ORIGINAL REPORTING: Making Los Angeles A Green Hydrogen Mecca

LA Green Hydrogen Hub Prospects Growing

Herman Trabish, December 6, 2021 (California Current)

Editor’s note: Green hydrogen has gained momentum with expanded efforts to find non-fossil fuel ways to respond to the war in Europe.

It is feasible for HyDeal Los Angeles, a public-private renewable hydrogen advocacy consortium, to make Los Angeles a global renewable hydrogen hub and to deliver cost-competitive renewable hydrogen to the LA basin and build a mass market, but only with a rigorous set of strategies and investor buy-in, HyDeal’s phase one multisector planning group concluded.

To drive the current high costs of green hydrogen down, HyDeal needs to become a multi-sector, high-volume supply chain/off-taker ecosystem comparable to gasoline’s refineries, pipelines, and fueling stations, Green Hydrogen Coalition President and Founder Janice Lin said at a Dec. 1 coalition webinar.

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There is $9.5 billion “clean hydrogen” spending in the new U.S. infrastructure law, including $8 billion for “Clean Hydrogen Hubs” like HyDeal LA, Department of Energy’s Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office Director Sunita Satyapal said during the webinar. In addition, DOE Earthshot investments are projected to help reduce the costs of this renewably-generated fuel, potentially bringing its average market price from today’s over $50/MWh to $20/MWh in 2030, she added.

DOE’s Hydrogen Earthshot funding proposes to bring the current per kilogram cost of green hydrogen of about $15 to $1/kg by 2030. That would replicate the success of the DOE Sunshot, which brought the cost of utility-scale solar from $0.15/kWh or more to below $0.03/kWh in the last decade, Satyapal said. In addition, LADWP committed to converting the Intermountain Power Plant in Utah and three in-basin power plants to green hydrogen over the next 15 years to advance the market.

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Between 2030 and 2035, a $27 billion investment would be needed, according to HyDeal’s planning group. That would build 26 GW of solar and 20 GW of electrolyzers at IPP and other Southwestern sites to fuel renewable hydrogen generated electricity via existing and new transmission and liquid fuel via thousands of kilometers of new pipelines to meet the LA hub’s 1 million to 3 million metric tons of demand. From 2025 to 2030, HyDeal would accelerate upstream production outside LA and introduce higher percentages of pipeline blends, proponents say.

Ultimately, dedicated pipelines will be needed to transport green hydrogen because they carry eight times the energy of transmission lines and will be needed to deliver liquid fuels to the LA basin for applications beyond power generation, HyDeal reported. Early conclusions from more advanced programs in Europe and testing by Dominion Energy and others suggest repurposed natural gas pipelines can be safe for large-scale liquid green hydrogen transport, Lin said…” click here for more

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