US west coast hubs are determined to continue their work connecting hydrogen buyers and sellers, signing up new partners and evaluating proposals even as they wait to hear whether the Department of Energy (DOE) will approve a second funding tranche.
The Pacific Northwest Hydrogen Hub (PNWH2) recently approved eight new projects worth $300mn in hub spending to join the partnership stretching across Washington, Oregon, and Montana, said PNWH2 president Chris Green while giving an update on hub activities at Hydrogen Summit Americas in Washington DC Wednesday. Meanwhile, California's ARCHES, which accepts requests for proposals on a rolling basis, receives "five to six" projects a week — mostly electrolytic — seeking to join the network, said ARCHES chief executive Angelina Galiteva.
"We want to make sure that regardless of what DOE does in terms of making a decision about the hubs and how the hub ecosystem develops, that we're moving forward with a robust solution for California," said Galiteva.
The seven federally designated hubs were set to receive as much as $7bn in government funding as laid out by the Infrastructure and Investment Jobs Act, which garnered bipartisan support during the prior administration of president Joe Biden. While each of the seven hubs received their first tranche of federal funding, all subsequent disbursements have been in doubt since President Donald Trump announced immediately after taking office a halt on clean energy spending pending DOE review. Energy secretary Chris Wright said earlier this year the review was supposed to wrap up by the end of the summer and dismissed as "rumors"reports that the DOE was considering cutting funding to hubs focused on producing renewable hydrogen, which predominantly fall in Democratic states, in favor of those relying on natural gas as a feedstock with carbon capture to abate emissions.
PNWH2 has "functionally completed" the first of four planned development phases and applied in March for its second tranche of the up to $1bn allotted to it by the previous administration, said Green. The hub received $27.5mn in its first disbursement.
Green said he was unable to reveal at this time the new partners while the hub waits to hear from DOE on the status of its funding application.
ARCHES' Galiteva said of the 37 planned partners that were included in its initial proposal to DOE, 35 have signed sub-recipient agreements and that the remaining two, Chevron and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), are in progress.
