PITTSBURGH—As the federal government nears a decision on which of the nation’s proposed “hydrogen hubs” will share up to $8 billion in startup money, critics of the idea in the Appalachian region are asserting that the program would do little to curb greenhouse gas emissions or create jobs, while increasing electricity prices for consumers and businesses.
The U.S. Department of Energy plans to fund six to 10 regional hydrogen hubs to produce, store and use hydrogen as an alternative fuel for industry, transportation and power generation. Two rival proposals for the Appalachian region are still in the running, with separate support from the Pennsylvania and West Virginia state governments.
But at a meeting this month in Pittsburgh, detractors argued that the economic and environmental benefits of building the hubs had been overstated. “The risk that we run is pushing hydrogen and carbon capture into applications where it’s not cost-effective,’’ said Sean O’Leary, a senior researcher at the Ohio River Valley Institute, the research nonprofit that sponsored the Sept. 11 forum.
He warned that the program, known as Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs, or H2Hubs, would siphon resources from more effective efforts to arrest climate change. The adopters would be “causing ourselves to pay far more money for a half measure—something that would cost a great deal more than other solutions and do a much worse job of reducing carbon emissions without any significant economic development to accompany it,’’ O’Leary said.
The hubs would generate so-called blue hydrogen, using natural gas to heat water that would then be separated into hydrogen and oxygen. Carbon generated from the gas combustion would then be captured and buried in underground spaces that would be fed by a pipeline network.
Advocates of the process say it would significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions from major sources such as power plants and transportation while creating thousands of jobs. A regional hub would particularly benefit communities suffering from the long declines in the coal and steel industries, they add, which have traditionally dominated the economies of Pittsburgh and the Appalachian region.
When approached by Inside Climate News, neither of the two public-private initiatives proposing to build a hub in the Appalachian region supplied projections of the hoped-for economic impact, however. And some analysts say the Department of Energy has not only exaggerated the benefits of the program but also risks worsening greenhouse gas emissions through leakage of the methane involved in burning and distributing the natural gas—and through the escape of hydrogen itself.
“The reality is that blue hydrogen is neither clean nor low-carbon,” the nonprofit Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, or IEEFA, declared in a report released the day after the Pittsburgh event. Equally worrying, it said, “pursuing it will waste substantial time that is in short supply and money that could be more wisely spent on other, more effective investments for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the immediate future.”
Disputing the Government’s Emissions Projections
The report said that a model generated by the DOE significantly understated the amount of methane that would be emitted by producing hydrogen from fossil fuels. The model also based its projections for methane’s global warming potential on a 100-year period, although the gas is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide over 20 years, it noted. And it fails to include an estimate of the warming potential for hydrogen, the institute added, saying that the gas has 30 times the warming potential of CO2 over 20 years.
“IEEFA is extremely concerned that the current blue hydrogen hype is going to result in the funding of projects that exacerbate climate change and lock in our reliance on fossil fuels for decades,” the paper states.
The Department of Energy said it does not comment on outside analyses but defended its hydrogen hub program as an essential part of the Biden administration’s efforts to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 while creating thousands of clean energy jobs.
“DOE’s Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs program is essential to achieving President Biden’s vision of a strong clean-hydrogen economy that creates healthier communities, strengthens energy security, and delivers new economic opportunities across the nation,” the agency said in a statement.
The agency said there had been a “tremendous” response to its call for initial proposals, called concept papers, from groups that hope to develop the hubs,…
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