Officials from an Appalachian hydrogen hub and the Department of Energy said plans were moving ahead for billions of dollars in clean hydrogen projects throughout the region and that more information would be available about the projects soon.
The Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub (ARCH2), a public-private consortium, was awarded nearly a billion dollars in federal funding through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law last year. The money will go to projects that produce and use low-carbon hydrogen from natural gas. Carbon emissions produced during the process will be buried underground in deep wells.
Community and environmental groups have complained about a lack of information about projects involved in the hub.
But at a virtual community briefing on the project Friday, Melanie White, director of strategic engagement for Allegheny Science and Technology, and the community benefits manager at ARCH 2, said more information should be coming soon.
White said an agreement with the Department of Energy that was made public last month will allow the hub to start planning projects.
“We are absolutely ready to start ramping that up and to become more active and bringing people the room and getting the opportunity to talk with us,” White said.
Nearly a dozen projects are planned in Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. They include projects to use hydrogen for transportation and manufacturing.
The Biden administration has touted “clean hydrogen” as a way to clean up industries that create large amounts of planet-warming greenhouse gases, like steel, cement and long-distance shipping.
Last year, the administration awarded ARCH2 and six other hubs $7 billion to create a national hydrogen network. But since the announcement, little has been made public about ARCH2, including exactly where they would be built
That lack of information was partly due to a lack of clarity about what projects would be built, said ARCH2’s program manager Kurtis Hoffman of Battelle, a nonprofit research and development organization.
“A lot of those locations aren’t nailed down, exactly. They’re in general areas and, therefore, still need to go through all the proper processes,” Hoffman said.
James Winters of the Department of Energy said more details will be made public once sites for the hydrogen projects are selected.
“These projects are not finalized. The cake is not baked yet. There’s a lot of room for these to change over the next few years as we move throughout the phases of development,” Winters said.
ARCH2 officials said a webinar on the hub is planned for September and that there will be town halls in the following months in places where projects are planned.
Complaints over lack of public information
Tom Torres, a hydrogen organizer with the Ohio River Valley Institute (ORVI), said the public briefing left him disappointed. His organization authored a letter signed by 54 other groups throughout the three states calling on the Department of Energy to suspend talks with a hydrogen hub in Appalachia and disclose more information about the project.
(ORVI is supported by The Heinz Endowments, which also funds The Allegheny Front)
Torres said Friday’s public briefing provided very little information about where the projects would be built, who would develop them, and how the public would get to weigh in on the projects.
The Department of Energy, Torres said, “continue(s) to direct the public to their engagement structure. And I just don’t think that they’ve been able to demonstrate that that structure will provide relief to anyone but the backers of these facilities,” Torres said. “I don’t think a lot of attendees left feeling reassured or empowered after this briefing.”
Over these objections, the hydrogen hub appears to be moving forward.
A ribbon-cutting is scheduled next week in Morgantown, West Virginia. Both of West Virginia’s U.S. Senators and governors of all three states are on the invite list.