Now is the time severely limit the emissions of CO2 and CH4

From an Article by Suzanne Mattei, Dennis Wamsted, & Seth Feaster of the Institute for Energy, Economics and Financial Analysis, December 19, 2023

The small and shrinking market potential for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is a reality.

Key Takeaways:

The U.S. Department of Energy is negotiating with several selected companies to establish regional hydrogen hubs that derive hydrogen from methane. They will be costly, and DOE must ask hard questions before it commits the funding.

DOE is under pressure to put the cart before the horse—to build hydrogen projects based on unproven technologies and undemonstrated markets.

By the time DOE’s selected applications are processed and the surviving projects are built, EV market trends will have expanded the already strong role of BEVs substantially, weighing against most vehicular uses of hydrogen.

If DOE fails to exercise discretion in reviewing and finalizing the hydrogen project proposals the result is likely to be a substantial waste of taxpayer dollars for an outsized hydrogen-based economy that will never arrive.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is negotiating with several companies to build costly hydrogen hubs that derive hydrogen from natural gas (methane), but the agency must ask hard questions before committing any more public funds for the “blue hydrogen” projects, according to the latest Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) report.

Public dollars should not be sunk into projects that are likely to fail to achieve financial viability due to a weak market, IEEFA warns, and the market scenario for hydrogen in vehicular transportation is particularly troubling.

The scale of the hydrogen push does not make sense from an economic perspective. Despite the influx of federal funding, the long-term viability of the proposed hydrogen hubs (H2Hubs) will likely still be ruled by actual market forces.

In a 2022 report, IEEFA found hydrogen had an extremely limited future in the market, including vehicular transportation, warning that the H2Hubs may be obsolete before they launch. With the rapid advances in battery electric technology and sustained growth in its market share, the market scenario for hydrogen in vehicular transportation is even more dubious today.

“DOE is under pressure to put the cart before the horse—to build hydrogen projects based on unproven technologies and undemonstrated markets,” said Suzanne Mattei, IEEFA energy policy analyst and author of the report. “But the agency has statutory authority to use good judgment to avoid sinking tax dollars into white elephants.”

Six of the seven hydrogen hubs selected by DOE to receive federal funding intend to market some portion of the hydrogen gas for use in transportation. The infrastructure required will take some years to develop. Given market trends, time is not on hydrogen’s side. This IEEFA report, part of a series, examines the dwindling market for hydrogen in vehicular transportation.

The report finds:

DOE makes unrealistic assumptions about the vehicle market for hydrogen. In 2020, it projected hydrogen could power 18% of cars and 26% of light-duty trucks. Now, just three years later, the agency recognizes hydrogen technology has lost to battery electric technology in the light-duty vehicle market.

Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) will dominate the U.S. market for zero-emission passenger cars, pickup trucks and other light vehicles because car manufacturers and customers have overwhelmingly moved in that direction.

Battery technology is making significant inroads into bus and medium-duty truck sales, and is already predicted to dominate the zero-emission medium-duty truck market. Projections indicate battery technology also is likely to capture most of the short-haul heavy-duty truck market.

BEVs also may well encroach on the regional long-haul market. Only 9% of U.S. trucks are engaged in long-haul service, defined by DOE as trucking more than 250 miles, and within that segment, an even smaller portion accounts for trips of a distance of 1,000 miles or more.

US Department of Energy Investments in Hydrogen Production Should Scale to Market Realities

Here is the Governor of Delaware describing the State’s plans

From an Article by Maryann Pugh, PA Chester County News, December 23, 2023

WILMINGTON, DE — A historic conference held at the Chase Center on the Riverfront this week has placed Delaware firmly at the forefront of the clean hydrogen revolution. Governor John Carney, U.S. Senators Tom Carper and Chris Coons, and Congresswoman Lisa Blunt Rochester hosted U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Deputy Secretary David Turk to discuss the enormous potential of clean hydrogen energy for Delaware and the region.

The Mid-Atlantic Clean Hydrogen (MACH2) proposal, a public-private venture uniting Delaware, southeastern Pennsylvania, and southern New Jersey, was selected by the DOE in October as one of the country’s seven regional clean hydrogen hubs. This prestigious designation comes with a robust $750 million federal grant, courtesy of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

The Clean Hydrogen for the Mid-Atlantic Conference brought together over 300 regional stakeholders to delve into the hub’s expected positive impact on regional economies, public health, and the environment. Distinguished guests and panelists included representatives from Bloom Energy, Chesapeake Utilities, First State Hydrogen, PBF Energy, DART, University of Delaware Center for Clean Hydrogen, Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, and the Delaware Workforce Development Board.

The MACH2 initiative aligns with President Biden’s ambitious environmental targets: a fully clean electrical grid by 2035 and net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. It is expected to reinforce national energy security and create approximately 20,000 well-paying clean energy jobs, including union jobs. The plan involves producing, distributing, and utilizing clean hydrogen to power everything from vehicles and airplanes to industries, leveraging the region’s highly skilled, unionized workforce and strong manufacturing, chemical, and bioscience sectors.

“Hydrogen hubs present a win-win-win for our climate, our communities and union workforce, and for the economy,” said David Turk, DOE Deputy Secretary. “Clean hydrogen is the Swiss Army Knife of clean energy technologies. It can decarbonize some of our hardest-to-abate sectors, like heavy industry and transportation, and can provide long-duration energy storage.”

