-V crossover utility coming this spring.

• They'll also go into a line of hydrogen-powered cement mixers, dump trucks, garbage trucks and more that GM is developing with Autocar Industries, a heavy truck manufacturer.
• And GM has a new joint venture with Komatsu to develop fuel cell-powered mining trucks.

Other truck manufacturers are also bringing fuel cell trucks to market, including Toyota, Hyundai and the startup Nikola.

• Cummins has its own twist: It's developing hydrogen combustion engines, which burn hydrogen instead of diesel fuel — unlike fuel cells, which generate electricity to power a motor.
• And rivals Daimler Truck and Volvo Group teamed up on a new fuel cell venture called Cellcentric that aims to crank up large-scale production by 2025.

Be smart: Hydrogen can make sense for long-haul trucking and round-the-clock freight logistics operations, where time is money.

• But fuel cell passenger cars remain a tiny niche. Fewer than 18,000 have been sold in the U.S. since 2012, and the country has just 55 publicly available hydrogen fueling stations — all in California, where zero-emissions rules are strictest.
• Still, it's worth noting that none of the early players, including Toyota, Hyundai and BMW, have given up.

What to watch: There's still a lot of fighting over the hydrogen production tax incentive rollout, as Jael Holzman explains in Axios Pro: Energy Policy.

• Without enough guardrails, environmentalists worry the credit could wind up increasing U.S. carbon emissions.

The bottom line: Fuel cell vehicles have a long way to go — but they may finally have the energy to get there.

• "Up until two years ago, I knew we were in an uphill battle and I didn't see a wave that would change anything," says Bill Elrick, executive director of the Hydrogen Fuel Cell Partnership, a joint effort between industry and government to expand the fuel cell vehicle market.
• "I think something has shifted."

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Meta plans to start applying labels to Facebook, Instagram and Threads posts containing suspected AI-generated images, Axios AI+'s Ryan Heath reports.

Why it matters: Meta has been under pressure — including from its own Oversight Board — to develop stronger AI-generated content policies ahead of dozens of elections around the world this year.

Details: Meta's technical solution for automatically labeling AI-generated images is not yet ready — users can expect that in "coming months," the company said.

• The company will use metadata to identify AI-generated images from Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, Adobe, Midjourney and Shutterstock.
• It's also "working hard to develop classifiers that can help us to automatically detect AI-generated content, even if the content lacks invisible markers," Nick Clegg, president for global affairs, wrote in a blog post.

Plus: Meta will also push users to label their own AI-generated or digitally altered "photorealistic" content — and it may "apply penalties" if users "fail to do so," per Clegg.

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Hurricanes are getting so strong in a warming world that a Category 6 intensity should be added to the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind scale, a new study finds.

Why it matters: The research shows how significantly climate change is altering storm intensity and other characteristics, Axios Generate's Andrew Freedman writes — as well as further underscoring the scale's limitations.

Details: The paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, does not represent an official move by the National Hurricane Center to add another hurricane category.

• Instead, it offers scientific reasons for the new category to be considered.
• The researchers note that the current top category — Category 5 — has no upper bound, despite the fact that the damage potential from such a storm's maximum sustained winds increases exponentially.

What they found: The study defines a hypothetical Category 6 for hurricanes, with maximum sustained winds of greater than 192 mph.

• It shows that a number of recent tropical cyclones would have met that criteria, including Super Typhoon Haiyan, Hurricane Patricia and Super Typhoon Meranti.
• It also finds that human-caused climate change has more than doubled the risk of Category 6-strength storms since 1979.

The big picture: The study comes as scientists are having to add new classifications and colors to marine heat stress maps and alter axes on charts of ocean heat content and other climate variables as rapid, human-caused climate change brings large shifts around the globe.

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Three Minneapolis City Council members are working to create a legal, regulated way for people experiencing homelessness to camp outside, Axios Twin Cities' Kyle Stokes reports.

Why it matters: Proponents argue that a depressing cycle of encampments and city-led sweeps points to the need for a city-sanctioned alternative.

• In just the past week, Minneapolis officials cleared the same unsanctioned encampment twice — only for residents to reassemble at another location each time.

What they're saying: Nobody wants people living outside, but "we have to accept reality as it is," City Council member Aisha Chughtai tells Axios.

• "The goal is to make a deeply tragic condition as safe and regulated as possible. In the absence of codified regulation, the encampment crisis as we see it is going to continue."

The other side: Minneapolis has looked into sanctioned encampment before, a spokesperson for Mayor Jacob Frey said in a statement — but officials in other cities told them unsheltered people tended not to use city-run sites.

• As a result, the number of unsanctioned encampments in other places did not decrease, the statement said.

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