Many want to build but who wants to use?
Louisiana, Oklahoma and Arkansas have dozens of companies lining up to help build the region’s clean hydrogen infrastructure, but finding users of that hydrogen may prove to be a challenge, an Oklahoma cabinet official said Wednesday at a Louisiana energy conference. Ken McQueen, Oklahoma’s secretary of energy and environment, said nearly 100 companies have expressed interest in participating in the HALO Hydrogen Hub, a research and development partnership between Louisiana, Oklahoma and Arkansas. About 70 of those companies have signed nondisclosure agreements with HALO or have submitted projects for consideration. “What we see across the hydrogen economy is we have lots and lots of people who are willing to build the facilities to manufacture hydrogen,” McQueen said at the Clean Fuels Summit, a two-day energy conference in downtown Baton Rouge hosted by Louisiana Clean Fuels and the Southeast Louisiana Clean Fuel Partnership. “The challenge is developing consumption for the hydrogen, and that’s really what our HALO application has focused on, is building a hydrogen ecosystem so that we can utilize all of this capacity,” McQueen added.
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Interest in cleaner hydrogen is there but we need to convince others to use it.
Interest in cleaner forms of hydrogen has risen in recent years, particularly in Louisiana as the state’s climate action plan has begun to take hold. Hydrogen is a common feedstock for Louisiana’s refineries and ammonia producers, but the standard process to create hydrogen produces substantial greenhouse gas emissions. Louisiana, Arkansas and Oklahoma have teamed up to nab a share of $8 billion in U.S. Department of Energy funding for regional clean hydrogen hubs. The three states submitted their latest application April 7 and are hoping to hear results by the end of the year. Louisiana officials, led by GNO Inc., have also been pushing to expand the state’s wind power generation as part of a “green” hydrogen initiative. “Green” hydrogen is created by electrolysis of water using renewable power. Clean hydrogen, particularly forms of it generated with renewable energy, is of great interest to Oklahoma as the state’s wind power sector has taken off, McQueen noted. Wind power generation in Oklahoma has skyrocketed over the last two decades, McQueen said. The state generated little of it 20 years ago. Last year, 43.6% of power came from wind energy, surpassing natural gas as Oklahoma’s primary electricity source. “As we think about electrolyzers located out in these large wind fields, if we can liquefy the hydrogen that’s made there, then that makes it economically feasible to transport that hydrogen 400, 500 miles from the site that it’s generated,” McQueen said. “With that distance it’s possible to cover a large number of (hydrogen) fueling stations across the state.”
Renewables are the answer.