Hydrogen Brings Opportunities, Challenges for West Virginia

Aug 23, 2023

Aug 28, 2023

CHARLESTON — Hydrogen is the new buzzword in clean energy, with several projects either underway in West Virginia or proposed. But what does it mean? Is there potential for West Virginia as a leader in producing this clean fuel, or will promises of a hydrogen future go the way of cracker plants and natural gas storage hubs?

The Pleasants Power Plant near St. Marys is being converted from a coal-fired plant to run on hydrogen. A new project near Point Pleasant wants to produce hydrogen from natural gas and pump the greenhouse gas emissions underground.

And politicians still talk about a possible regional hydrogen hub, one of which must be built somewhere in Appalachia.

There is nothing new about hydrogen in and of itself. It’s one of the most common elements in the universe. Two hydrogen atoms combine with one oxygen atom to create water. On the flipside, hydrogen is highly flammable. Ignition of hydrogen gas is what brought down the infamous Hindenburg airship in 1937.

But hydrogen is back in the news, seen as a possible clean-burning fuel for manufacturing and vehicles. Hydrogen burns clean with no greenhouse gas emissions and only water as its byproduct. But producing hydrogen gas in large-scale quantities is expensive, and the ways of producing hydrogen to scale still involve the use of fossil fuels, such as natural gas.

LIGHT IT UP

President Joe Biden set a goal at the beginning of his term in 2021 of cutting greenhouse emissions in the U.S. in half by the end of the decade. Biden wants to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by between 50% and 52% of 2005 levels by 2030, a carbon-neutral electric grid by 2035, and zero-emissions by 2050.

One way the Biden administration hopes to meet those goals is with hydrogen, with the U.S. Department of Energy leading the way on research. This includes work by the National Energy Technology Laboratory, with one facility in Morgantown.

“Ensuring America is the global leader in the next generation of clean energy technologies requires all of us – government and industry — coming together to confront shared challenges, particularly lack of market certainty for clean hydrogen that too often delays progress,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm in a July press release.

The $1.2 trillion Infrastructure investment and Jobs Act — negotiated in 2021 by U.S. Senators Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., — included $9.5 billion in funding for hydrogen research. One program included $1.5 billion to support hydrogen electrolysis, using electricity to separate the hydrogen gas from water molecules. Another $8 billion was set aside to fund a broad Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs program.

The West Virginia Hydrogen Hub Working Group — made up of state and federal elected leaders — applied to the Department of Energy last year to land a regional hydrogen hub. Each hub is required to demonstrate the production of clean hydrogen and demonstrate the use of clean hydrogen.

As many as 10 regional hubs could be built, but Manchin and Capito inserted specific language in the law requiring a hub in Appalachia. The DOE is expected to announce the locations for regional hydrogen hubs by the end of the year.

In July, the Biden administration launched the Demand-Side Initiative to invest more than $1 billion towards supporting the regional hydrogen hubs and helping provide market certainty for both producers of hydrogen and potential industrial and commercial end-users.

“… DOE is setting up a new initiative to help our private sector partners address bottlenecks and other project impediments – helping industry unlock the full potential of this incredibly versatile energy resource and supporting the long-term success of the H2hubs,” Granholm said.

The DOE set a goal – called the Hydrogen Shot – of being able to produce hydrogen at $1 per one kilogram by the end of 2032. If the Hydrogen Shot objectives can be achieved, the DOE believes greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced by 16% by 2050, create $140 million in revenues, and create more than 700,000 new jobs by 2030.

The $737 billion Inflation Reduction Act passed last summer after negotiations between Democratic leaders and Manchin, also includes several tax credits to incentivize the production and commercial use of hydrogen. This includes the 45V hydrogen tax credit, which provides up to $3 per kilogram of hydrogen produced for projects that begin prior to 2033.

BLINDED BY SCIENCE

The National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) is conducting wide-ranging research into hydrogen storage – from fuel cells for vehicles and industry, to large-scale storage. In Morgantown and other facilities, NETL engineers are working on developing new kinds of turbine engines that can use hydrogen for fuel, using microwaves to extract hydrogen and other petrochemical feedstocks, and storing large quantities of hydrogen underground.

“As we work to mitigate the impact of climate change, it’s crucial that we identify how we can best interact to unlock the potential of hydrogen by developing carbon-negative hydrogen technologies and systems,” said NETL researcher Jonathan Lekse in a statement following a July conference in Colorado.

“These and other projects are especially important to establish a hydrogen economy and reap the many benefits it will provide,” said Nathan Weiland, a senior fellow at NETL.

But others doubt the ability of hydrogen to vitalize the regional economy. The Ohio River Valley Institute, a left-of-center public policy advocacy organization, released a report last week, titled “Frackalachia Update: Peak Natural Gas and the Economic Implications for Appalachia.”

In that report, senior researcher Sean O’Leary argued that much like the boom predicted for natural gas in the last decade – such as the building of cracker plants to extract petrochemical feedstocks from natural gas or underground natural gas storage hubs – that promises of hydrogen production are overhyped.

“This report, its predecessors, and struggling downtowns in communities throughout Frackalachia provide overwhelming evidence that the predictions weren’t only wrong, they were the products of deeply flawed and biased analyses … Sadly, the same is likely to be true of the most recent shiny object being dangled in front of the region’s policymakers — the promised creation of an Appalachian hydrogen hub,” O’Leary wrote.

