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Where natural gas comes from matters for hydrogen production.
Oil giants Exxon and Chevron are among a group of energy companies that could receive up to $1.2 billion in federal grants to make so-called “clean” hydrogen in Texas. Their proposal to produce the clean-burning fuel using natural gas and carbon capture, in addition to other methods, was selected by the Biden administration a year ago to become one of the country’s seven clean hydrogen hubs. But a trio of researchers at the University of Texas at Austin just showed that there’s a dirty paradox at the heart of the plan.
In a study published in the journal Nature Energy on Monday, the researchers show that upstream emissions in the natural gas supply chain in Texas are so high that it’s essentially impossible to make hydrogen from it that would meet federal standards for “clean” hydrogen. But, the authors warn, the government’s proposed method for measuring the carbon intensity of hydrogen overlooks these emissions. That means these Texas hydrogen projects could get millions in public funding in the name of tackling climate change, all while making the problem worse.
“You’re investing so much in developing a hydrogen economy, and then it turns out, 10 years later, half of them are not even low carbon,” Arvind Ravikumar, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin and one of the authors of the new paper, told me. “I think that’s a real risk.”
This story might sound familiar. I’ve written extensively about the emissions accounting challenges plaguing another method for making clean hydrogen that requires only water and carbon-free electricity, known as electrolysis. The problem there is that the electric grid still runs largely on fossil fuels, and so plugging in a hydrogen plant will produce indirect emissions, even if the production process itself is clean.
The new study highlights a similar issue with hydrogen made from natural gas. Of course, since this method uses fossil fuels, it’s already substantially more difficult to prove it has any climate benefits at all. In theory, the emissions can be greatly reduced, although likely not entirely eliminated, by capturing the carbon emitted from the plant. The authors show, however, that the more important factor is where the natural gas comes from.
Natural gas is mostly methane, a greenhouse gas more than 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the short term, and leaks are notoriously underestimated. But any assessment of the benefits of hydrogen made from methane must take leakage into account, and some natural gas fields are leakier than others.
The paper analyzes a range of scenarios for two hypothetical hydrogen plants — one on the Gulf Coast that sources natural gas from the Permian Basin, and one in Ohio that gets gas from the Marcellus Shale. The Treasury Department’s draft rules for calculating the carbon intensity of hydrogen for the clean hydrogen tax credit say these two plants should assume that a national average of 1% of the natural gas extracted from the ground is leaked into the atmosphere where it warms the planet. But more than a decade of on-the-ground measurements, combined with more recent satellite data, has shown that methane leaks vary widely from well to well and basin to basin.
Using the more accurate, though still approximate, leakage rates of 5.2% in the Permian and 1.25% in the Marcellus, the authors calculated the carbon intensity of hydrogen produced at the two plants under various assumptions. What if the carbon capture system is more effective? Or less effective? What if the capture equipment is powered by renewables? What if we measure the warming effects of methane over 20 years versus over 100 years?
No matter which variable they changed, one result stayed the same: Hydrogen made from Permian Basin gas greatly exceeded the government’s definition of clean hydrogen, i.e. 4 kilograms of CO2 released per kilogram of hydrogen produced. In fact, the emissions from natural gas production in the Permian Basin alone pushed it over that standard. Hydrogen made from Marcellus Shale gas, on the other hand, has the potential to qualify as clean if at least 90% of the carbon at the plant is captured.
The findings suggest that without enormous efforts to reduce those upstream emissions, which come from leaks, venting, and flaring at the wellhead and along the pipeline system, natural gas-based hydrogen projects on the Gulf Coast should not qualify for federal subsidies.
The authors advocate for the Treasury’s final guidelines for calculating the carbon intensity of hydrogen to account for these regional differences. “I think that, to begin with, will make a huge difference in accurately estimating the emissions intensity of these projects,” Ravikumar said. As new methane regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency go into effect, it’s possible that projects that are not eligible today could become eligible in the future. “But the point is, you’ll only know that if you do your carbon accounting accurately across supply chains,” he said.
