The Biden administration will pour $7 billion into seven different hydrogen production “hubs” in the US. It’s part of President Joe Biden’s plan to transition the country to clean energy, although hydrogen’s environmental benefits still depend on an overhaul of how the fuel is traditionally produced.
Burning hydrogen produces water vapor, unlike fossil fuels, which release greenhouse gas emissions when burned. This is considered particularly valuable for the rehabilitation of aviation, maritime shipping and heavy industries such as steel, which are more difficult to run with renewable energy and batteries. The difficult part with hydrogen is removing the pollutants from the manufacturing process. Today, most hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels, and some of the new hubs will continue to use gas to produce hydrogen.
The Biden administration has been planning these hubs since last year. During his visit to Philadelphia today, he is expected to name seven sites selected for funding under the bipartisan infrastructure bill. According to a White House press release, the hubs are expected to spur an additional $40 billion in private investment.
A hub in the Pacific Northwest spanning Washington, Oregon and Montana will use renewable energy to produce hydrogen. A California hub will use renewable energy and burn biomass. Two hubs in the Mid-Atlantic (Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey) and inland (Minnesota and the Dakotas) will rely on a mix of renewable and nuclear energy.
It is still much more expensive to produce hydrogen using clean energy
It is still much more expensive to produce hydrogen with clean energy than the old-fashioned way with gas. The Biden administration has set a goal of reducing costs by 80 percent to $1 per kilogram this decade. To that end, Biden last year approved the use of the Defense Production Act to strengthen domestic supply chains for clean energy technologies, including electrolyzers that split water molecules to produce hydrogen.
The alternative to electrolysis is a process called steam methane reforming. Methane, the main component of so-called natural gas, reacts with water vapor to form hydrogen, which continues to release carbon dioxide. The plan is to capture all carbon dioxide emissions from gas at the new hubs, but the technology to do this is still very expensive and has not yet been tested on a large scale. In addition, the leakage of methane, a very powerful greenhouse gas, represents a major gas infrastructure problem that cannot be solved by CO2 capture alone.
A hub in the Appalachian Mountains, which includes West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania, will produce hydrogen from gas. A Midwest hub in Illinois, Indiana and Michigan will use gas, renewable energy and nuclear energy. A hub on the Texas Gulf Coast will rely on gas and renewable energy.
Ultimately, the Biden administration plans for all seven hubs to save a combined 25 million tons of CO2 emissions annually, roughly equivalent to a reduction of more than 5.5 million cars per year. Bundling hydrogen production into “hubs” is also a cost-saving measure, as facilities can share infrastructure such as pipelines and storage. The Biden administration is also promising thousands of jobs, and the hubs fall under his Justice40 initiative, which requires the government to ensure that 40 percent of benefits from federal investments go to communities “marginalized, underserved and overburdened by pollution.” ” are.