Governor John Carney echoed Turk’s enthusiasm, emphasizing the significance of Delaware being selected as one of the seven regional hydrogen hubs. “This designation will bring $750 million for Delaware and our partners in the region to build a clean energy industry that will create thousands of good union jobs,” said Governor Carney. “The point of cleaner energy is to make things cleaner and better for people – especially those who live in disadvantaged communities. There will be an opportunity at each stage for the Delawareans to weigh in and shape these projects, and we encourage the public to participate.”

As Delaware steps into the future with this clean hydrogen initiative, the potential for economic growth, environmental sustainability, and community involvement is clear. The MACH2 project represents not just a step, but a giant leap forward in the journey towards a cleaner, greener future.

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READ ALSO THIS STORY: PA Senator Casey Questions Biden Administration’s Proposed Hydrogen Tax Credit Rule

Gov. Josh Shapiro touts federal investment in hydrogen hubs alongside Philadelphia union leaders earlier this year

This month, Biden announced that, as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that passed in 2021, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) will spend $7 billion on seven regional hubs across the country. Two of these hubs will serve Pennsylvania, which has the Keystone State’s governor twitterpated.

“Today, Pennsylvania is positioning itself as the leader of our country’s clean energy future and creating thousands of new, good-paying union jobs,” said Shapiro.

Most hubs have partnered with trade unions, such as Steamfitters Local 420 and Philadelphia Building and Construction Trades Council. Trade unions are chomping at the bit for these projects to start. “We have a well-trained, well-prepared union workforce ready to go,” said Ryan Boyer, head of the Philadelphia Building and Construction Trades Council.

However, even labor-friendly economists aren’t bullish about the ability of these hydrogen hubs to create permanent jobs. Sean O’Leary, senior researcher at the left-leaning Ohio River Valley Institute, stated he’s “wary of claims of job creation.” AND, “Both of (the proposals) are, to a large degree, based on retrofitting existing facilities and infrastructure,” said O’Leary. “The problem is retrofitting … doesn’t increase output or employment other than in temporary construction jobs.”

Though the DOE estimates that the two Pennsylvania-serving hubs will create 40,000 jobs, only 9,400 will be permanent. Compared to Pennsylvania’s oil and gas industry (which employs 424,000 people statewide), hydrogen hubs are a drop in the bucket of labor markets. In addition to exaggerated job numbers, environmentalists are skeptical of hydrogen’s ability to cut carbon emissions.

Hydrogen relies heavily on fossil fuels. According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, 96% of global hydrogen production uses natural gas, coal, and oil. Environmental groups are crying foul on the overhyped claims about clean hydrogen, suggesting that hydrogen is less of a boon and more of a boondoggle.

The Delaware Riverkeeper Network, a conservationist organization dedicated to protecting the Delaware River Watershed, strongly condemned the hydrogen hubs, claiming the DOE project “throws taxpayer money at a false solution to the climate crisis by stimulating dirty energy development that will increase greenhouse gas emissions and pollution and degrade air and water quality despite claims that hydrogen is ‘clean’ and an alternative to fossil fuels.”

Environmentalists are also displeased with the lack of public details for these hubs as lawmakers and regulators keep the plans close to their chests. A Spotlight PA piece described these hydrogen hub plans as “shrouded in secrecy.”

Even hydrogen advocates struggle to remain optimistic about these projects. “We’ve been pretty disappointed with the lack of transparency so far,” said Pete Budden, a hydrogen policy specialist and advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a New York-based environmental nonprofit. “It’s made it really difficult to advocate around these projects.”

The long-term viability of these hubs is suspicious. DOE’s goal of reducing the cost of hydrogen generation to $1 per kilogram is “out of reach,” according to feasibility studies. Even with significant federal subsidies, businesses still consider hydrogen hubs a “high-risk investment.”

Besides financial viability, government regulations also threaten the hubs’ feasibility. About 95% of U.S.-produced hydrogen uses natural gas. To reach near-zero emissions, this form of hydrogen production requires carbon capture.

Yet, some Pennsylvania lawmakers are eager to discourage this form of hydrogen and further subsidize more-expensive hydrogen produced from renewable sources. If Shapiro and Biden want hydrogen hubs to succeed, they may want to persuade their lawmaking peers to adopt a lighter regulatory touch.

However, Shapiro and Biden might not have to thread the needle between good-paying union jobs and green energy; hydrogen hubs provide little or neither.

>>> Elizabeth Stelle is director of policy analysis for the Commonwealth Foundation.

Plenty of options exist to locate solar panels and electrical components

From an Article by Bill McKibben, New Yorker Magazine, November 20, 2023

A Department of Energy report promotes a new system that could remake the energy grid.

On any given Monday in Vermont, Josh Castonguay, the vice-president of innovation at that state’s Green Mountain Power utility, told me, he studies the forecast for the days ahead, asking questions like “What’s it looking like from a temperature standpoint, a potential-of-load standpoint? Is there an extremely hot, humid stretch of a few days coming? A really cold February night?”

If there is trouble ahead, Castonguay prepares, among other things, Vermont’s single largest power plant, which isn’t exactly a power plant at all—or, at least, not as we normally think of one. It’s an online network, organized by the utility, of forty-five hundred electric storage batteries (currently, most of them are Tesla Powerwalls), spread out across more than three thousand Vermont homes.

