Biden rushes to finalize green hydrogen hubs but environmentalists balk, side with Trump this time

President Biden is rushing $7 billion out the door to build “clean energy” hydrogen hubs, but this is one green project that environmentalists don’t want.

They tell the president to keep the money in federal coffers because hydrogen has limited benefits and could even increase global warming.

The conflict aligns environmentalists with President-elect Donald Trump, a hydrogen skeptic.

The hubs are regional networks of more than a dozen interconnected hydrogen production centers, storage facilities and pipelines to accelerate the use of hydrogen to create energy.

They are the linchpin of Mr. Biden’s vision of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. by 2050. The Department of Energy has said that hydrogen should replace fossil fuels such as coal and oil because it burns cleaner and can serve as an energy source to power vehicles, steelmaking, manufacturing, and electricity production. Without the hubs, the U.S. may not be able to produce the levels of hydrogen needed to achieve its decarbonization efforts.

Some environmentalists say the benefits of hydrogen are overblown and will exacerbate global warming. They say that when burned, hydrogen releases into the air nitrogen oxide, a toxic gas that negatively affects people’s hearts and lungs and produces smog.

Tracy Carluccio, deputy director of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, a suburban Philadelphia environmental group, has dismissed “green hydrogen” as a “scam.” Her organization is working to block the construction of the Mid-Atlantic Clean Hydrogen Hub, or MACH2. The hub, which would be located in Philadelphia, is one of the hydrogen hubs across the country that would be funded under Mr. Biden’s plan.

“I think the public needs to understand that green hydrogen is a misnomer and the way that hydrogen hubs like MACH2 are designed is very misleading to the public because of the pollution that will result,” Ms. Carluccio told The Washington Times. “It will make the climate crisis worse.”

Matthew Krayton, a spokesperson for MACH2, said the Riverkeepers’ description is a “gross mischaracterization” of the project. He said MACH2 will reduce pollution in the 15% of the economy that’s hard to abate, such as transpiration and heavy manufacturing.

All of it adds up to a big showdown this month. On one side is the Biden administration, which fears the entire hydrogen dream could go up in flames and take the president’s climate legacy with it. On the other side are environmental groups fretting that the administration will dispense the cash on an idea they say will worsen the climate crisis.

If the money is still in the federal government’s coffers when Mr. Biden leaves office, it would fall into the hands of Mr. Trump, who’s no fan of hydrogen production.

“You know the story with hydrogen, it’s great until it blows up,” Mr. Trump said during an October rally, claiming hydrogen-powered cars explode.

White House referred questions about the hydrogen flap to the Energy Department, which did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

In October 2023, Mr. Biden announced $7 billion to build seven regional hydrogen hubs in 16 states from Pennsylvania to California. Several of the projects will stretch across multiple states, such as MACH2, which will include Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware.

Mr. Biden said the taxpayer funds would jump-start $40 billion of private investment in the hubs, creating tens of thousands of clean energy jobs. He called the spending an investment in “a stronger energy-secure economy” while “combatting the existent threat of climate change”

The president’s announcement was only an intent to award. Funding negotiations are ongoing between the Energy Department and a coalition of private groups that would invest in the hubs.

The Energy Department is scrambling to finalize those contracts to unlock the funds allocated through Mr. Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure law.

Separately, Treasury is rushing to finish its rules for tax credits for hydrogen projects. Once completed, it would open up as much as $34 billion in tax incentives available for hydrogen production through Mr. Biden’s climate, tax and health law known as the Inflation Reduction Act.

So far, deals are in place for first-phase planning grants of about $30 million each for a hub in California, the Pacific Northwest and the Appalachian region.

There is still plenty of money left to dole out. For example, MACH2 hasn’t received a dime of the $750 million in federal funds it was promised, and the Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub, or ARCH2, has only received a commitment for $30 million of $925 million in federal funds allocated for it.

Most of the projects are in the nascent stage. MACH2 is moving into phase one, which is largely on paper and resolving basic questions like how much hydrogen will be produced at the hub. It will be a while before shovels are in the ground. Mr. Kryaton said contract negotiations are ongoing.

The last-minute push is aimed at currying favor with the very same environmental groups who say they don’t want it. Those groups are actively working to scuttle Mr. Biden’s hydrogen dreams.

Groups such as the Riverkeepers and the Ohio River Institute, which is dedicated to economic and clean energy development in the Appalachian region, have attended meetings and launched letter-writing campaigns to encourage the feds to take a different path.

Ms. Carluccio said MACH2 didn’t initially make information about the project public until the Riverkeepers accessed them through a records request, and MACH2’s meetings are either in venues that require lengthy travel or online but require an expensive paywall to access. She’s described meetings with the Energy Department’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations as similarly opaque experiences.

“It makes people feel like they are not being heard,” she said.

Mr. Krayton pushed back on her complaint, saying the MACH2 project has provided the Riverkeepers with all of the information they’ve asked for.

Sean O’Leary, senior researcher with the Ohio River Institute, reported similar problems with the ARCH2 hub He’s also concerned that the hub will be an economic boondoggle for the region.

Mr. O’Leary compared the hydrogen mania to the region’s predicted natural gas boom that began in the late 2000s. The boom never materialized, and the Appalachian region lost more than 10,000 jobs between 2009 and 2021 while personal income dropped, according to data from the Ohio River Institute.

“Because the Appalachian hub is a blue hydrogen hub derived from natural gas, that creates a problem for us both economically and environmentally,” Mr. O’Leary said.

Technically, burning hydrogen does not produce direct greenhouse gas emissions, according to a 2022 study published in Atmosphere Chemistry and Physics. The study revealed it increases the concentration of other greenhouse gases like methane, ozone and water vapor.

A Harvard University study earlier this year concluded that hydrogen might be less effective at fighting climate change than other methods, including direct air capture of carbon dioxide.

The Biden administration estimates that the seven hubs will combine to reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions by 25 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually. However, that amounts to less than half of one percent of total carbon dioxide emissions in the United States.

Todd Allen, co-director of the University of Michigan’s MI-Hydrogen project, said the effectiveness of hydrogen as clean energy depends on the process used to derive it. That’s because fossil fuels have typically been used to generate the chemical reaction needed to separate hydrogen, a process that cannot be replicated with wind or solar panels.

“You can arrive at either answer because it depends on the pathway you take to separate it,” he said. “If you are using fossil fuels to develop it, then you are not moving in a cleaner direction.”

Some of the hubs are planning on producing so-called “blue,” which would be created with natural gas. Others will use a mix of methods, including nuclear power, solar and wind power and biogas, a decomposed organic matter, to produce hydrogen.

Mr. Allen says the hubs alone won’t make a big difference in battling climate change unless the government funding spurs the kind of private investment the Biden administration is seeking. If that happens, innovation and capacity could help reduce emissions.

“The point of the hub is to break through the chicken and the egg and drive down cost and certainties by incentivizing more private investment to kick in, and then it would drive down emissions,” he said.