After more than a year of speculation, the Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub finally lifted the cloak and named names.
The mammoth consortium that has been selected by the U.S. Department of Energy for up to $925 million in funding to establish a hub for methane-derived hydrogen production and use includes 15 projects and more than a dozen companies.
Shawn Bennett, energy and resilience division manager at Battelle and a former DOE assistant secretary, said he has never been involved in anything this big. What some have derided as a lack of transparency has been a mad-dash, super-competitive process that’s still not over, he said. Negotiations with DOE are slated to last the next few months until the award is secured.
Still, “the cloak of competition has been removed,” said Melanie White, director of strategic engagement with Allegheny Science and Technology who is leading community engagement efforts for the hub.
Ms. White and Mr. Bennett unveiled the projects at a DOE-run public webinar.
The map they presented on Tuesday was different from the one Mr. Bennett showed during a presentation at an oil and gas industry conference, Shale Insight, last month. Most notably, it included the names of the companies and which projects they were developing. It also slimmed down its Pennsylvania inventory.
The map shows two dots in the Keystone State. One, in Fayette County, is EQT’s planned natural gas-derived hydrogen facility that would turn some of it into aviation fuel and sell the rest to Air Liquide, a French chemical company that plans to turn hydrogen into ground transportation fuel. The other is KeyState Zero’s project in Clinton County. This expanding effort has been in the works for years. It aims to marry onsite gas drilling with hydrogen, ammonia and urea production and carbon sequestration.
West Virginia’s projects include the previously announced ammonia production from natural gas with carbon capture and storage being developed by CNX; an effort by Fidelis and Mountaineer GigaSystem to make hydrogen from natural gas and biomass then burn it for electricity to supply datacenters; a partnership between utility Hope Gas, Watt Fuel Cell Corp and EQT to produce hydrogen from natural gas, blend it into gas pipelines and use it for residential fuel cells; a hydrogen production project from natural gas derived from food waste announced by Empire Diversified Energy; and an Amazon and Plug Power hydrogen production facility from renewable energy sources.
A smaller but diverse mix of companies and uses are slated for Ohio, including a hydrogen storage hub being proposed by MPLX, a pipeline partnership from Marathon Petroleum Corp., in the same salt beds that were once prospected for ethane storage.
Having storage means companies looking to use hydrogen would feel more comfortable locating in the area, he said.
Mr. Bennett said the map was revised after discussions with the Department of Energy. For one, all fueling stations were removed. So were two hydrogen production facilities slated for Pennsylvania, one just west of Pittsburgh and the other in the northeastern part of the state. He said federal officials told Arch2 they did not want any hydrogen produced through steam methane reforming, which is how nearly all hydrogen is currently made in the U.S. Instead, if projects used natural gas as a feedstock, the DOE preferred autothermal reforming, a newer process that produces a CO2 stream that’s more concentrated and therefore easier to capture.
There are no pipelines on the map — not for CO2 or hydrogen.
“That was very intentional,” Mr. Bennett said. The hub companies wanted to see where demand develops before building infrastructure.
“Different use cases are going to show what needs pipelines and what needs trucks,” Mr. Bennett said.
The level of detail disclosed in the session on Tuesday made some listeners wonder why it had all been so opaque until now.
“There is a reason behind this,” Mr. Bennett said. “We’re very careful not to publicize too much too early.”
He said that besides wanting to keep things close to the vest in a competitive process, the consortium was also mindful about overpromising.
For example, while the hub has overall job projections, Ms. White said these aren’t steadfast commitments.
“But I can tell you that 15 of our companies and our projects are committed to hiring locally first” and that all are either using union labor or open to it, she said.
The team estimates that the number of permanent jobs created by all the projects would be around 3,000. Construction jobs are expected to be around 18,000.
The hub application required Arch2 to submit a community benefits plan, which is basically a plan about how to pursue community engagement and benefit goals. This will manifest in community briefings and outreach in the coming months. Ms. White said that after the new year she will be organizing regional town halls.
Individual companies will set up their own meetings, she said, likely at a later point.
“People can reach out anytime,” Ms. White said providing her email: mwhite@alleghenyst.com,
“I live in Washington, Pa. We’re happy to come and talk and explain what is going on.”
To date, the most progress in terms of community benefits has been made on hydrogen trainings programs, she said. Arch2 is working with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to develop hydrogen safety training, both for workers in the industry and first responders. It also plans to develop community and student education efforts around hydrogen.
“We want to make sure factual information is out there about hydrogen and its environmental and safety implications,” she said.
Many public comments during Tuesday’s webinar focused on the lack of transparency to date — “a valid concern,” Ms. White said — while others voiced concerns that the hub would simply prolong dependence on fossil fuels.
“Last night was my first real experience with people in direct contact with me stating, ‘We don’t want this,’” Ms. White said.
“How do I respond? I will listen. Absolutely. And I hope that they in turn listen to the other sides of the argument. And I would like to think we could find some place in the middle.”
Anya Litvak: alitvak@post-gazette.com
First Published: October 26, 2023, 1:16 p.m.
Updated: October 27, 2023, 9:56 a.m.