The network also includes a broad array of residential rooftop solar panels, which produce the energy stored in those batteries, and smart water heaters and E.V. chargers. The people who have these assets aren’t off the grid; they’re Green Mountain Power customers who, for a discount on their bills, agree to plug their batteries (most of which are leased to own) and appliances into the utility’s network and let the company control the devices so that they use less power at critical moments. (If customers need to override the company’s commands, they can.)

This means that Castonguay (or, really, his algorithms) can program storage batteries to be charged a hundred per cent before a storm hits. Or, if it’s going to be a hot day, he can preheat water heaters in many homes in the morning, so that in the afternoon, as the temperature rises, more power will be available to run air-conditioners. He can also precool some big buildings in the morning. “Then, if you think about it, the building itself is the battery,” he said, in the sense that it stores chilled air for later in the day. “We have about fifty megawatts” of this distributed power, Castonguay told me. “At the scale of Vermont, that’s a lot.”

Utilities have always been able to dispatch supply, bringing power plants, which are often in idle mode, online as demand requires. Now they’re increasingly able to call up small, individual home power plants and dispatch demand as well, turning down thermostats or delaying car charging.

Green Mountain Power is at the forefront of this push; last month, it announced plans to install storage batteries for many of its customers — two hundred and seventy thousand homes and businesses, in total — in the next decade, pending regulatory approval. (Castonguay says it is testing a new home battery system, from FranklinWH— a company named for Ben Franklin, who actually coined the term “battery” — and that this apparatus seems to work as well as the Powerwall.)

But other companies are starting to follow. Green Mountain Power’s former C.E.O., Mary Powell, left three years ago and soon took over Sunrun, which supplies rooftop solar panels and storage batteries for hundreds of thousands of homes nationwide, and serves as a third-party power aggregator for several utilities. “We’re sitting on more than 1.1 gigawatt-hours of installed storage capacities just with our customers now,” she told me recently, much of it in California, where the company is based.

From August through October, as a series of heat waves pushed consumption up in that state, Pacific Gas and Electric was buying up to thirty megawatts of power through Sunrun every evening to keep peak demand down in its grid system. Sunrun’s customers who provided the energy got a check for seven hundred and fifty dollars.

“We went from contract to operation in six months,” Powell said. “You simply could not get a resource of that size built and operationalized any other way in that time frame.” And, she added, “it’s not just that we can make a more reliable, resilient grid” by drawing on the scattered resources; “We can also make a much more affordable grid,” because being able to use residential power means not having to build big, new power plants to meet peak demand. Taking in that money saved, she added, “We can shave ten billion dollars a year off the price of the country’s power system.”

To be continued ….

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Source ~ The Next Power Plant Is on the Roof and in the Basement | Bill McKibben, The New Yorker, November 20, 2023

“Clean Energy Investing” is taking many different paths, not all clean!

From an Article by Kerry Hebden, The Chemical Engineer, November 17, 2023

THE White House has announced up to US$3.5bn in funding to strengthen domestic battery manufacturing as part of President Biden’s Investing in America agenda.

Batteries are seen as a critical part of the transition to a clean energy economy. However, China dominates the global electric vehicle battery supply chain. A key driver in that is their world-leading refinery capacity when it comes to critical components like cobalt, nickel sulphate, lithium hydroxide, and graphite.

Graphite is used in EV battery anodes, the negatively charged portion of a battery, but limits recently imposed by China have fuelled uncertainty in supply chains.

Beijing has also imposed similar restrictions on gallium and germanium – two key metals used primarily in the production of semiconductors and solar panels.

Added to the restriction worries is the global demand for lithium batteries, which is expected to surge more than five-fold by 2030 as countries push to reach net zero.

By closing the gap in supply chain disruptions and accelerating domestic battery production, the US will be less reliant on imports, said Jennifer M Granholm, the country’s secretary of energy. “Positioning the United States front and centre to meet the growing demand for advanced batteries is how we boost our global competitiveness, maintain and create good-paying jobs, and strengthen our clean energy economy.”

The US$3.5bn funding is being allocated from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law – the same act that recently allocated up to US$7bn for seven hydrogen hubs. It is the second round of funding to boost domestic production of advanced batteries and battery materials nationwide.

The first, announced last year, allocated US$3bn to 15 projects, including companies that mine critical minerals like nickel, used in lithium batteries.

In this next round, the Department of Energy (DOE) is prioritising next-generation technologies and battery chemistries, in addition to lithium-based technologies. It is also calling for projects that will increase separation of battery-grade critical materials, expand production facilities for cathode and anode materials production, and expand battery component manufacturing facilities.

The DOE is also aiming to recover rare earth elements (REEs) and critical minerals needed for clean energy technologies, by extracting and separating them out from the billions of tons of coal waste and ash produced by mining across the US.

When REEs are mined within the US, they are then shipped overseas for processing, before being sold back in more expensive products. The new facility, which is supported by a US$140m investment, and hailed as a first-of-its-kind facility, will not only reduce new mining projects, but will also bypass the need to refine waste abroad.

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Thursday, November 2, 2023 @ WV-DEP
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Air Quality Permit Notice: Notice of Open Comment Period ~ Form Energy, Inc.

On July 7, 2023, Form Energy, Inc. applied to the WV Department of Environmental Protection, Division of Air Quality (DAQ) for a construction permit to build an Iron-Air Battery Manufacturing Facility located at 1725 Main Street, Weirton, WV, at latitude 40.42022 and longitude -80.59261. A preliminary evaluation has determined that all State and Federal air quality requirements will be met by the proposed construction. The DAQ is providing notice to the public of an open comment period for Permit Application R13-3625.

