The Biden administration announced on Friday $7 billion in grants to fund seven regional hydrogen hubs across the country — projects that will accelerate the use of the odorless gas as an energy source for vehicles, manufacturing, and more.
President Joe Biden will name the winners during his trip to Philadelphia, where he’s expected to tout the bipartisan infrastructure bill that paid for the project. The Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs program — which allocates $8 billion total toward clean hydrogen production and use — will finance projects that are estimated to produce 3 million tons of hydrogen per year or nearly one-third of the country’s 2030 clean hydrogen production goal.
There were 23 finalists for the program, but only seven were selected.
The seven hubs are estimated to eliminate 25 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year — an amount that equates roughly to the combined annual emissions of more than 5.5 million gasoline-powered cars, according to the White House. The projects are also expected to catalyze nearly $50 billion in both private and public investment and spur job growth.
The hydrogen hubs will span widely across the country, with sites crossing state lines. The projects that were selected include the Mid-Atlantic hub (cutting across Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey), the Appalachian hub (running through West Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania), the California hub, the Gulf Coast Hub stationed in Texas, the Heartland Hub (cutting through Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota), the Midwest hub (placed across Illinois, Indiana and Michigan), and the Pacific Northwest hub (stationed within Washington, Oregon and Montana).
The hubs are expected to utilize a wide range of energy sources — nuclear, natural gas, biomass, wind, and solar — to produce hydrogen energy. However, only two hubs are expected to exclusively use renewable sources to power operations — the California hub and the Pacific Northwest hub.
Hydrogen has received pushback from environmentalists who scrutinize how it is produced. “Green hydrogen” is produced using renewables such as solar and wind — and less than 1% of hydrogen today is produced through this method. However, hydrogen that is created from natural gas is considered “grey,” while “blue hydrogen” is created through the same process but is coupled with carbon capture and storage.
Green groups have called for the Biden administration to distinguish between the hydrogen projects, claiming “blue” and “grey hydrogen” could extend the life of oil and gas companies, and they are advocating the White House focus on decarbonization through electrification.
In a report published in August, environmental advocacy group Earthjustice warned that hydrogen could be a “false solution” for renewable fuels, stating that gas companies using as much green hydrogen as “optimistically possible” would only reduce the climate impact of burning the company’s gas by about 7%.
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“When deployed as a marketing tool by the fossil fuel industry, hydrogen can be used to hinder necessary climate action, like the transition to electric appliances in homes and buildings and the shift to battery electric vehicles,” the report reads.
The report also details that hydrogen could have environmental justice implications, noting that production typically takes place at oil refineries and would continue to leave local communities vulnerable to pollution. Furthermore, the authors state that fossil fuel companies often overrate the value of retrofitting gas power plants to ensure they remain open.