The push to develop green hydrogen in North America got a boost Tuesday with the announcement of a new program to hasten development of the clean-burning, renewable fuel for use in the Western Interconnection.

A joint effort of the National Association of State Energy Officials (NASEO), Western Interstate Energy Board (WIEB) and the Green Hydrogen Coalition (GHC), the Western Green Hydrogen Initiative seeks “to assist interested states and partners in advancing and accelerating deployment of green hydrogen infrastructure in the Western region for the benefit of the region’s economy and environment,” according to the GHC.

The initiative will look to engage the Western U.S. states and Canadian provinces.

“We are here to unveil the first-ever-of-its-kind collaboration around green hydrogen … [a] public-private partnership to really create an action-focused initiative to bring together energy officials, public utility commissions, developers and other key stakeholders to accelerate progress for green hydrogen throughout the West,” GHC Executive Director Laura Nelson said Tuesday during the first day of the Green Hydrogen Visions for the West Virtual Conference.

“I like to say this will be a template for the United States and — really — beyond,” said Nelson, a former energy adviser in the Utah governor’s office.

The initiative also has the backing of Mitsubishi Power, which won a contract to convert Utah’s 1,900-MW coal-fired Intermountain Power Plant into an 845-MW natural gas plant capable of burning a mixture of gas and hydrogen by 2025, with the goal of eventually using only hydrogen as a fuel source. The plant is operated by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and generates power for 29 municipalities in Southern California and Utah.

“We are really excited about this. From our point of view, we’ve been participating in decarbonizing the U.S. power sector for the past 20 years,” Mitsubishi Power Americas CEO Paul Browning said, noting that the sector’s carbon emissions are down about 40% from 2000 levels, the result of replacing coal-fired generation with a combination of natural gas and renewables.

Browning said that when his company asked the question of what would then replace natural gas to achieve future emission reductions, it landed on the combination of renewables and energy storage. And although Mitsubishi has made heavy investments in battery storage, Browning said use of lithium-ion batteries for longer-duration energy storage will be “prohibitively expensive,” even with expected cost reductions.

“In that application of longer-duration energy storage, we believe that green hydrogen is far and away the most affordable solution today and is going to become increasing affordable over time,” Browning said. “Three years ago, we decided we were all in on winning the order to supply gas turbines to the Intermountain Power Plant, because we saw it as a first step in many, many more green hydrogen projects to come.”

“The Mitsubishi offices have led in clean energy opportunities for decades, and I think the potential opportunities in this area for the West, and frankly around the entire nation, are enormous,” NASEO Executive Director David Terry said. He recalled that nearly 20 years ago, NASEO was involved in early research and development efforts around green hydrogen and that “it’s exciting to see that come full circle to a real market opportunity now to provide solutions to states’ energy challenges.”

‘Intelligent Tinkering’

In a press release Tuesday, GHC said, “Green hydrogen can help avoid uneconomic grid buildout, prevent renewable curtailment, repurpose existing infrastructure, reduce greenhouse gases and air pollution, reduce agricultural and municipal waste, and diversify fuels for multiple sectors from steel production to aviation.”

Green hydrogen development in the West has so far been minimal, it said. “To enable investments at scale, green hydrogen must be compensated for the many benefits it provides.”

To advance that goal, GHC laid out five key objectives for the initiative:

• Coordinating and leveraging state, federal and industry R&D and green hydrogen demonstration projects “to guide priorities and scale commercial technology options.”
• Addressing regulatory, policy and commercial barriers hindering the scaled production and use of green hydrogen.
• Supporting “regional grid and gas sector modeling efforts to inform coordinated state policy actions and investment for green hydrogen utilizing existing energy infrastructure.”
• Identifying “education and workforce opportunities that support the transition to a local and resilient green hydrogen energy system.”
• Assisting states in “developing hydrogen storage and utilization roadmaps to advance innovation and expand opportunities for low-cost renewable energy to produce, use and store green hydrogen.”

“It’s an amazing initiative, and great results are coming to an energy future that I think is here,” Terry said.

WIEB Executive Director Maury Galbraith waxed philosophical about the potential key role for green hydrogen in transitioning to a carbon-free grid while maintaining reliability. He likened the Western Interconnection to “a living machine” in that it is “constantly evolving.”

“We cannot simply stop the machine and start all over again. The machine must operate as we improve it,” Galbraith said.

Quoting conservationist Aldo Leopold’s statement, “To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering,” Galbraith cautioned that the industry is currently discarding parts of the Western bulk electric system “at a rapid pace.”

“Whether you believe this is a good thing or a bad thing, I think we can all agree it is a risky thing,” he said, adding that his role as the head of WIEB “is to ensure that we tinker intelligently.”

“One point seems clear to me: A large-scale, dispatchable, clean source of electric generating capacity would be a tremendous help. Green hydrogen is a clean fuel source that can be potentially used in combustion turbines to provide this electric generating capacity,” Galbraith said.

“Is green hydrogen electric generation the technology that will be selected in the evolution of the bulk electric system? I do not know — that depends on a lot of factors. Is it an intelligent step to take as we tinker with the bulk electric system? Yes, without a doubt.”