The following potential emissions will be authorized by this permit action: Particulate Matter less than 2.5 microns, 15.23 tons per year (TPY); Particulate Matter less than 10 microns, 15.94 TPY; Particulate Matter, 15.94 TPY; Sulfur Dioxide, 9.78 TPY; Oxides of Nitrogen, 27.67 TPY; Carbon Monoxide, 48.94 TPY; Volatile Organic Compounds, 80.45 TPY; and Hazardous Air Pollutants, 7.16 TPY.

Written comments or requests for a public meeting must be received by the DAQ before 5:00 p.m. on Friday, December 1, 2023. A public meeting may be held if the Director of the DAQ determines that significant public interest has been expressed, in writing, or when the Director deems it appropriate.

Joe Kessler, PE. Engineer, WV Department of Environmental Protection, Division of Air Quality, 601 57th Street, SE, Charleston, WV 25304
Telephone: 304/926-0499, ext. 41271; Email: joseph.r.kessler@wv.gov

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McGeehan Reports Form Energy’s Ties To Foreign Interests

https://www.theintelligencer.net/news/top-headlines/2023/02/mcgeehan-reports-form-energys-ties-to-foreign-interests/

The climate crisis will require life style changes and spending changes!

From Stephanie Wissman, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, November 9, 2023

Regarding the article “Pittsburgh-based plan passed over as hydrogen hub selections draw statewide praise” (Oct. 13, TribLIVE): Building a lower carbon future means ensuring the success of the Department of Energy’s new hydrogen hubs. The hubs are networks of clean hydrogen producers, consumers and connective infrastructure working together to kick-start the growth of a low-carbon hydrogen economy.

Pennsylvania and the Appalachian region’s abundant natural gas and skilled workforce make our area a prime location for hydrogen development, with the promise of economic growth and advancing shared climate goals.

A recent study found that if policies are implemented to support all types of hydrogen development, it could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 37% through 2050 and inject billions of dollars into the economy through jobs. To unlock these benefits, we need to start building the necessary infrastructure.

Given a workforce of over 423,000 already supported by the natural gas and oil industry, Pennsylvania is ready to embrace this new energy opportunity. With over half the proposed hubs using hydrogen produced from natural gas and carbon capture, this project will kick-start the next generation of energy development.

Pennsylvania has a proud history of energy production and a wealth of potential for innovation. Let’s all work together to make hydrogen a cornerstone of our cleaner energy future.

>>> Stephanie Catarino Wissman, Executive Director, American Petroleum Institute Pennsylvania, Harrisburg

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‘Climate Scam’: 180+ Groups Tell Biden to Drop Support for Hydrogen

From an Article by Jake Johnson, Common Dreams, August 22, 2023

“Calling hydrogen clean energy is a scam to prop up the oil and gas industry,” said one campaigner.

More than 95% of hydrogen produced in the United States is made using fossil fuels, but that hasn’t stopped its backers — including industry groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — from touting the energy source as critical to the fight against climate change.

A diverse coalition of advocacy organizations on Tuesday implored the Biden administration to stop buying into the hype.

In a letter to officials at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), more than 180 groups called on the administration to abandon plans to invest in hydrogen projects, warning that “a large-scale buildout of hydrogen infrastructure will further exacerbate the climate crisis and disproportionately harm people of color, low-income communities, and Indigenous peoples.”

Two recently enacted pieces of legislation—the Inflation Reduction Act and a bipartisan infrastructure measure championed by oil industry ally Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.)—include benefits for the hydrogen industry.

The latter bill authorized the Department of Energy to spend roughly $8 billion on developing Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs (H2Hubs), drawing outrage from community organizers in Colorado, New Mexico, and other states behind the Western Interstate Hydrogen Hub, a project aimed at expanding U.S. hydrogen production.

“We recognize that the Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act directs DOE to fund these hubs, but we ask DOE to find a different path and reject this false solution. It’s time for DOE to do the right thing,” the groups wrote in their letter on Tuesday.

The groups behind the letter — including the Center for Biological Diversity and Food & Water Watch — note that hydrogen production generates significant planet-warming emissions.

“Hydrogen lifecycle emissions which use carbon capture and storage are 20% greater than directly burning natural gas or coal, and 60% greater than burning diesel oil, because of the increased fossil fuels required to power it,” the letter states. “The process of producing gray and blue hydrogen is a major source of fugitive methane emissions from flaring, transportation, and other upstream processes—releasing even more potent greenhouse gases and exacerbating atmospheric warming over the next two decades.”

“President Biden can’t claim to be a climate leader while his administration continues to embrace the hydrogen climate scam and other policies that continue to perpetuate fossil fuel production and infrastructure.”

As Nature explained in an editorial warning against “overhyping” hydrogen, “Most hydrogen is currently made by processes—such as steam reformation of natural gas (methane)—that produce large amounts of CO2 as a by-product.”

“Although ‘green’ hydrogen can be made by using electricity from renewable sources to split water molecules,” the outlet added, “this process is costly compared with more conventional production methods.”

Silas Grant, a campaigner with the Center for Biological Diversity, said Tuesday that “calling hydrogen clean energy is a scam to prop up the oil and gas industry.”