One problem with this solution is that hydrogen producers have access to another federal tax credit that doesn’t require any analysis of how clean the hydrogen is — up to $85 for every ton of carbon they capture and sequester underground. Indeed, at least one project developer has already said they will go after that subsidy instead of the one for clean hydrogen.
Ravikumar thinks those developers are facing a major risk. “At the end of the day, you’re going to buy hydrogen from these companies explicitly for its low-carbon attributes,” he said. “Right now we did this analysis, but very soon, you’re going to have satellites that are going to look at all these regions and be able to make emissions information publicly available. And once you’re able to do that, you can’t make up numbers on paper.”
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A war of attrition is now turning in opponents’ favor.
A solar developer’s defeat in Massachusetts last week reveals just how much stronger project opponents are on the battlefield after the de facto repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act.
Last week, solar developer PureSky pulled five projects under development around the western Massachusetts town of Shutesbury. PureSky’s facilities had been in the works for years and would together represent what the developer has claimed would be one of the state’s largest solar projects thus far. In a statement, the company laid blame on “broader policy and regulatory headwinds,” including the state’s existing renewables incentives not keeping pace with rising costs and “federal policy updates,” which PureSky said were “making it harder to finance projects like those proposed near Shutesbury.”
But tucked in its press release was an admission from the company’s vice president of development Derek Moretz: this was also about the town, which had enacted a bylaw significantly restricting solar development that the company was until recently fighting vigorously in court.
“There are very few areas in the Commonwealth that are feasible to reach its clean energy goals,” Moretz stated. “We respect the Town’s conservation go als, but it is clear that systemic reforms are needed for Massachusetts to source its own energy.”
This stems from a story that probably sounds familiar: after proposing the projects, PureSky began reckoning with a burgeoning opposition campaign centered around nature conservation. Led by a fresh opposition group, Smart Solar Shutesbury, activists successfully pushed the town to drastically curtail development in 2023, pointing to the amount of forest acreage that would potentially be cleared in order to construct the projects. The town had previously not permitted facilities larger than 15 acres, but the fresh change went further, essentially banning battery storage and solar projects in most areas.
When this first happened, the state Attorney General’s office actually had PureSky’s back, challenging the legality of the bylaw that would block construction. And PureSky filed a lawsuit that was, until recently, ongoing with no signs of stopping. But last week, shortly after the Treasury Department unveiled its rules for implementing Trump’s new tax and spending law, which basically repealed the Inflation Reduction Act, PureSky settled with the town and dropped the lawsuit – and the projects went away along with the court fight.
What does this tell us? Well, things out in the country must be getting quite bleak for solar developers in areas with strident and locked-in opposition that could be costly to fight. Where before project developers might have been able to stomach the struggle, money talks – and the dollars are starting to tell executives to lay down their arms.
The picture gets worse on the macro level: On Monday, the Solar Energy Industries Association released a report declaring that federal policy changes brought about by phasing out federal tax incentives would put the U.S. at risk of losing upwards of 55 gigawatts of solar project development by 2030, representing a loss of more than 20 percent of the project pipeline.
But the trade group said most of that total – 44 gigawatts – was linked specifically to the Trump administration’s decision to halt federal permitting for renewable energy facilities, a decision that may impact generation out west but has little-to-know bearing on most large solar projects because those are almost always on private land.
Heatmap Pro can tell us how much is at stake here. To give you a sense of perspective, across the U.S., over 81 gigawatts worth of renewable energy projects are being contested right now, with non-Western states – the Northeast, South and Midwest – making up almost 60% of that potential capacity.
If historical trends hold, you’d expect a staggering 49% of those projects to be canceled. That would be on top of the totals SEIA suggests could be at risk from new Trump permitting policies.
I suspect the rate of cancellations in the face of project opposition will increase. And if this policy landscape is helping activists kill projects in blue states in desperate need of power, like Massachusetts, then the future may be more difficult to swallow than we can imagine at the moment.
And more on the week’s most important conflicts around renewables.
