Hydrogen has been the fuel of the future for about 100 years. Now its moment may have arrived.

Initially investigated as an auto fuel, and later becoming a crucial rocket fuel in the NASA manned space program, hydrogen is seen today as the most promising replacement for fossil fuels in transportation, industrial processes and power generation.

The Biden administration’s June 2021 announcement of a hydrogen “Earthshot” by U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm aimed at reducing the price of hydrogen to $1/ kg within this decade was the start of a frenetic drive both by government and industry to move away from carbon emissions.

The bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passed in November 2021 allocated more than $9 billion for hydrogen development programs, including $8 billion in matching grants for the creation of multi-state “hydrogen hubs” by industry and government in which hydrogen would be used in the region in which it is produced.

The Inflation Reduction Act signed by the president on Aug. 16 created a 10-year production tax credit (PTC) as high as $3/kg for hydrogen electrolysis operations built by companies paying prevailing wages and offering apprentice training. The law also allows operations to choose an investment tax credit rather than a PTC.

The bill is expected to accelerate the already growing interest in hydrogen research, development and use.

Hydrogen webinars, reports and conferences are now weekly events in the U.S. and in Europe, which is facing a critical shortage of natural gas. In Germany, where there is a commitment to move to 100% hydrogen, a natural gas storage company has been testing the efficacy of underground salt caverns and salt domes for hydrogen storage, with results that U.S. counterparts will find useful.

RAG Austria AG, one of Europe’s largest gas storage companies with connections to major European gas pipelines, has preliminarily determined that hydrogen injected into former gas reservoirs stays put, doesn’t react with steel equipment any differently than natural gas and can be pumped back out upon demand.

The company successfully injected a 115,000-cubic-meter mixture of hydrogen and natural gas into storage and later retrieved it without incident, said Markus Pichler, a reservoir engineer, during a webinar produced earlier this month by Mission Hydrogen, an independent German proponent of hydrogen that has been hosting weekly webinars for a global audience.

Pichler said the company began hydrogen storage research in 2012, initially in laboratories. He said the mixture of hydrogen and gas injected into storage did not affect the steel piping and other equipment used in the gas reservoir, did not seep out of the reservoir and behaved much like methane. But he added that hydrogen storage is still in the R&D stage, with ongoing testing to confirm laboratory results in actual reservoirs.

The company, which maintains 66 TWh of gas storage, also discovered something else in its hydrogen tests, Pichler said; carbon dioxide injected into a reservoir containing hydrogen is converted to biomethane by microbes that exist naturally in the salt caverns.

To potential critics wondering why anyone would generate hydrogen and then convert it to methane, losing energy in the process, Pichler said: “If you think about it, all of our gas infrastructure is actually built for methane, for natural gas. If you then feed this [pipeline system] with biomethane, you basically need to change nothing.”

Pichler’s suggestion bypasses the question of pure hydrogen damaging gas pipelines, an issue confirmed in late July in a study commissioned by the California Public Utilities Commission. The study found that hydrogen blends above 5% could embrittle steel pipelines and raise the risk of leaks. (See Study Finds Adding More Hydrogen to Natural Gas Raises Risks.)

Collaborating Toward a Net-zero Carbon Future with Hydrogen

The question of whether existing utility pipelines can be used to ship hydrogen has not prevented gas turbine manufacturers from developing equipment capable of using hydrogen rather than only natural gas

Mitsubishi Power CEO Bill Newsom | Reuters

“A majority of the utilities in the United States have set a net-zero goal by 2050 or sooner, and [now] they have to assess how to get there. Our mission is to provide power generation and energy storage solutions for our customers which empowers them to affordably and reliably combat climate change,” said Bill Newsom, CEO of Mitsubishi Power Americas, in a webinar interview hosted earlier this month by Reuters. “We are investing hundreds of millions of dollars and partnering with our customers to enable them to be the heroes in this decarbonization journey.”

He said the company has been researching and developing electrolysis technologies for green hydrogen production, developing hydrogen storage and delivery standards, and modifying combined cycle turbines to burn hydrogen and hydrogen-gas mixtures.

Some designs have achieved a generation efficiency of at least 64%, according to the company. The long-term goal is to engineer a turbine capable of running on 100% hydrogen, Newsom said, a feat that company engineers have achieved with small gas turbines.

The R&D is not all in laboratories. Mitsubishi is building and already testing hydrogen-gas mixtures at a large power plant in the Netherlands. Its turbines will be used at power plants at several U.S. sites, including new plants in Utah, New York, Ohio, Virginia and Texas, according to Gas Turbine World.

Newsom said the company is looking at projects “across the U.S. that are utilizing salt domes [for storage]. As for converting pipelines to run hydrogen, that will take some time,” he said.

“We built the natural gas infrastructure here over the last 100 years,” he said. “We’re not going to in the next three decades be able to rebuild that entire infrastructure. What we want to do is look at how can we inject hydrogen into these existing pipelines. And which of these lines can be upgraded, maybe sleeved or coated, so that we can inject more than say, 20% hydrogen?”

Stressing that federal programs are crucial to accelerated development, Newsom said the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act means “there will be more real projects and more incentives, and this momentum will continue to bring real projects to fruition.”

He noted as an example that the Department of Energy in June awarded a $504.4 million loan guarantee to Mitsubishi Americas and partner Magnum Development for the creation of Advanced Clean Energy Storage in Utah, now considered the first hydrogen hub in the U.S. Creation of the hub took the cooperation of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico.