“The Biden administration’s plans to expand this dirty energy will only increase oil and gas extraction at a time when the climate emergency demands the opposite,” said Grant. “We need investment in affordable, reliable, community-supported renewable energy like wind and solar.”

The coalition’s letter comes two months after New Mexico-based advocacy organizations urged the Biden administration to reject funding for the Western Interstate Hydrogen Hub, arguing the initiative would “devastate public health, clean air, Indigenous sacred places, and the climate.”

“The climate crisis poses a grave threat to all life on Earth,” the groups wrote in a letter to the U.S. Energy Department. “DOE has the power to help lead a transformation to a more sustainable future. To do so, you must help phase out fossil fuels and reject false solutions like hydrogen.”

But the Biden White House has yet to waver in its support for hydrogen, claiming in a brief last month that “clean hydrogen has the potential to play an important role in decarbonizing the U.S. economy.”

Jim Walsh, policy director at Food & Water Watch, countered Tuesday that investments in hydrogen are “a distraction from real climate action that will cause more pollution, more strain on water resources, and more extraction of climate warming fossil fuels.”

“President Biden can’t claim to be a climate leader while his administration continues to embrace the hydrogen climate scam and other policies that continue to perpetuate fossil fuel production and infrastructure,” Walsh added.

The hydrogen hubs will likely serve corporations not communities!

From an Article by Alex Dalton, Chicago Tribune, November 5, 2023

At a virtual event held on Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, leaders with the Midwest Alliance for Clean Hydrogen discussed details of “hydrogen hub” projects across the region that stand to receive up to $1 billion in federal investment.

MachH2, which brings together over 60 public and private entities across Indiana, Illinois and Michigan, was one of seven funding recipients announced in October, alongside partnerships based in the Pacific Northwest, the mid-Atlantic, Appalachia, California, the Texas Gulf Coast and the Upper Midwest. The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act set aside $7 billion for the hubs with the goal of fighting climate change.

MachH2 chief integration officer Neil Banwart, who also serves as managing director of the Indianapolis-based nonprofit Energy Systems Network, unveiled a map that included the locations of eight of the hydrogen hub’s nine planned projects during the Wednesday meeting, and fielded a range of questions from community members.

When burned, fossil fuels produce carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that has played a large role in the warming of the planet. Burning hydrogen, by contrast, bonds hydrogen atoms with oxygen to produce only water as a byproduct. Hydrogen’s advocates, industry leaders and elected officials among them, say that replacing fossil fuels with hydrogen in energy-intensive industrial processes can help lower their carbon footprint.

However, as the hydrogen hubs’ critics have been quick to point out, creating hydrogen requires energy, and the source of the energy used affects the process’s overall environmental impact. Hydrogen can be separated from the oxygen atoms in water using electricity through a process called electrolysis.

If the process uses energy from wind, solar or other renewable sources, then this so-called “green” hydrogen can be produced and burned without carbon emissions. “Pink” hydrogen is produced using energy from a nuclear reactor, which does not involve direct carbon emissions. “Blue” hydrogen — the cheapest and most widespread method of production today, according to the Department of Energy — is produced by reacting natural gas with steam, producing carbon dioxide as a byproduct.

Banwart said that MachH2 will take an “all of the above hydrogen production approach,” including green, pink and blue hydrogen production. A hydrogen production node planned for Northwest Indiana to be operated by the energy giant BP — the only MachH2 project planned for the Hoosier state — will produce blue hydrogen and offset the process’s environmental impact using carbon capture and storage.

In his presentation, Banwart acknowledged that blue hydrogen is a controversial component of the hub’s plans. “I don’t think we’re gonna settle the debate tonight, but I do want to emphasize that blue hydrogen can be very low carbon,” he told attendees, adding that the carbon intensity of the hub’s hydrogen production will be subject to independent review.

“By taking this approach to pursue multiple forms of clean hydrogen including blue, pink and green, we can move more quickly, we can scale the production and the distribution of these molecules all across the Midwest, and that will allow us to decarbonize difficult to decarbonize sectors.”

BP explained its carbon storage plans, which involve building pipelines to move liquid carbon dioxide from its hydrogen production node to suitable injection sites south of Lake County, at a series of public meetings earlier this autumn. The company was met with a mixed reaction from community members, some of whom voiced concerns over possible negative environmental impacts stemming from failures in pipelines or injection wells.

The 2020 rupture of a carbon dioxide pipeline in Satartia, Mississippi, which resulted in 45 hospitalizations, has stoked public fears about the prospect of more CO2 pipelines. While carbon dioxide is neither combustible nor poisonous, it is denser than air and can cause asphyxiation by displacing oxygen near the ground.

John Rupp, a clinical associate professor emeritus at the Indiana University O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, believes that carbon capture in Indiana will do more good than harm.

While CO2 pipelines do come with some risks, Rupp told the Post-Tribune, they are less dangerous than the pipelines carrying highly combustible fossil fuels that already crisscross the state. Further, he noted, the class VI permits issued to CO2 injection sites by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency come with extremely stringent guidelines for safety and monitoring.

“It’s very very high level of management if it’s done in accordance with the permit’s stipulations, so I wouldn’t be concerned if it were in my own backyard,” he said. “But that’s not to say that when people have concerns that they shouldn’t be listened to or discounted. There’s valid concerns and contamination of groundwater is a reasonable thing to be concerned about and so BP or whoever the developer is should do a good job at understanding that concern and addressing those but I think from a technological standpoint the management is excellent.”

