North Carolina is vying to be at the forefront of the world’s transition to clean energy through an experimental program to develop hydrogen as a cleaner power source.
The state is part of the Southeast Hydrogen Hub coalition, which aims to acquire funding to build a hydrogen hub throughout Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina – including nodes in Charlotte and Wilmington.
It would bring jobs and development to the region; the hub would be part of the first large scale project of its kind. Funding would come from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which allocated $8 billion for four to 10 hydrogen hubs across the country.
“It has the potential, in certain areas, to jumpstart the economy, like in former oil and gas producing areas,” said Morgan Rote, director of U.S. climate policy at Environmental Defense Fund. “Maybe they start to switch to a hydrogen economy.”
Purpose of a hydrogen hub
Hydrogen can be burned to provide energy, and unlike fossil fuels like coal and natural gas, when hydrogen is burned it does not release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This alternative energy source is one part of the federal government’s plan to lower the national carbon footprint.
The Southeast Hydrogen Hub coalition is a bipartisan group of U.S. senators and major utility companies such as Duke Energy, Dominion Energy, Louisville Gas and Electric Company and Kentucky Utilities Company, Southern Company and the Tennessee Valley Authority.
“The purpose of a regional hub is to try to create an ecosystem around hydrogen so that it’s connecting the production source and the resources needed to produce hydrogen with the end uses that are viable in that area,” Rote said.
The Department of Energy, which is responsible for funding, encouraged the Southeast Hydrogen Hub coalition to submit a full application. The better the plan is for the community, the more likely it is to be chosen.
“[DOE has] said it’s really important for the project developers to talk about how it will benefit the community, like what jobs it will create,” Rote said. “They are talking about community benefit agreements, which are things like … the companies will agree to also invest in local parks and putting in place air quality monitors.”
The DOE expects to make decisions on the hubs this summer.
‘It’s a really flexible energy source’
The hubs will not just be the first large scale implementations of hydrogen in the country, they will also serve as models for future hubs.
“We should be seeing lessons from each of these projects that then help to build the whole hydrogen economy,” Rote said. “So doing these major demonstration projects you start to see costs come down because we’re learning how to do this well. We’re starting to get the infrastructure built because there’s specific demand.”
The projects will also inform the government on the most efficient uses of hydrogen as an energy source.
Hydrogen can be used in targeted ways such as in high heat industrial processes, which are harder to electrify, as feed stock into steel production and as fuel for shipping and heavy-duty trucks, which have a harder time using an electric battery. One hub may be located at a port, allowing an evaluation of hydrogen as an export.
“It is an important technology for certain applications, it’s a really flexible energy source so you can use it for a lot of different purposes and many of those we don’t have another good technology or another good climate solution,” Rote said.
It also has the potential to combat the seasonality of renewables. During milder months in the spring and fall, sun and wind energy can be produced in abundance, while in summer and winter more energy is required to heat and cool buildings.
“Hydrogen, ultimately, is a secondary energy resource, it’s an energy carrier,” Jonathan Cristiani, bioenergy and hydrogen technology manager at Black & Veatch, said at the 2023 UNC Cleantech Summit in Chapel Hill. “And what we’re doing, with many green hydrogen applications, is we’re taking an abundance and shifting to another.”
The colors of hydrogen
In addition to variation in uses, the hubs will use a variety of energy sources to produce hydrogen.
Hydrogen is created by using energy to split hydrogen from another molecule, most commonly water. The resulting hydrogen can be stored in salt caverns underground and used when energy demand is high.
The kinds of hydrogen are commonly referred to by the colors green, red, blue and gray, based on the source of energy used to produce it.
Green hydrogen is created using “green” energy sources – otherwise known as renewables.
Red, pink and purple hydrogen encompass the kinds of hydrogen that are produced using nuclear energy. Innovations in the nuclear power industry make this kind of hydrogen production more likely, with more portable and safer power plants.
Blue hydrogen is created using natural gas with carbon capture. This is the kind of hydrogen that Duke Energy plans to use in their clean energy proposals.
“Duke Energy is one of the co-applicants for the SE Hydrogen Hub proposal,” Will Scott, director of climate and clean energy southeast for the Environmental Defense Fund, said. “Duke’s own Clean Energy plan would use hydrogen to co-fire at existing natural gas facilities.”
Gray hydrogen is produced using fossil fuels without carbon capture – this is the kind of hydrogen production that would not be better for the environment, the production of the energy still using nonrenewable sources and freely emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Although the hydrogen hub project will be the first wide-scale hydrogen project of its kind, this energy source is not new.
‘This is a major evolution’
The Apollo 11 mission, the first to land on the moon in 1969, included three hydrogen fuel cells. Fifty-four years later, in January 2023, the largest plane to date flew a 10-minute test flight using a combination of hydrogen fuel cells and batteries.
More similar to the hydrogen hub plan, Black & Veatch, a sustainable infrastructure company,is already working on the ACES Delta Advanced Clean Energy Storage hub. Located in Utah, this hydrogen hub is the first project that combines utility and industrial scale green hydrogen production, storage and transmission.
Monolith is producing a rarer turquoise hydrogen, which uses a process to separate hydrogen from solid carbon, resulting in both hydrogen and carbon black.
Monolith Corp. uses the carbon black that it produces to make tires, but the substance is also in everything from phones to classroom whiteboards. This an example of how byproducts of hydrogen production can be repurposed rather than becoming waste.
But, Rote said, it is not necessarily the holy grail to limit a countries or an individual’s carbon footprint.
In response to the federal push for hydrogen implementation, Environmental Defense Fund is conducting research to understand the possible negatives to implementing hydrogen widely. One key finding is that hydrogen is a leaky gas, meaning there will be costs associated with ensuring that it is used safely. Hydrogen is also an indirect greenhouse gas.
“I think it’s good for environmentally conscious citizens to be aware that this is a major evolution to what we’re consuming and that there needs to be a grain of salt given to some of the industry boosterism that you’re seeing around hydrogen,” Rote said.
