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As soon as Friday, the Biden administration could announce who will advance to the next phase of its “clean hydrogen hubs” program, a $7 billion experiment to find out whether and to what extent hydrogen can become a competitive replacement for fossil fuels.
The eventual hubs could touch every corner of the country, but the Department of Energy, which is administering the program, and the applicants themselves, have kept the proposed plans mostly confidential. Each one could include a dozen or more individual projects, but little has been disclosed about what the proposed projects are, where they will be, or what the public process will look like around their development. The awards could help clarify the direction of a massive government program that, right now, contains more questions than answers.
Earlier this week, sources familiar with the Department of Energy’s plans told Bloomberg that Biden is expected to announce the initial winners on Friday when he visits Pennsylvania. On Thursday morning, Reuters reported on a tip that one of the grants would go to the Mid-Atlantic Clean Hydrogen Hub, a partnership between Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey, while another would go to the Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub, led by West Virginia, but involving partners in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Kentucky as well.
Per the bipartisan infrastructure law, which created the program, the DOE must support the development of at least four hydrogen hubs. Collectively, they have to contain projects that test the use of hydrogen in transportation, power generation, residential and commercial heating, and industry. There also have to be projects that demonstrate different ways to make hydrogen, including using renewable electricity, nuclear energy, and natural gas with carbon capture.
Biden’s announcement will just be the start of a process that will play out over the next five to 10 years. The funding will be rolled out over the course of four phases, and the initial batch of winning proposals will not necessarily all continue to receive support beyond the first phase. Each hub will receive a relatively small grant to conduct planning and analysis over the course of the next 12 to 18 months to ensure their “concept is technologically and financially viable, with input from relevant local stakeholders.” (The DOE’s funding announcement estimated initial grants of $20 million, although Reuters reported the Pennsylvania hub will receive $750 million.) After that point, each will be subjected to a “go/no-go review” to determine whether it can advance to the next phase.
“I think it's important to emphasize that what DOE is announcing is an invitation to negotiate potential funding awards,” Jill Tauber, the vice president of climate and energy at Earthjustice, told me. “So this is not an announcement of final decisions and awards. There are still approvals to be secured.”
Hydrogen is incredibly divisive. Most experts who study decarbonization agree that it holds a lot of promise as a climate solution. It can be burned to provide heat or power to any number of processes, similar to natural gas, without releasing any carbon emissions. But it requires a lot of energy to make hydrogen in the first place, and no one knows yet exactly which applications will make sense.
Climate advocates are wary of two big risks. One is that the process of making hydrogen, whether from electricity or natural gas, could emit so much carbon that it ultimately will be worse for the climate. The other is that even if the production is clean, the hydrogen could be wasted on something like residential heating, which already has more efficient solutions available, rather than reserved for processes that are truly hard to decarbonize.
That’s why the biggest questions for the hydrogen hubs are not just where they will be, but which energy sources they will use and which end-uses they will focus on.
“Hydrogen certainly has the potential to be a clean energy solution that delivers benefits, including economic benefits,” said Tauber. “But it can also drag us deeper into the climate crisis and hurt communities. So both things are on the table right now.” These concerns have already made national news in relation to a high-stakes battle over the rules for the clean hydrogen tax credit, a subsidy that was created by the Inflation Reduction Act.
The term “hubs” might bring to mind a few city blocks of bustling activity, but the hydrogen hubs are shaping up to be far more expansive. Many of the applicants are unlikely alliances between multiple state governments, companies, and universities across wide swathes of the country. For example, a potential hub in the Northeast could involve more than a dozen projects stretched across seven states.
Nearly 80 such groups submitted initial concept papers for hubs to the Department of Energy when it first opened up the application process. Of those, the DOE encouraged 33 groups to file full applications, which were due in April, and the agency will be selecting six to 10 for the first phase of the awards.
Just one of the applicants, a partnership between Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming called the Western Interstate Hydrogen Hub, released its initial concept paper to the public, though with a number of redactions. While the hubs will all be different and designed to the specific circumstances of their region, the document is still helpful for demonstrating what kinds of projects are under consideration.
The document lists eight specific projects. Several are hydrogen production facilities — some would use electricity to make the fuel, others would use gas. A company called Libertad Power would buy hydrogen for a network of hydrogen fueling stations for long-haul trucks that it is planning to build between Texas and California. Xcel Energy, the dominant utility in Colorado, wants to blend hydrogen into the natural gas that it burns in its power plants and delivers to residential and commercial customers. There’s also a 275,000-acre farm on Navajo Nation that would run its tractors and other equipment on hydrogen fuel. Companies would construct pipelines and design trucking routes to transport hydrogen around the region.
In addition to getting more detailed information about the different components of the proposals, advocates like Tauber want DOE to more clearly spell out how it will engage with affected communities as the program progresses. “None of that is clear right now, and hopefully we'll see some of that clarity in the announcement,” she said.
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Though it might not be as comprehensive or as permanent as renewables advocates have feared, it’s also “just the beginning,” the congressman said.