So far, not all of blue hydrogen’s critics have been convinced. Several attendees of the Wednesday meeting raised concerns over the practice. Chris Chyung, the executive director of Indiana Conservation Voters, told the Post-Tribune on Thursday that he sees the BP plan as a continuation of Northwest Indiana’s history as an industrial sacrifice zone. He noted that while pink and green hydrogen production are part of MachH2′s plans, that technology will be employed outside of the state.

“As a native Hoosier it was clear from the presentation last night that right now MachH2 is looking at basically exporting the dirtiest form of the hydrogen production that’s tied to fossil fuel burning to Indiana,” he said. “We’ve seen this time and time again, especially in North Lake County with the industrial lakefront and the steel mills.”

Banwart said that it is too early to provide estimates for the share of MachH2′s total hydrogen production that will be taken up by each production type. The partnership submitted a detailed application for federal funds which has not been made public — this is due to the competitive nature of the application process, Banwart said.

Funding for MachH2 and the other six hydrogen hub partnerships is contingent on the success of negotiations between the hubs and the Department of Energy. If successful, the hub projects will enter a four-phase implementation process that will last between seven and thirteen years, with DOE funds paid out at designated intervals.

OCED staff stressed at the Wednesday meeting that public input will play a significant role in all stages of the process. Each hydrogen hub is required to develop a community benefits plan laying out quantifiable benefits to affected communities, such as employment and training opportunities.

Chyung said that his organization has requested to be part of a MachH2 advisory committee and is waiting to hear back from the partnership. He is cautiously optimistic, he said, that MachH2 will take input from activists and community members seriously as it continues to plan its projects.

“I’m really hoping that in the coming weeks we will see a barrage of community engagement from MachH2 and a real sincerity and willingness to open this process up to members of the community because again, this is taxpayer money,” he said. “This is a billion dollars of taxpayer money and we should all have a stake at the table and right now we simply don’t.”

©2023 Chicago Tribune. Visit at chicagotribune.com.

James Hansen’s goal is to protect grandchildren, a noble effort!

From an Article by Bob Berwyn, Inside Climate News, 11/2/23

James Hansen, the scientist who first sounded the climate alarm in Congress, sees a decrease in aerosol pollution driving a surge of warming and criticizes the U.N. climate science panel, drawing a backlash from other researchers.

During the past year, the needles on the climate dashboard for global ice melt, heatwaves, ocean temperatures, coral die-offs, floods and droughts all tilted far into the red warning zone. In summer and fall, monthly global temperature anomalies spiked beyond most projections, helping to drive those extremes, and they may not level off anytime soon, said James Hansen, lead author of a study published today in the journal Oxford Open Climate Change that projects a big jump in the rate of warming in the next few decades.

But the research was controversial even before it was published, and it may widen the rifts in the climate science community and in the broader public conversation about the severity and imminence of climate impacts, with Hansen criticizing the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for underestimating future warming, while other researchers, including IPCC authors, lambasted the new study.

The research suggests that an ongoing reduction of sulfuric air pollution particles called aerosols could send the global average annual temperature soaring beyond the targets of the Paris climate agreement much sooner than expected, which would sharply increase the challenges faced by countries working to limit harmful climate change under international agreements on an already treacherous geopolitical stage.

Differences about climate science projections is not the main problem, said Jeffery Sachs, director of the Columbia University Earth Institute, who moderated a panel presentation by the authors of the new study. “We’re in a grim situation,” he said. “And it’s even grimmer that the politicians have failed their responsibility to the world now for quite a long time. We have a massive political failure. Our politicians like wars. They don’t want to save the planet, in the right way.”

Hansen and the international co-authors also reanalyzed paleoclimate records going back several thousand years and found that the planet’s most important ocean heat transport currents could slow or shut down this century because they are more sensitive to increasing freshwater from melting ice than shown by widely used climate models, including those used as the basis for scientific projections by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has also been criticized by other scientists, including some who are authors with the IPCC, for downplaying climate risks.

The findings suggest that the same widely used models and projections also downplay how fast vast global ice sheets could melt and speed sea level rise to a rate that would be difficult to adapt to, the authors of the new paper said.

Combining the the paleoclimate data with modeling and detailed observations from the last few decades, the team concluded that the world is in for a wild ride of climate impacts, including possible superstorms that could toss house-sized boulders to the top of seaside cliffs, radical changes to global rainfall patterns that would affect agriculture in densely populated regions and possibly several meters of sea level rise by 2100, as compared to the IPCC-projected range of .29 to 1.1 meters.

“Look at what we are seeing the last few months at the current level of warming,” said co-author Leon Simons, a researcher with the Club of Rome, in the Netherlands. “We see the impacts happening now. The forest fires in Canada are a very concrete example, emitting almost 2 billion tons of CO2 and bringing smoke to Europe. That’s just one example. There will be much more of that in the next few years.”

A Surge of Alarming Studies and Public Actions From Researchers

In the last few years, Hansen, Simons and several other research groups have tried to raise awareness about the potential for sudden and unexpected climate shocks in the near future that would affect most people alive right now. For example, studies show the growing risk of multiple simultaneous crop failures in different parts of the world that would seriously threaten global food security.

On Sept. 19, the Stockholm Resilience Center published research showing that six of nine climate-related planetary boundaries have been breached, which “risks the stability of the entire planet,” according to the authors, including Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and Konrad “Koni” Steffen, who researched and warned of the dangers of a Greenland Ice Sheet meltdown until his untimely death in a crevasse there in 2020.