O’Leary said that any hydrogen hub is likely to be smaller than what supporters say it would be, that the potential market for hydrogen will grow but still be far smaller to support the projected jobs the DOE expects to create, that private markets may never be able to support a hub, and that hydrogen manufacturing plants could still be too expensive and capital-intensive to build and still be highly polluting.

“That isn’t to say that the region doesn’t need new industry, including some that might be part of a hydrogen hub,” O’Leary wrote. “It’s to say that policymakers should be realistic about what these industries do and do not offer in the way of economic development as well as the costs they may inflict and the quality of life trade-offs they may require.”

“If policymakers are realistic about these things, they will recognize the need for a more effective and sustainable approach to economic development regardless of whether or not the natural gas industry stagnates or continues to grow, regardless of whether the hydrogen hub is realized, and regardless of whether some small amount of petrochemical development manages to find a foothold,” O’Leary continued.

BENEATH THE SURFACE

One way to extract hydrogen is by using natural gas – a process called blue hydrogen. Houston-based Fidelis New Energy was approved for up to $62.5 million in forgivable loans from the state Economic Development Authority last week for a hydrogen production project and biomass power plant in north Point Pleasant.

The Mountaineer GigaSystem project will produce hydrogen for use in powering data centers and other potential projects by using natural gas. The greenhouse gas emission produced by the hydrogen manufacturing process would be captured, transported by pipeline, and pumped underground in pore spaces underground state-owned wildlife lands nearby.

Legislation passed during the 2023 session earlier this year allows the state Division of Natural Resources to sell, lease, or dispose of property under its control, including leasing state-owned pore spaces beneath state forests, wildlife management areas, and other lands under DNR’s jurisdiction for use in carbon capture and sequestration.

Environmental advocates are not pleased with the Fidelis project, both for its use of natural gas and its plans for pumping carbon emissions underground. Morgan King, a climate campaign coordinator for the West Virginia Rivers Coalition, accused Fidelis and the state of “experimenting” on nearby communities

“We’ve not been able to see projects achieve the 95% capture rate that is established by the Department of Energy as the recommended standard for capturing pollution,” King said. “On top of that, there are life cycle concerns. Even imagining a perfect world where we can produce blue hydrogen in an economic and safe way and we can capture the carbon at 95% or more, there is still concerns of storage.

“When we look at taking our protected state forests and our protected wildlife areas and injecting carbon into those pore spaces, that’s extremely experimental and dangerous,” King continued. “This hasn’t happened here before, and I don’t think West Virginia communities and West Virginia public lands should be the experiment to figure out if it works safely.”

King raised concerns about the potential for earthquake activities in the areas where the greenhouse gas emissions would be stored and the possibility of groundwater contamination. She also raised issues about lack of community engagement, the economic viability of hydrogen, and the continued use of fossil fuels to produce it.

“If we’re continuing to frack and extract gas, there’s going to be environmental and public health impacts for that,” King said. “If we really want to store carbon and protect our communities, we would just leave that gas in the ground.”

Jessica Pierson Moore is director and state geologist for the West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey, a division of the state Department of Commerce. Speaking by phone, Moore said GES has conducted several studies of underground geology in the state. The areas being looked at for underground storage of carbon emissions are thousands of feet below groundwater and in much harder geologic formations, mitigating the risks of earthquake activities.

“We have a long track record of storing gases in the Appalachian Basin, most notably natural gas and methane storage which has been done here safely for probably about 80 years,” Moore said. “We know that we can do that kind of gas storage. We also know we can dispose of waste directly in the basin.”

Moore explained that Ohio has dealt with earthquake activities due to the underground storage of fracking wastewater, but those quakes are caused by the combination of its sedimentary rocks and older crystalline basin rocks.

“When you move into West Virginia, the section of sedimentary rock is thicker,” Moore said. “The section we’re looking at in West Virginia is not in proximity to that crystalline basin interface … it’s that history of development in the basin that has enabled us to understand the deep subsurface. It is really deep.”

The deepness is what will protect the state’s groundwater, Moore said. Projects like Fidelis are required to apply for a class six carbon dioxide injection well permit. Underground saltwater reservoirs in the area being considered sit at around 1,500 feet below the surface. The geologic pore spaces for greenhouse gas storage will have to be deeper than 2,500 feet to be viable.

“The target that we are looking at for this project is several thousand feet even deeper than that,” Moore said. It’s 7,000-feet-to-8,000-feet in the subsurface … for this project, we’re not really looking at the shallowest reservoirs that have been targets of oil and natural has exploration for 150 years.”

Moore said there has been exploration of this deeper reservoir target since the 1940s, but since most natural gas and oil reservoirs are far shallower, it was overlooked for drilling. With the opening up of the Marcellus and Utica shale deposits, state researchers have worked to map out these larger, deeper pore spaces.

Despite complaints from environmental groups about lack of community engagement, Moore said none of the groups that have lodged complaints have reached out to GES. She encouraged anyone with questions to contact her office.

“I can tell you from meeting the folks at Fidelis that they are engaged in the community. They really see something special in West Virginia,” Moore said. “As far as the technical information, my office is here for the people of West Virginia. We’re taxpayer supported. We pride ourselves in meeting you with your questions.”

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CHARLESTON — Hydrogen is the new buzzword in clean energy, with several projects either underway in West Virginia ...