You remember hydrogen: simplest element, number one on the periodic table? Experts say that this humble atom could play a key role in the future of clean energy, and Washington — along with other partners in the Pacific Northwest — is positioning itself to be a leader in hydrogen energy technology.
In 2021, the Washington state Legislature passed the Climate Commitment Act, codifying a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 95 percent by 2050. The abundance of hydroelectricity in the state, as well as big leaps in electric vehicles over the past decade, have made that goal much more feasible.
However, a big question has hovered over a handful of fossil fuel-reliant sectors such as heavy industry, maritime transportation, freight shipping and aviation. For example, manufacturing steel and concrete requires high heat, which is most easily achieved through burning fossil fuels. Electric battery technology is not yet advanced enough to deliver sufficient power to justify its weight on big machines, such as jetliners.
This is where hydrogen comes in.
Proponents say that the lightest element in the universe can, if produced with renewably generated electricity, help decarbonize these “hard to abate” sectors. Hydrogen could also store energy for far longer than batteries when converted into a stable compound, such as ammonia. Unlike fossil fuel combustion, the only byproduct of hydrogen fuel cells is water.
So what’s the big catch? Producing hydrogen through electrolysis has historically been difficult and expensive. Many technologies that utilize hydrogen are still in their infancy and years away from being deployed on a commercial scale. Can the climate transition afford to wait on the development of clean hydrogen technologies?
Policymakers in the Pacific Northwest don’t think so. The Washington Department of Commerce (COM), Oregon and other regional governments have formed a partnership called the Pacific Northwest Hydrogen Association (PNWH2). According to Stephanie Celt, a senior energy policy specialist at COM, PNWH2 is a public-private partnership to encourage the establishment of hydrogen production facilities and other complementary industries.
The association applied earlier this month for a $1 billion regional hydrogen hub grant, funded by the 2021 infrastructure package, to kickstart investment in the field. If selected, this new hub would funnel federal dollars into hydrogen production and infrastructure projects in Oregon and Washington.
“There was a lot of interest from the state, from the private sector, from various utilities, from tribes, from environmental organizations, all looking at Washington state as a place where that kind of hub would be competitive and where we saw that as an important opportunity,” Celt said.
Celt said that Washington is an ideal place for a hydrogen hub because of the state’s relatively clean energy grid and diverse group of stakeholders and advocates dedicated to environmental justice.
When to use (and not use) hydrogen
Policymakers argue that the first use of clean hydrogen will be to replace the fossil fuel-derived hydrogen already being used in industrial processes such as chemical production. The technology to produce hydrogen with electricity already exists, which makes it possible to decarbonize this use fairly quickly.
“The absolute first best place to use it is to replace fossil hydrogen,” said Rebecca Smith, a senior energy policy analyst at the Oregon Department of Energy. “In every case that doesn’t require any technology change, it’s just truly a drag-and-drop, no-regrets strategy.”
Smith added that rolling out clean hydrogen to other manufacturing sectors where electricity is insufficient would be the next logical step.
“And then you start to get into those sectors where just electrification doesn’t make sense, and maybe you don’t have any other — or many other — decarbonization options,” Smith said. “That’s heavy industry: You can use it for high-heat industry; you can use it for certain manufacturing; you can use it to produce green ammonia, which can then produce a fertilizer that has a much lower carbon footprint.”
Plans for clean hydrogen production are already in motion. Earlier this month, the Grant Public Utility District announced a plan to build a hydrogen production facility in collaboration with the private firm Obsidian Renewables. The agency has submitted an application for the same hub grant that PNWH2 applied for. PNWH2’s grant application has not been made public, citing concerns around certain trade secrets.
The next step for hydrogen production will be to identify ways to store it in the long term. In Grant PUD’s application, the utility agency anticipates storage of hydrogen for up to a week. Hydrogen storage could complement a shift to renewable energy, with electrolysers running off excess power on sunny or windy days. The saved-up hydrogen-derived fuel could then be utilized on shortage days, in lieu of starting up a methane gas or coal plant.
“If you’re able to either store that hydrogen, either compressed or liquefied ... then you can actually have that available as a low- or zero-carbon resource for when you have longer periods, when you have days or even weeks of need for electricity,” Smith said.