Last week, the Alliance of World Scientists said “moral urgency” compelled them to again warn of a global climate emergency, with the currently projected 3 degrees Celsius of warming by 2100 making global societal collapse a “plausible and dangerously underexplored” possibility, a scenario the researchers wrote about in a December 2022 study.

The rise of such warnings coincides with widespread criticism that the IPCC’s scientific process is too slow to help society make decisions to deal with the rapidly changing climate, and that the panel’s key findings are watered down because politically appointed science officials and administrators have the final say over what is included in the panel’s key summary reports that are meant to inform public policy. That vicious cycle of slow and overly restrained science feeds public complacency and justifies government inaction, according to Hansen.

Hansen’s early testimony to the U.S. Congress in 1988 was politically groundbreaking, presenting decision-makers with compelling scientific information that he hoped would prompt action. When, after decades, it had not, he followed up by joining protests against the Keystone Oil Pipeline and getting arrested outside the White House in 2011, and again in 2018 in West Virginia while protesting mountaintop removal for coal mining, all while he was still head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Other researchers have also pressed for more urgency from scientists and scientific organizations recently. Rose Abramoff and Peter Kalmus interrupted a talk at the American Geophysical Union annual conference in Chicago last December, unfurling a banner urging scientists to “GET OUT OF THE LAB AND INTO THE STREETS” and and criticizing the paths outlined by major climate institutions as too slow to avert catastrophe. Abramoff was fired from her job at Oak Ridge National Laboratory for her actions at the conference.

An appeal to the energy industry for rational programs in the climate crisis

From an Article by Kevin Killough, Just The News, November 5, 2023

Billions of federal tax dollars are being poured into a fledgling hydrogen industry, and critics say the plan lacks as much forethought as the rest of the DOE green initiatives.

Other troubled green initiatives rolling out include the development of offshore wind energy and the widespread adoption of electric vehicles. This past month both the offshore wind and the electric vehicle industries have seen significant losses as a result of problems that experts, such as energy writer Robert Bryce and Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Mark Mills, have long been warning about.

Some experts are warning that the plan to replace fossil fuels with hydrogen is just as lacking in forethought and economic sensibility as EV mandates and offshore wind development. “We’re going to completely buy a hydrogen economy with your federal tax dollars. It’s just loony,” Steve Goreham, an energy researcher and author of “Green Breakdown,” told Just The News.

Hydrogen produces no carbon dioxide when burned. This makes it a candidate for use in heavy industry, which produces 40% of global carbon dioxide emissions. Replacing fossil fuel use in heavy industry is a particularly difficult challenge, but the hope is that hydrogen can satisfy that sector’s energy needs. Hydrogen can also be used for electricity generation, building heating and transportation.

Hydrogen can be created in different ways, and the methods are designated with colors. The various hydrogen hubs receiving the $7 billion are pursuing some of these methods.

With green hydrogen, water is split into hydrogen and oxygen using an electrolysis process, which means high voltage power is run through it. That process is powered with wind and solar energy.

To make blue hydrogen, natural gas is split into hydrogen and carbon dioxide with a steam reforming process. In order to be truly “blue,” the carbon dioxide has to be captured and stored. If not, it’s considered gray hydrogen.

Hydrogen can also be produced with coal, which is known as black or brown hydrogen. Nuclear energy can be used in the electrolysis process, which makes pink hydrogen.

Hydrogen, however, is not itself an energy source: It’s an energy carrier. In all the various ways to make it, converting energy into hydrogen and back to energy results in an energy loss between 18% to 46%.

Frank Lasee, a former Wisconsin state senator and president of Truth In Energy And Climate, a publication on energy and the environment, told Just The News that it makes little sense to generate electricity just to create hydrogen, which you then burn to create heat. “Why would you create electricity and then spend 35% of it to make something that you now have no infrastructure for?” Lasee said.

Lasee added that because the hydrogen atom is so small, it leaks out of containers easily. It’s difficult to transport in pipelines or tanks due to hydrogen embrittlement, which is where hydrogen degrades metals. It’s also highly explosive, as the 1937 Hindenburg Disaster illustrated.

Using wind and solar energy, Lassee said, would mean ramping up and down hydrogen production according to when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining, and unreliable industrial processes are as problematic as unreliable electricity grids.

Some of the hydrogen hubs that have been awarded funding, such as the Pacific Northwest Hydrogen Hub, plan to use hydroelectric power, which could provide reliable electricity. But even where there is a constant source of power like hydroelectric, hydrogen made through the electrolysis process requires a huge amount of water.

Lasee said that the hydrogen initiative doesn’t have any real plan for where it’s going to get the water it needs, especially out in the arid West where water from rivers is governed by strict allocation of water rights.

Many of the hydrogen hubs would produce blue hydrogen with natural gas, which has drawn criticism from environmentalists who see it as just another use of fossil fuels. Writing in Master Resource, a free market energy blog, author Goreham explained citing data from the International Energy Agency, that hydrogen produced from natural gas costs between $1 and $1.40 per kilogram to produce. When it’s produced from water with the electrolysis process, it costs around $5 per kilogram.

The Inflation Reduction Act provides a subsidy of $3 per kilogram of green hydrogen, which is three times what it costs to produce it from natural gas. “Who would ever think of something that goofy? But that’s what the inflation Reduction Act is doing,” Goreham said in an interview.

