green hydrogen

By staff - FracTracker Alliance, June 5, 2024

Key Findings

• The DOE’s lack of transparency about ARCH2 prevents meaningful public feedback, leaving communities uninformed and unable to engage in decision-making.
• Hydrogen blending raises safety concerns due to hydrogen embrittlement, potentially affecting pipelines, valves, and household appliances.
• Reliance on carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology introduces risks like subsurface carbon dioxide migration, posing threats to nearby communities.
• Fracking for methane can lead to groundwater contamination, air pollution, and health effects for nearby communities.
• While promising temporary jobs, ARCH2 is unlikely to generate significant long-term employment, potentially extending reliance on coal and gas industries and contributing to job and population loss.

Overview

The Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub (ARCH2) project is a major initiative of the U.S. Department of Energy aimed at developing a hydrogen economy in the Appalachian region. However, despite promises of significant advancement in clean energy and economic growth, the project presents substantial risks to the environment and human health and safety.

This article is based on comments submitted to the Department of Energy (DOE) by FracTracker Alliance regarding the hub’s potential environmental, health, and economic impacts on local communities, including the lack of transparency from the DOE, the dangers associated with hydrogen blending, underground gas migration risks, and the impacts of continued reliance on fossil fuel extraction.

By Joe Romm, et. al. - Delaware River Keeper, June 4, 2024

By Reid Frazier - Alleghany Front, May 30, 2024

A coalition of community and environmental groups is calling on the Department of Energy to suspend talks with a hydrogen hub in Appalachia and disclose more information about the project.

The Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub, or ARCH2, was one of seven “clean hydrogen hubs” awarded by the Department of Energy last year. 

“Very little information has been shared, and the concerns have only continued to be raised by the public,” says Tom Torres, hydrogen campaign coordinator for the Ohio River Valley Institute, which wrote a letter to the agency outlining its complaints.

The hub is a consortium of companies, governments and nonprofits that will produce hydrogen from natural gas. The DOE awarded the hub up to $925 million to produce “low-carbon” hydrogen. 

But how it will do this, and where companies will build these projects, remains unclear, Torres said. 

The groups are asking the hub to disclose information like site locations for the hydrogen projects involved in ARCH 2, as well as track records of developers associated with them. They also want community groups to be involved in negotiations, planning, construction and operation of the hub. 

“[T]he Department has done little to establish the necessary conditions for ‘deep, deep partnership,’” according to the letter, which was signed by the Ohio River Valley Institute and 54 other groups. (Ohio River Valley Institute is supported by The Heinz Endowments, which also funds The Allegheny Front.)

The letter adds that the agency has offered “scant” public information about the project: “[L]ittle more than four approximate, selectively designed, preliminary maps…and project descriptions as short as three words — and no substantive opportunity to shape this proposal while negotiations continue behind closed doors,”

Jill Hunkler, executive director of Ohio Valley Allies, a community group, said in a statement that “even the most basic details” of the project are lacking. 

“Impacted communities deserve to be informed and have their voices included in the negotiation phase,” Hunkler said. “How can we take this process seriously when the DOE has yet to answer the questions presented to them by concerned citizens in our region?”

Announced last year, the hydrogen hubs were meant to kick start a low-carbon hydrogen network around the country. When used for energy, hydrogen emits no carbon dioxide. But making hydrogen from natural gas – the most common way it is manufactured – produces carbon dioxide emissions. ARCH2 developers have said they may use carbon capture technology to store those emissions and, in the process, create 21,000 jobs. 

By Susan Phillips - Alleghany Front, April 30, 2024

On the campus of a former DuPont facility in Newark, Delaware, a group of researchers are working to create what they say is key to solving the world’s climate crisis — an affordable way to make hydrogen using renewable energy.

“It’s not a question of technical feasibility. It is a question of figuring out what is the lowest cost to produce that hydrogen,” said Balsu Lakshmanan, chief technology officer for the start-up Versogen. “We are displacing bad hydrogen with good hydrogen.”

“Bad hydrogen”

The world is full of what he referred to as “bad hydrogen.” Nearly all the hydrogen used today is made with natural gas, in a process known as “steam methane reformation,” or through coal using gasification. And while hydrogen burns clean when used in fuel cell cars, trucks and buses — emitting only water vapor — climate warming gasses like carbon dioxide are released during hydrogen production.

Ten million metric tons of hydrogen are produced in the U.S. every year. More than 1,600 miles of pipeline transports it — primarily in the Gulf Coast.

The bulk of the hydrogen is not used to power vehicles but as part of oil refining, including those in the Philadelphia region. It’s also used to help feed us all — it’s used to make ammonia, a key ingredient in fertilizer.

By Sabrina Fernandes, Hamza Hamouchene, Miriam Lang, and John Feffer - Institute for Policy Studies, April 21, 2024

By staff - Sunflower Alliance, March 27, 2024

The federal government is providing big bucks to projects that produce hydrogen as a “climate solution.” Most hydrogen produced today is fueled by fossil gas (methane) — so not really a solution at all.

Climate advocates have been advocating for “guardrails” on the program to make sure the hydrogen projects that receive federal money are really produced by new renewable energy.

But this report from Friends of the Earth reveals ways that Big Oil and other polluters are scheming to make the federal rules as lax as possible. They’re campaigning to add loopholes to the guardrails.