President-elect Donald Trump’s team is drafting an executive order to “halt offshore wind turbine activities” along the East Coast, working with the office of Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, the congressman said in a press release from his office Monday afternoon.
“This executive order is just the beginning,” Van Drew said in a statement. “We will fight tooth and nail to prevent this offshore wind catastrophe from wreaking havoc on the hardworking people who call our coastal towns home.”
The announcement indicates that some in the anti-wind space are leaving open the possibility that Trump’s much-hyped offshore wind ban may be less sweeping than initially suggested.
In its press release, Van Drew’s office said the executive order would “lay the groundwork for permanent measures against the projects,” leaving the door open to only a temporary pause on permitting new projects. The congressman had recently told New Jersey reporters that he anticipates only a six-month moratorium on offshore wind.
The release also stated that the “proposed order” is “expected to be finalized within the first few months of the administration,” which is a far cry from Trump’s promise to stop projects on Day 1. If enacted, a pause would essentially halt all U.S. offshore wind development because the sought-after stretches of national coastline are entirely within federal waters.
Whether this is just caution from Van Drew’s people or a true moderation of Trump’s ambition we’ll soon find out. Inauguration Day is in less than a week.
Imagine for a moment that you’re an aerial firefighter pilot. You have one of the most dangerous jobs in the country, and now you’ve been called in to fight the devastating fires burning in Los Angeles County’s famously tricky, hilly terrain. You’re working long hours — not as long as your colleagues on the ground due to flight time limitations, but the maximum scheduling allows — not to mention the added external pressures you’re also facing. Even the incoming president recently wondered aloud why the fires aren’t under control yet and insinuated that it’s your and your colleagues’ fault.
You’re on a sortie, getting ready for a particularly white-knuckle drop at a low altitude in poor visibility conditions when an object catches your eye outside the cockpit window: an authorized drone dangerously close to your wing.
Aerial firefighters don’t have to imagine this terrifying scenario; they’ve lived it. Last week, a drone punched a hole in the wing of a Québécois “Super Scooper” plane that had traveled down from Canada to fight the fires, grounding Palisades firefighting operations for an agonizing half-hour. Thirty minutes might not seem like much, but it is precious time lost when the Santa Ana winds have already curtailed aerial operations.
“I am shocked by what happened in Los Angeles with the drone,” Anna Lau, a forestry communication coordinator with the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, told me. The Montana DNRC has also had to contend with unauthorized drones grounding its firefighting planes. “We’re following what’s going on very closely, and it’s shocking to us,” Lau went on. Leaving the skies clear so that firefighters can get on with their work “just seems like a no-brainer, especially when people are actively trying to tackle the situation at hand and fighting to save homes, property, and lives.”
Courtesy of U.S. Forest Service
Although the Super Scooper collision was by far the most egregious case, according to authorities there have been at least 40 “incidents involving drones” in the airspace around L.A. since the fires started. (Notably, the Federal Aviation Administration has not granted any waivers for the air space around Palisades, meaning any drone images you see of the region, including on the news, were “probably shot illegally,” Intelligencer reports.) So far, law enforcement has arrested three people connected to drones flying near the L.A. fires, and the FBI is seeking information regarding the Super Scooper collision.
Such a problem is hardly isolated to these fires, though. The Forest Service reports that drones led to the suspension of or interfered with at least 172 fire responses between 2015 and 2020. Some people, including Mike Fraietta, an FAA-certified drone pilot and the founder of the drone-detection company Gargoyle Systems, believe the true number of interferences is much higher — closer to 400.
Law enforcement likes to say that unauthorized drone use falls into three buckets — clueless, criminal, or careless — and Fraietta was inclined to believe that it’s mostly the former in L.A. Hobbyists and other casual drone operators “don’t know the regulations or that this is a danger,” he said. “There’s a lot of ignorance.” To raise awareness, he suggested law enforcement and the media highlight the steep penalties for flying drones in wildfire no-fly zones, which is punishable by up to 12 months in prison or a fine of $75,000.
“What we’re seeing, particularly in California, is TikTok and Instagram influencers trying to get a shot and get likes,” Fraietta conjectured. In the case of the drone that hit the Super Scooper, it “might have been a case of citizen journalism, like, Well, I have the ability to get this shot and share what’s going on.”
Emergency management teams are waking up, too. Many technologies are on the horizon for drone detection, identification, and deflection, including Wi-Fi jamming, which was used to ground climate activists’ drones at Heathrow Airport in 2019. Jamming is less practical in an emergency situation like the one in L.A., though, where lives could be at stake if people can’t communicate.
Still, the fact of the matter is that firefighters waste precious time dealing with drones when there are far more pressing issues that need their attention. Lau, in Montana, described how even just a 12-minute interruption to firefighting efforts can put a community at risk. “The biggest public awareness message we put out is, ‘If you fly, we can’t,’” she said.
Fraietta, though, noted that drone technology could be used positively in the future, including on wildfire detection and monitoring, prescribed burns, and communicating with firefighters or victims on the ground.