Lasee said that he believes part of the impetus for the production of hydrogen is the realization that the electricity grid can’t handle the electricity demand required to power the number of electric cars green mandates are encouraging.

Hydrogen will offer another carbon-free transportation fuel, but Lasee said, just as the quality and scarcity of charging stations is a problem for EVs, hydrogen infrastructure will need funding to build out.

The New York Times reports that the Energy Department will release some of the $7 billion in funding in initial grants for the awardees to develop more detailed proposals. The department will review those proposals for feasibility and determine if more funding for the project is warranted.

The Block Island Wind Farm, which began construction in 2015, was the first commercial-scale offshore wind farm in the U.S., and the financial and environmental problems with offshore wind have only begun to really show themselves in the past year.

There’s a long way to go before any hydrogen hubs are built and brought online. If the critics are right, there could be billions of dollars spent before the hydrogen hubs prove worth the public money.

It might be easier to get the Genie back in the bottle.

From Article by Brad McElhinny, WV Metro News, Oct. 31, 2023

Hope Gas is further describing its role in a hydrogen hub that is a multi-pronged public and private investment in the Appalachian region. Although a federal investment of almost a billion dollars was announced with a splash just a few weeks ago, specifics about aspects of the project have been taking shape more gradually.

Hope Gas intends to partner with WATT Fuel Cell Corp to produce hydrogen from natural gas for Hope’s local distribution system and residential fuel cells. A WATT fuel cell is being installed at the Hope Gas headquarters in Morgantown. The company that makes the fuel cells is working to build a construction facility. (Another partner is the gas company EQT.)

Hope aims provide fuel cells to West Virginian homes starting in 2024, ramping up over the next three years. Hope Gas plans to leverage federal grant dollars under the ARCH2 hydrogen hub project to reach a total of 5,300 WATT Fuel Cell potential customers.

“There’s only one project that DOE is funding that is bringing hydrogen into the home,” said Morgan O’Brien, chief executive of Hope Gas on MetroNews’ “Talkline.” ~ “We have this one, unique project and the punchline of it is we’re not only partnering with the government but partnering with the technology business. So we have a company that makes a fuel cell that can burn hydrogen. It can also burn natural gas as well, and it can be put in your home and basically act either as a backup generator or actually help you, basically, come off the grid at some point and use the fuel cell to be one of your sources of energy.”

Hope says West Virginia is in the top three states with electric reliability issues and that many residential customers rely on backup generators. The company says fuel cells will use a home’s access to the existing, reliable natural gas infrastructure to provide affordable, reliable power. If customers currently have a generator, Hope officials say, installation of a fuel cell will be very simple.

With such a system, natural gas is converted to hydrogen, which in turn is converted to electricity using a chemical reaction similar to a battery. No nitrogen oxides (NOx) or sulfur oxides (SOx) are emitted from fuel cells, according to Hope.

Out of the box, Hope says, fuel cells can use a blend of natural gas and 20% hydrogen. They can be converted to use 100% hydrogen. In addition, according to Hope, fuel cells can be paired with solar panels to charge the batteries to provide additional power to homes.

“You could theoretically be buying hydrogen in your home, putting a fuel cell in your home and creating green energy in your home in West Virginia,” O’Brien said. He added, “We think once people learn about them and particularly with the hydrogen hub subsidy, these are going to be very compelling for most families.”

Shawn Bennett, division manager for energy and resilience at Battelle, one of the companies at the center of the hydrogen hub’s development, described the Hope project during an online public meeting last week.

He described it as “finding those communities who may have electricity that kind of goes in and out, providing them an opportunity for backup power — something that is reliable and something they can use all the time.”

The hydrogen hub project means having interconnected projects to produce hydrogen power, store carbon dioxide emissions and use the hydrogen power for activities like transportation or data storage.

President Joe Biden and officials with the U.S. Department of Energy on Oct. 13 announced the Appalachian hydrogen hub and six similar projects across the nation. The total federal support is $7 billion, with the Appalachian project in line for $925 million of that. Private investment is already lining up and will put up billions more in financial support.

Appalachian counties in Ohio and Pennsylvania are also participating in the hub. Officials said the project is geared toward the rich supplies of natural gas in the region, although some aspects of the project also rely on producing “green hydrogen” from renewable sources.

Other aspects of the hub include:

# — a CNX/Transgas ammonia production facility in southern West Virginia.

# — two TC Energy/Chemours facilities in the mid-Ohio Valley and Kanawha Valley to produce hydrogen through electrolysis.

# — a Fidelis/Mountaineer Gas “GigaSystem” site in the mid-Ohio Valley to use natural gas and biomass to produce hydrogen for data centers and other consumers.

# — a Hog Lick Aggregates site in north central West Virginia to use hydrogen to fuel delivery trucks, haul trucks and equipment.

# — an Empire Diversified Energy site at the tip of the Northern Panhandle producing hydrogen through anaerobically-digested food waste for industrial and transportation fuel.

# — and a Plug Power/Amazon site in northern West Virginia to produce “green hydrogen.”

“It’s going to be a long journey before we figure out all the challenges with hydrogen,” O’Brien said. “At the same time, West Virginia is rich with natural gas, so it’s not like we’re not rich and plentiful with affordable energy here and clean energy. I’m a big believer that you want to define the future, so I think it’s important for companies like Hope Gas to be engaged with hydrogen.”