A Clean Hydrogen Ecosystem Will Require a Collaborative Effort

Clean hydrogen development and deployment is critical to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Green hydrogen is a zero-carbon fuel source, and it can also be used as a form of long duration renewable energy storage. Playing that role, however, will require more than a single entity or technology leading the charge. Hydrogen’s widespread deployment will require unprecedented collaboration with industry partners, policymakers, government entities and NGOs alike and the ability to leverage existing and new technologies.

Achieving net zero carbon emissions may be the greatest challenge of our lifetime, and at the same time the possibility of what we can accomplish together is exciting. Our urgency is already translating to action: governments, industry stakeholders and citizens around the world are coming together with integrated solutions for the first time, even as some of us continue to build of the momentum of energy transition projects that have been years in the making. 

Last week, I had the privilege of sitting down with my co-collaborators and colleagues Craig Broussard of Magnum Development and Jigar Shah of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) along with S&P Global’s Eleonor Kramarz, to discuss the importance of public-private partnerships in realizing hydrogen’s potential in the energy transition. 

Here’s what stood out to me from our CERAWeek panel:

Building the Foundation for a Hydrogen Ecosystem

Hydrogen will play a major role in enabling a clean, affordable, and reliable electricity supply throughout the energy transition. The growing availability of renewable power sources is beginning to improve the economics of clean hydrogen production. Before hard-to-abate industries like concrete and steel manufacturing can deploy clean hydrogen to decarbonize their operations, they will need a steady, large-scale supply. That requirement encompasses more than just production—we will need to be able to store large volumes of clean hydrogen, and we’ll need to be able to deliver it where it’s needed, when it’s needed. 

“Part of what Mitsubishi Power and Magnum Development are doing is solving the ‘if-you-build-it-they-will-come’ problem, and they’re going first,” said Jigar Shah, the DOE Loan Programs Office Director. “Over time, as the other companies DOE works with who need hydrogen as feedstock come knocking, we can introduce them to our friends at The Advanced Clean Energy Storage Hydrogen Hub (ACES Delta Hub), and the infrastructure they’ve built out.”

Building an infrastructure to support clean hydrogen is a prerequisite for its widespread adoption across industries. The power industry will play a pivotal role in building this framework. But it can’t do it alone.

Creating Regional Hydrogen Hubs

The ACES Delta Hub, created jointly with Magnum Development, is the nation’s first utility-scale clean hydrogen hub. It will include electrolysis and salt cavern storage for the first time, nearly doubling global green hydrogen production capacity and creating the world’s largest renewable energy storage facility.

The geographic location of this hub is no accident. It uniquely sits on the only Gulf Coast domal-style salt dome in the Western United States located in Delta, Utah. Salt caverns are well-suited for holding large quantities of hydrogen safely and cost effectively. We’re currently building two of these salt dome caverns, which will provide 300,000 megawatt hours of storage capacity. In the future, the salt dome has the capacity to contain up to one hundred caverns. This gives us the ability to store a truly massive amount of hydrogen, enough to cost-effectively support decarbonizing the entire Western United States.

This project will serve as a template for building out additional hydrogen infrastructure throughout the country that can be replicated across the globe. That’s one reason DOE’s Loan Programs Office issued the first loan for a renewable project in over a decade, showing that America can, and is, leading on clean hydrogen deployment.

 “We’re the poster child for public-private partnerships, no doubt about it,” said Craig Broussard, CEO and President of ACES Delta, LLC. “And in public-private partnerships, relationships matter. We develop those relationships by being trustworthy and transparent as we scale together.”

This type of government support creates opportunities and incentives to explore unique approaches and projects that might not otherwise be undertaken at the speed or scale necessary to reach decarbonization goals.

Collaborating to Accelerate the Next Steps in the Energy Transition

Public-private partnerships have the potential to accelerate progress toward other key milestones, which is perhaps our greatest takeaway from the ACES Delta Hub. The hub, and the loan received from DOE, reflects four years of collaboration between Mitsubishi Power Americas and Magnum Development. However, the hub also has additional partners and collaborators who worked alongside us to help make the ACES Delta Hub a reality. Public partners included the State of Utah, and more specifically the SITLA | Utah Trust Lands Administration with project proceeds benefiting the schoolchildren of the State. Our world-class project partners include Black & Veatch, responsible for constructing the surface-related facilities at the site including the electrolyzer production facility, and WSP, responsible for constructing the sub-surface and storage cavern-related facilities. Our financing partners which included a consortium of some of the world’s most sophisticated and leading investors including Manulife, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMCo), and GIC. And of course, one of our most cherished partners – our customer the Intermountain Power Agency who made the commitment to clean energy and enabled the project as a whole.

A successful energy transition will be the sum of innumerable moving parts. It’s efforts like these that will serve as threads in a much larger tapestry woven by policymakers, industry stakeholders and citizens across the globe. Large-scale public-private collaborations will be crucial for maintaining and potentially even accelerating our progress toward a thriving clean hydrogen ecosystem and a net zero future. I for one am excited to be part of shaping the energy transition.