1. Wells County, Indiana – One of the nation’s most at-risk solar projects may now be prompting a full on moratorium.
2. Clark County, Ohio – Another Ohio county has significantly restricted renewable energy development, this time with big political implications.
3. Daviess County, Kentucky – NextEra’s having some problems getting past this county’s setbacks.
4. Columbia County, Georgia – Sometimes the wealthy will just say no to a solar farm.
5. Ottawa County, Michigan – A proposed battery storage facility in the Mitten State looks like it is about to test the state’s new permitting primacy law.
A conversation with Jeff Seidman, a professor at Vassar College.
This week’s conversation is with Jeff Seidman, a professor at Vassar College and an avid Heatmap News reader. Last week Seidman claimed a personal victory: he successfully led an effort to overturn a moratorium on battery storage development in the town of Poughkeepsie in Hudson Valley, New York. After reading a thread about the effort he posted to BlueSky, I reached out to chat about what my readers might learn from his endeavors – and how they could replicate them, should they want to.
The following conversation was lightly edited for clarity.
So how did you decide to fight against a battery storage ban? What was your process here?
First of all, I’m not a professional in this area, but I’ve been learning about climate stuff for a long time. I date my education back to when Vox started and I read my first David Roberts column there. But I just happened to hear from someone I know that in the town of Poughkeepsie where I live that a developer made a proposal and local residents who live nearby were up in arms about it. And I heard the town was about to impose a moratorium – this was back in March 2024.
I actually personally know some of the town board members, and we have a Democratic majority who absolutely care about climate change but didn’t particularly know that battery power was important to the energy transition and decarbonizing the grid. So I organized five or six people to go to the town board meeting, wrote a letter, and in that initial board meeting we characterized the reason we were there as being about climate.
There were a lot more people on the other side. They were very angry. So we said do a short moratorium because every day we’re delaying this, peaker plants nearby are spewing SOx and NOx into the air. The status quo has a cost.
But then the other side, they were clearly triggered by the climate stuff and said renewables make the grid more expensive. We’d clearly pressed a button in the culture wars. And then we realized the mistake, because we lost that one.
When you were approaching getting this overturned, what considerations did you make?
After that initial meeting and seeing how those mentions of climate or even renewables had triggered a portion of the board, and the audience, I really course-corrected. I realized we had to make this all about local benefits. So that’s what I tried to do going forward.
Even for people who were climate concerned, it was really clear that what they perceived as a present risk in their neighborhood was way more salient than an abstract thing like contributing to the fight against climate change globally. So even for people potentially on your side, you have to make it about local benefits.
The other thing we did was we called a two-hour forum for the county supervisors and mayor’s association because we realized talking to them in a polarized environment was not a way to have a conversation. I spoke and so did Paul Rogers, a former New York Fire Department lieutenant who is now in fire safety consulting – he sounds like a firefighter and can speak with a credibility that I could never match in front of, for example, local fire chiefs. Winning them over was important. And we took more than an hour of questions.
Stage one was to convince them of why batteries were important. Stage two was to show that a large number of constituents were angry about the moratorium, but that Republicans were putting on a unified front against this – an issue to win votes. So there was a period where Democrats on the Poughkeepsie board were convinced but it was politically difficult for them.
But stage three became helping them do the right thing, even with the risk of there being a political cost.
What would you say to those in other parts of the country who want to do what you did?
If possible, get a zoning law in place before there is any developer with a specific proposal because all of the opposition to this project came from people directly next to the proposed project. Get in there before there’s a specific project site.
Even if you’re in a very blue city, don’t make it primarily about climate. Abstract climate loses to non-abstract perceived risk every time. Make it about local benefits.
To the extent you can, read and educate yourself about what good batteries provide to the grid. There’s a lot of local economic benefits there.
I am trying to put together some of the resources I used into a packet, a tool kit, so that people elsewhere can learn from it and draw from those resources.
Also, the more you know, the better. All those years of reading David Roberts and Heatmap gave me enough knowledge to actually answer questions here. It works especially when you have board members who may be sympathetic but need to be reassured.