“We don’t want to see this turn into the FAA saying, ‘Hey everyone, no more drones in the United States because of this incident,’” Fraietta said. “You don’t shut down I-95 because a few people are running drugs up and down it, right? Drones are going to be super beneficial to the country long term.”
But critically, in the case of a wildfire, such tools belong in the right hands — not the hands of your neighbor who got a DJI Mini 3 for Christmas. “Their one shot isn’t worth it,” Lau said.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect that the Québécois firefighting planes are called Super Scoopers, not super soakers.
Plus 3 more outstanding questions about this ongoing emergency.
As Los Angeles continued to battle multiple big blazes ripping through some of the most beloved (and expensive) areas of the city on Friday, a question lingered in the background: What caused the fires in the first place?
Though fires are less common in California during this time of the year, they aren’t unheard of. In early December 2017, power lines sparked the Thomas Fire near Ventura, California, which burned through to mid-January. At the time it was the largest fire in the state since at least the 1930s. Now it’s the ninth-largest. Although that fire was in a more rural area, it ignited for some of the same reasons we’re seeing fires this week.
Read on for everything we know so far about how the fires started.
Six major fires started during the Santa Ana wind event last week:
Officials are investigating the cause of the fires and have not made any public statements yet. Early eyewitness accounts suggest that the Eaton Fire may have started at the base of a transmission tower owned by Southern California Edison. So far, the company has maintained that an analysis of its equipment showed “no interruptions or electrical or operational anomalies until more than one hour after the reported start time of the fire.” A Washington Post investigation found that the Palisades Fire could have risen from the remnants of a fire that burned on New Year’s Eve and reignited.
On Thursday morning, Edward Nordskog, a retired fire investigator from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, told me it was unlikely they had even begun looking into the root of the biggest and most destructive of the fires in the Pacific Palisades. “They don't start an investigation until it's safe to go into the area where the fire started, and it just hasn't been safe until probably today,” he said.
It can take years to determine the cause of a fire. Investigators did not pinpoint the cause of the Thomas Fire until March 2019, more than two years after it started.
But Nordskog doesn’t think it will take very long this time. It’s easier to narrow down the possibilities for an urban fire because there are typically both witnesses and surveillance footage, he told me. He said the most common causes of wildfires in Los Angeles are power lines and those started by unhoused people. They can also be caused by sparks from vehicles or equipment.
At more than 40,000 acres burned total, these fires are unlikely to make the charts for the largest in California history. But because they are burning in urban, densely populated, and expensive areas, they could be some of the most devastating. With an estimated 9,000 structures damaged as of Friday morning, the Eaton and Palisades fires are likely to make the list for most destructive wildfire events in the state.
And they will certainly be at the top for costliest. The Palisades Fire has already been declared a likely contender for the most expensive wildfire in U.S. history. It has destroyed more than 5,000 structures in some of the most expensive zip codes in the country. Between that and the Eaton Fire, Accuweather estimates the damages could reach $57 billion.
While we don’t know the root causes of the ignitions, several factors came together to create perfect fire conditions in Southern California this week.
First, there’s the Santa Ana winds, an annual phenomenon in Southern California, when very dry, high-pressure air gets trapped in the Great Basin and begins escaping westward through mountain passes to lower-pressure areas along the coast. Most of the time, the wind in Los Angeles blows eastward from the ocean, but during a Santa Ana event, it changes direction, picking up speed as it rushes toward the sea.
Jon Keeley, a research scientist with the US Geological Survey and an adjunct professor at the University of California, Los Angeles told me that Santa Ana winds typically blow at maybe 30 to 40 miles per hour, while the winds this week hit upwards of 60 to 70 miles per hour. “More severe than is normal, but not unique,” he said. “We had similar severe winds in 2017 with the Thomas Fire.”
Second, Southern California is currently in the midst of extreme drought. Winter is typically a rainier season, but Los Angeles has seen less than half an inch of rain since July. That means that all the shrubland vegetation in the area is bone-dry. Again, Keeley said, this was not usual, but not unique. Some years are drier than others.
These fires were also not a question of fuel management, Keeley told me. “The fuels are not really the issue in these big fires. It's the extreme winds,” he said. “You can do prescription burning in chaparral and have essentially no impact on Santa Ana wind-driven fires.” As far as he can tell, based on information from CalFire, the Eaton Fire started on an urban street.
While it’s likely that climate change played a role in amplifying the drought, it’s hard to say how big a factor it was. Patrick Brown, a climate scientist at the Breakthrough Institute and adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, published a long post on X outlining the factors contributing to the fires, including a chart of historic rainfall during the winter in Los Angeles that shows oscillations between wet and dry years over the past eight decades.
But climate change is expected to make dry years drier and wet years wetter, creating a “hydroclimate whiplash,” as Daniel Swain, a pre-eminent expert on climate change and weather in California puts it. In a thread on Bluesky, Swain wrote that “in 2024, Southern California experienced an exceptional episode of wet-to-dry hydroclimate whiplash.” Last year’s rainy winter fostered abundant plant growth, and the proceeding dryness primed the vegetation for fire.
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Editor’s note: This story was last update on Monday, January 13, at 10:00 a.m. ET.