All about the catch in Biden’s green hydrogen plan. Reuters reports
Biden's green hydrogen project hits a climate hurdle: water shortages. All the details in the Reuters in-depth analysis
The Biden administration's climate program is facing an unexpected challenge in Corpus Christi, Texas, where a proposed green hydrogen hub would require installing energy-intensive, costly, and expensive seawater desalination plants. potentially harmful to the environment.
Gulf Coast port is vying for up to $1 billion, available under President Joe Biden's 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, to create a regional hub for the production of hydrogen, a low-emissions fuel obtained by electrolysing water which can help decarbonise industries and transport that produce heavy emissions.
A hydrogen hub would require access to millions of gallons of water, a challenge for Corpus Christi, which is experiencing a multi-year drought. Although local officials say they can provide water by building a seawater desalination plant, environmental groups and some local residents and lawmakers are speaking out against desalination sites.
“It makes no sense to create a supposed source of clean energy that in turn destroys an entire ecosystem, threatens other economies that depend on a system of healthy bays, and usurps residents' water supplies,” wrote the Coastal Alliance to Protect the Environment , a Corpus Christi activist group, in a letter to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, shared with Reuters .
Reuters interviewed six researchers studying hydrogen as green energy and was given exclusive access to an analysis by consultancy Rystad Energy that showed the Biden administration's vision of low-carbon hydrogen could collide with a challenge in turn exacerbated by climate change: water scarcity.
Producing hydrogen requires huge amounts of fresh water in a world increasingly affected by climate-induced drought.
According to Rystad's data, nine of the 33 projects on the Energy Department's shortlist for hydrogen hubs are in high water-stressed regions.
These locations include Southern California, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico and Texas. Globally, the picture is even worse, with more than 70% of proposed green hydrogen projects located in water-stressed regions such as the Middle East.
“Most of the world's planned green hydrogen projects will be located in water-stressed regions,” said Minh Khoi Le, a renewable energy analyst at Rystad, adding that this would create a demand for more desalination plants.
The Biden administration is offering companies up to $100 billion in tax credits and regions up to $7 billion in hydrogen hub construction grants to help meet the goal of producing 50 million tons of clean hydrogen by 2050.
DOE will announce the hubs in September.
The DOE declined to comment on applications from Corpus Christi or other hydrogen hubs, but pointed to Reuters the agency's funding announcement, which "acknowledges that water consumption for H2Hubs could lead to additional stress for regional water resources".
US Environmental Protection Agency Deputy Administrator Radhika Fox told Reuters that “More water systems are considering desalination as source water becomes increasingly scarce and treatment technology improves,” but did not comment directly on Corpus Christi.
Peter Zanoni, city manager of Corpus Christi, said the hydrogen project, if approved, would require the adoption of seawater desalination.
Even with about 100 million gallons of groundwater a day, the city is experiencing drought conditions and is limiting sprinkler use and irrigation to once a week, according to its drought emergency plan.
The city has a contract to supply up to 25 million gallons of water a day to Saudi Arabia's major industrial users ExxonMobil and Basic Industries Corporation, Zanoni said, and plans to host at least a half-dozen green hydrogen producers in the 'hubs, each of which would need about 3 to 4 million gallons of fresh water per day.
Zanoni said the city plans to add at least 70 million gallons of water per day of capacity, at least 30 million of which will come from the proposed seawater desalination plant. “This drought-proof source is really interesting for us,” Zanoni said.
WARS FOR WATER
While the United States has hundreds of desalination plants scattered across the country to treat slightly brackish inland water sources, turning ultra-salty ocean water into fresh water poses greater risks, according to some experts from the water sector.
Pumping the brackish byproduct of desalination into Corpus Christi Bay could cost the fishing industry about $6 million, according to Paul Montagna of Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, who holds a chair at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies. per year, causing the deaths of fish species such as shrimp and Atlantic croaker.
Additionally, seawater desalination plants are energy-intensive and expensive to build and maintain, energy experts say. The Poseidon Plant near San Diego, California, the largest seawater desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere, cost more than $1 billion to build and requires nearly $275 million in upgrades to meet updated state regulations to protect marine life that can be sucked into intake pipes or affected by the plant's salty discharge.
In March, the EPA stepped in with a $170 million loan to offset price hikes for local consumers.
Corpus Christi first proposed seawater desalination in 2017 to fuel its rapidly growing energy and petrochemical industries.
The city has struggled to obtain federal environmental permits and local support.
The EPA said in January that it will not recognize a state-issued pollutant discharge permit for one of Harbor Island's proposed desalination plants until Texas regulators do a more thorough examination of the environmental impact on the facility. groundwater use and conservation efforts.
In a letter sent to the Texas Environmental Quality Commission in September, the EPA said it "continued to have concerns about reporting and monitoring requirements for total dissolved solids, chlorides and sulfates."
In October, a residents' association in the Hillcrest neighborhood, a predominantly black area formerly home to refineries, filed a civil rights lawsuit, saying the proposed Inner Harbor desalination plant would worsen the pollution.
The city is seeking regulatory approval for three more desalination sites.
Errol Summerlin, founder of local environmental group CAPE, said the environmental costs of desalination of seawater are too high, even if it is a low-carbon fuel.
“This plan would destroy an ecosystem to create an unproven solution to the global climate crisis,” he told Reuters .
Brandon Marks, regional manager for the Texas Environment Campaign, said heavy industrial users, not residents, stand to gain the most from the proposed desalination plants.
Nearly 70 percent of the increase in water use in the Corpus Christi area over the past decade has come from industrial users, compared to just under 6 percent, according to a report released in November by the consulting firm Autocase Economic Advisory. of domestic, commercial, fire, public recreation and health services.
“The whole reason they're trying to get this water is to allow for unlimited growth, which would not only hurt the bay, but the bay area communities as well,” Marks said.
Charles Zahn, president of the Port of Corpus Christi and a leading proponent of desalination, said desalination plants could be a boon to the region, even providing an opportunity to sell water to the city of San Antonio if was a surplus.
“We need desalination to bring industry that brings us jobs and raises our tax revenue,” he said. "I think water is probably the number one problem in Texas and we have the ability to help Texas."
(Excerpt from the foreign press review by eprcomunicazione )
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/energia/ecco-linghippo-nel-piano-di-biden-idrogeno-verde-report-reuters/ on Sun, 09 Jul 2023 05:30:52 +0000.