The hub will produce and store green hydrogen made with renewable power as fuel for two Mitsubishi gas turbines.  The power will replace the output of two coal plants operated by the Intermountain Power Agency in Utah, which mostly serve utilities in Utah and California.

The Mitsubishi gas turbines will initially burn 30% green hydrogen and 70% natural gas when they begin operating in 2025. The goal is 100% hydrogen by 2045. The green hydrogen — produced by wind turbines, often at night when there is less power demand — will be stored in nearby salt domes.

Each of the two salt caverns, now being drilled, will hold 250 GWh of hydrogen, Newsom said. The gas plant will replace two old coal-fired power plants, Newsom said, adding that Mitsubishi has also announced partnerships with Entergy, Puget Sound and El Paso Electric.

“They have set their target to net zero. We are partnering with them to provide them with solutions to get there. Collaboration is absolutely critical,” he said, adding that Mitsubishi is also considering “sector partnering” with companies in steel manufacturing, transportation and agriculture.

State Efforts to Advance a Clean Hydrogen Economy

Efforts to move toward a hydrogen-based energy future vary by state. In addition to the multi-state partnered Utah project, organized efforts in Oregon and New York are preparing those states for a hydrogen future.

In a webinar organized by the National Association of State Energy Officials earlier this month, Rebecca Smith, a senior energy policy analyst at the Oregon Department of Energy, and Ian Latimer, program project manager with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) outlined what their states are planning for a decarbonized future.

In any state, the process ought to start with the legislature, Smith said, which is what Oregon lawmakers did last year with the passage of legislation requiring a broad state study, which the agency expects to release in September.

Oregon’s statutes do not define renewable hydrogen, but the legislation requiring the study did: “renewable gas from energy sources that do not emit greenhouse gases.”

One of the goals of the study, she said, has been to figure out how a policy on renewable hydrogen would fit with existing policies on renewable and clean energy. The mandate has also been to inventory current hydrogen volume and use in the state and to propose how the production and use of green hydrogen might be integrated into the state’s power generation. The state has relied on national federal laboratories and academia rather than utilities or gas producers at this point in order to produce a neutral study.

Another goal in preparing the study has been to include groups that are not often included in energy studies, especially those focused on environmental justice or community issues, and the study has tried to include local governments. Smith said her department “went out of our way to especially ensure that those who might be skeptical of renewable hydrogen we’re invited to participate” in order to reflect their opinions and attitudes in the report.

“We’re really seeking to partner … with all stakeholders, not only those who are already excited about renewable hydrogen. With respect to the [hydrogen] hubs [DOE competitively grants], everyone expects us to be very competitive,” she said.

“I am limited in what I can say about what’s going on in Oregon. But what I can say is that Oregon is collaborating with Washington state on a Pacific Northwest hub concept,” Smith said. “We have teamed up with our state’s business development agency, Business Oregon, to convene interested Oregon stakeholders.”

Once the study is filed in September, the state DOE plans to hold a number of public workshops to continue to engage business, labor and the public about the future of hydrogen in the state, she said.

Latimer presented what looked like a fully developed environmental plan that will include hydrogen.

“We are looking to get an 85% reduction in emissions below 1990 levels, 40% emissions reductions by 2030, 100% zero-emission electricity sector by 2040, including an interim target of 70% renewables by 2030,” he said.

“And then a number of technology specific targets throughout the next 10 to 15 years, and that’s targets for everything from offshore wind, to distributed solar, to battery energy storage development, as well as different targets for building electrification and energy efficiency,” he said.

“All of these targets are courtesy of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019 [CLCPA],” he added.

The state has described CLCPA as “one of the most ambitious climate laws in the world,” and Latimer made that clear as he described development of a planning and enforcement bureaucracy in recent years.

“The question then becomes, well, goals are great. How do you get there?” he said.

“The climate act enabled a Climate Action Council [CAC] to negotiate and chart a path forward for New York to reach its ambitious climate and energy targets, including the adoption of a scoping plan, which will make the recommendations for achieving the greenhouse gas emissions reduction … set forth in the climate act,” he explained.

The CAC is co-chaired by NYSERDA CEO Doreen Harris and Basil Seggos, chair of the New York Department of Environmental Conservation.

The council “includes a number of state agencies, a number of Governor appointees and then assembly and senate appointees as well,” Latimer said. It is the organization now charting the future of energy, including the use of hydrogen in the state, he said.

“Ultimately, any path that we take towards hydrogen in New York state will be in conjunction with the scenario and with the scoping plan that is put in place by the Climate Action Council. The integration of hydrogen into the plan will be based on a complicated analysis and at this point includes a number of scenarios,” he said.

“It recognizes a number of critical roles that hydrogen can play in decarbonizing hard-to-electrify applications. In the near-term that might mean … medium- and heavy-duty vehicle decarbonization.

“It may mean decarbonizing high-temperature industrial applications where electrification is not a viable or cost-effective alternative in the longer term. The integration analysis sees a role for low-carbon fuels such as hydrogen and decarbonizing,” Latimer said.

But in the long run, he said, the plan sees “an accelerated transition away from combustion, which means you are not looking at the combustion of hydrogen for power generation or heat. You’re focused on accelerating electrification for buildings and transportation, and so there’s … a decreased role for hydrogen in that scenario.”

The plan includes a role for hydrogen consumed by fuel cells powering “microgrids as a potential resilience solution for disadvantaged communities, looking to displace fossil fuel backup deployment,” he added.

The state is also analyzing the economic development created by the use of hydrogen, Latimer said.