Hydrogen Hubs Announced Angering at least one Environmental Group

The Department of Energy released the winners of the regional hydrogen hub program. They will be located in Appalachia, California, the Gulf Coast, the Mid-Atlantic (Phili area) the Midwest, the Pacific Northwest, and a Heartland Hub in Minnesota and the Dakotas.

The goal of the program was to allocate funds to various approaches to producing hydrogen. Makes perfect sense. The market is in its early stages, and it needs to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

The applications range from fertilizer production at the Heartland Hub, to heavy duty trucking and transportation in California, to decarbonizing heavy industry at the Midwest Hub. The production methods run the gamut from biomass, to nuclear, to – and here is the issue – natural gas and carbon capture.

The Clean Energy Group vociferously objected to the use of natural gas to produce hydrogen. Green hydrogen – or hydrogen produced solely from renewable energy – is the ultimate objective. Blue is generally the next best alternative.

However, instead of applauding a step forward for a promising technology, the organization’s president Seth Mullendore categorized the announcement as “worse than expected” and a “reckless buildout of hydrogen infrastructure” which “does nothing to advance climate goals.”

Seriously?

This is one of the major problems with the climate movement. Many climate advocates think that you can get to your ultimate goal without taking any of the intermediate steps. That is simply not how technology works. Not to mention that if you waited until you achieved the optimum solution, you’d likely emit a good deal more carbon into the atmosphere. This is a foolish and counterproductive position to take.

The hydrogen hubs represent a major step forward toward net-zero. True, hydrogen has its challenges, and it isn’t without its downside. That is true of almost every approach. Regardless, you have to start somewhere to resolve the technical issues and that somewhere is never the finish line.