Under pressure from environmental groups, the Biden administration drafted guidelines for the federal subsidies that said qualifying hydrogen projects had to meet the requirements of the three guardrails. They had to be:

• powered by renewable capacity built within three years of the hydrogen facility (additionality/incrementality)
• connected to the same regional grid as the hydrogen production
  (regionality/deliverability)
• able to match renewable energy usage on an hourly basis with hydrogen production, albeit starting in 2028 (time-matching).

Fossil interests are calling for the three guardrails to be removed, weakened to the point of irrelevance, or failing that, waived for ‘first mover’ projects. They’re hoping to grab federal money intended for green energy,

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By Susan Phillips - WHYY, March 12, 2024

Cheers and jeers erupted during a speech by Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro Monday, who was in town to promote hydrogen energy at a public meeting at the Steamfitters Local 420 union hall in Northeast Philadelphia.

Shapiro began by praising Steamfitters’ president, Jim Snell, for “creating clean energy opportunities.” Snell is part of a group that includes business leaders and academics behind the Mid-Atlantic Clean Hydrogen, or MACH2 hydrogen hub plan, one of seven proposals the Department of Energy chose to curb climate emissions from heavy industry such as steelmaking, cement and fertilizer. Hydrogen only emits water vapor when burned as fuel, but the bulk of it is currently produced using fossil fuels.

“We are all in when it comes to the hydrogen hubs here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” said Shapiro, which generated applause from the crowd of more than 100 union members and fossil fuel executives.

But moments into Shapiro’s speech, the Delaware Riverkeeper Network’s Maya van Rossum stood and began shouting. Van Rossum objected to the public meeting’s location at the union hall in the far Northeast, saying it was difficult to reach. The Riverkeeper and a list of other environmental groups sent a letter to the MACH2 organizers last month asking to change the venue to a place that would be more accessible to the public and more welcoming to those who opposed the plan.

“If they are going to try to show the Department of Energy that MACH2 is engaging the public they’re going in the opposite direction,” said the Riverkeeper’s Tracy Carluccio ahead of the meeting. “We need information first. We need to be informed to ask an informed question. Where are these components? Are there new pipelines, a compressor station, hydrogen storage?”

During the meeting, van Rossum said public meetings should be held in a neutral location, like a library, rather than a union headquarters that stands to gain federal funds.

As security began to surround Van Rossum, she continued, “I’d like the Governor to please answer the question.” Union members shouted back to “sit down” and “shut up.” Soon, both environmentalists and union members were shouting “shame, shame, shame.”

“Yelling and shouting accomplishes nothing,” said Shapiro, who went on to finish his speech during the commotion and then quickly left.

By Kiley Bense - Inside Climate News, March 12, 2024

Activists want more public participation in a proposal to produce hydrogen in southeastern Pennsylvania. Touted by the Biden administration as “crucial” to the nation’s climate goals, advocates fear the federally-funded project will create more pollution and further burden environmental justice communities.

Protestors disrupted a public meeting on Monday about a federally-funded “hydrogen hub” to be located in southeastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey and Delaware that would produce, transport and store the controversial fuel at sites across the region.

While the Biden administration considers these hubs a key part of its climate agenda that would decarbonize greenhouse-gas intensive sectors of the economy like heavy industry and trucking, climate activists consider hydrogen a false solution based on unproven technology that will only lead to more fossil fuel extraction and further pollute the environment.

Minutes after Governor Josh Shapiro took the stage at a union hall in northeast Philadelphia to speak in support of the project, which will be funded with $750 million from the Department of Energy as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Delaware Riverkeeper, Maya van Rossum, stood up from her seat and demanded his attention.

“The Department of Energy said that community engagement is supposed to be a highest priority. You have yet to have a meeting with the impacted community members to hear what they have to say,” she shouted, interrupting Shapiro as he was speaking about the buy-in for hydrogen hubs at all levels of government in Pennsylvania. “When are you going to have a meeting with those community members?” she asked.

By staff - FracTracker Alliance, June 5, 2024

Key Findings

• The DOE’s lack of transparency about ARCH2 prevents meaningful public feedback, leaving communities uninformed and unable to engage in decision-making.
• Hydrogen blending raises safety concerns due to hydrogen embrittlement, potentially affecting pipelines, valves, and household appliances.
• Reliance on carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology introduces risks like subsurface carbon dioxide migration, posing threats to nearby communities.
• Fracking for methane can lead to groundwater contamination, air pollution, and health effects for nearby communities.
• While promising temporary jobs, ARCH2 is unlikely to generate significant long-term employment, potentially extending reliance on coal and gas industries and contributing to job and population loss.

Overview

The Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub (ARCH2) project is a major initiative of the U.S. Department of Energy aimed at developing a hydrogen economy in the Appalachian region. However, despite promises of significant advancement in clean energy and economic growth, the project presents substantial risks to the environment and human health and safety.

This article is based on comments submitted to the Department of Energy (DOE) by FracTracker Alliance regarding the hub’s potential environmental, health, and economic impacts on local communities, including the lack of transparency from the DOE, the dangers associated with hydrogen blending, underground gas migration risks, and the impacts of continued reliance on fossil fuel extraction.

By Abbe Ramanan, Amanda McKay, David Schlissel, Anika Juhn, et. al. - Clean Energy Group, January 18, 2024