Will Hydrogen Hubs Be a Clean Energy Boom or Boondoggle? – Yale Environment

As part of a $7 billion investment in hydrogen, the U.S. Department of Energy is committed to building a network of hydrogen facilities and pipelines centered in southeast Pennsylvania. Critics are questioning the project’s expense and its net savings in carbon emissions.

n the fall of 2023, the Biden administration announced $7 billion in funding for seven hydrogen hubs, slated to be built across the country over the next eight to 12 years. If all goes as planned, one of those hubs, the Mid-Atlantic Clean Hydrogen Hub (MACH2) — a network of more than a dozen interconnected hydrogen production centers, storage facilities, pipelines, and new solar farms that will power these operations — will stretch from southeastern Pennsylvania and neighboring southern New Jersey into Delaware. Expected to receive $750 million in federal funding, MACH2 is projected to create roughly 20,800 jobs in the Delaware Valley region, of which 6,400 will be permanent.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) says that a sufficiently robust buildout of hydrogen production could power steelmaking, cement production, and other energy-intensive heavy industries, which account for more than a fifth of national carbon emissions and have been notoriously hard to decarbonize, as well as fueling ships, airplanes, and trucks. But some environmentalists and energy experts question whether investing so much money in hydrogen could siphon funding from more effective decarbonization strategies. Even a so-called “green” hub, which runs entirely on renewable energy, they say, might not provide the promised carbon-reduction benefits and could potentially even increase emissions.

And residents of potential host communities — particularly the hard-pressed city of Chester, Pennsylvania, where some of the MACH2 facilities are planned — are concerned that they will bear the brunt of the potential risks and health hazards that hydrogen production and transport could bring.

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Will Hydrogen Hubs Be a Clean Energy Boom or Boondoggle? – Yale Environment, source