Clean energy storage options such as water- and battery-based systems have significant limitations, and analysts say that hydrogen could help fill the gap, even if the technology needs to progress significantly to become cost-effective.
David Roberts, an energy reporter and founder of the newsletter and podcast Volts, said that aviation and maritime transportation and logistics could also be valuable use cases for clean hydrogen.
“There are some applications that we don’t quite know how to electrify yet,” Roberts said. “The big example here is airplanes: long flights. There are some electric planes now, four seaters, eight seaters that can do regional hops. We’re getting closer to that. But in terms of carrying a hundred people all the way across the country? That just requires an enormous amount of energy concentrated in a small space, and we just don’t know how to do that to that extent yet with batteries or electricity.
“The same with big cargo ships: We don’t quite know how to electrify those yet,” he said.
In 2022, a hydrogen fuel cell-powered ferry called SeaChange launched from Bellingham, becoming one of the first of its kind. According to the company’s website, the vessel can carry up to 75 passengers with a maximum range of 300 nautical miles.
A venture by another company, Universal Hydrogen, made headlines in March when one of its pilots successfully flew a 40-passenger regional airliner retrofitted with a hydrogen fuel cell for 15 minutes from the Grant County International Airport.
However, not all hydrogen investments could contribute to the clean energy transition. Roberts said gas utility companies have been riding on the hydrogen bandwagon to try to greenwash their business model.
“I want every article about hydrogen to at least make note of the fact that mixing it into natural gas pipelines to heat homes and buildings is fucking stupid,” he said. “And it’s just a natural gas utility’s way of trying to fight off obsolescence.”
Roberts added that, in many instances — such as cars and light vehicles — electrification has become far more cost effective and efficient than hydrogen. In other cases, such as heavy vehicles and rail, the outlook is more mixed, and, he said, it remains to be seen whether electric batteries or hydrogen fuel cells will prevail.
Industrial policy is back
The increased focus on hydrogen technology and infrastructure in Washington is part of a recent shift in attention toward the manufacturing sector. Prompted in part by the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of China as a global economic superpower, the Biden administration has revamped interest in industrial planning. In addition to the infrastructure package, the CHIPS Act and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) poured billions in subsidies to clean energy and high tech manufacturing, with stipulations on production being located — in part or in whole — within the United States.
In particular, the IRA’s generous hydrogen subsidies for producers could be a game changer for kickstarting the hydrogen sector. According to the federal Department of Energy, the agency aims to reduce the cost of clean hydrogen to $1 per kilogram within the next decade.
“Probably among the most significant, in terms of impacting the economics of clean hydrogen production, is the hydrogen production tax credits from the IRA,” Celt said. “The fact that those are putting on the table up to $3 a kilogram for the cleanest hydrogen production, it’s a really significant driver of these industries who are producing hydrogen to be doing it in the cleanest way possible.”
Celt said that she’s excited about the hydrogen hub proposal as part of a new wave of interest in industrial planning at the state level. This year, the legislature passed Senate Bill 5269, which tasks COM to initiate indicative industrial planning for key sectors to align with the transition to net-zero emissions.
This type of attention to industrial policy led by governments is a stark change after decades of neoliberal orthodoxy that posited that industrial decision making should be left up to the private sector. This has led to a hollowing out of the public sector, with civil servants who possessed vital administrative expertise and know-how leaving to private firms offering better pay and prestige.
Roberts said that it remains to be seen whether Washington and the U.S. will be able to develop the necessary capacity to effectively develop a world-class clean energy manufacturing sector.
“If you want to have a robust industrial policy, as we now say we do, you need administrative capacity. You need a state apparatus that’s capable of building all this shit, on time and on budget,” he said.
“And right now, just because of the last 40 years of neoliberalism, our administrative capacity has kind of withered,” Roberts said. “It’s more expensive to build things here than it is almost anywhere else in the world. It's more expensive and slower. So even as we’re sort of racing to build this industrial policy and build all this infrastructure, we’re also racing to rebuild and restore our administrative capacity or the capacity of our government — federal and state — to handle these things well.
“Who knows how that’s gonna turn out?”
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Guy Oron is the staff reporter for Real Change. Find them on Twitter, @GuyOron.
Read more of the Apr. 26-May 2, 2023 issue.