Unlocking the Power of Hydrogen for Energy, Industry, and Agriculture

- Okay, we're gonna get started here.

Welcome, and thanks for joining us for one of our PennState Extension Energy Webinars.

I'm Thomas Beresnyak, I'm gonna be the host today.

Lemme pull up my slides here. We're gonna get started.

We have a pretty exciting topic.

Registration was through the roof on this one.

Actually, about 500 people are joining us today for this hydrogen presentation.

So we'll get started here.

There's our tagline.

You know, we do believe in access to science-based education for everyone.

That's our main goal here at PennState Extension.

And today we're gonna talk about Unlocking the Power of Hydrogen for Energy Industry and Agriculture.

I'm gonna do a little bit of an overview here in the beginning, and then we're gonna hear from AECOM on the production side of hydrogen, some more technical aspects.

And then we're gonna have an update from Team PA a little bit more in depth on the hydrogen hubs here in the Commonwealth and those will be appearing in other parts of the country as well.

Thomas Beresnyak, I'll be the host.

I thought I put a funnier picture.

That's myself with Dr. Conklin touring one of the energy facilities here in the state of Pennsylvania.

But in our role, we're helping landowners, government officials, farmers to learn more about energy and have a more efficient operations.

My email's there if you need to reach out TEB119@PSU.EDU, and we'll do a little bit of a hydrogen overview, kind of what's pushing hydrogen.

What is hydrogen?

It's, of course, it's the most abundant chemical element, 75% of the mass of the universe.

You might be cloudy today, but when you can see the big yellow thing in the sky, that's about 70% hydrogen.

So most of the mass in the universe is that.

On earth it's locked in things like water, plants, and animals.

It's very scarce as a gas, less than one part per million by volume.

And it is viewed as a clean alternative to methane or natural gas.

We've been hearing a lot about hydrogen in the news.

So I put a couple of very recent articles.

This just appeared in the "New York Times" a couple days ago.

They're putting together a huge facility here in Utah, an underground battery, basically to store hydrogen in salt caverns.

And then you'll see in this picture, you can see the pickup trucks, just the scale of that project.

And in the background you can see some of the solar panels there.

So the idea is that when the solar's not producing these salt caverns have a backup of hydrogen for energy production.

So this is something very timely in the news.

And then of course, you've probably heard a lot about the two hydrogen hubs that Pennsylvania will be part of.

We have the Mid-Atlantic hydrogen hub, or MACH2, Pennsylvania to Delaware and New Jersey.

That was 750 million to help unlock hydrogen decarbonization.

And then the Appalachian hydrogen hub or ARCH2 out in the west, West Virginia, Ohio and PA, that's a $925 million investment.

And it's utilizing the low cost natural gas there to produce cleaner hydrogen.

The map up there is from the Department of Energy kind of integrating where these hubs will go across the country and transporting it, producing power, integrating with renewables.

It's a nationwide network of hubs.

You're gonna hear a little bit more about this later, but you often hear the hydrogen rainbow mentioned quite a few times.

I'll go over the big three, really, green hydrogen would be the kind of ultimate goal where it's produced entirely from renewables.

There are no emissions in a green hydrogen process.

You know, the dream would be you had solar panels in a pond and you know, you're producing it that way.

Blue hydrogen does have CO2 stored and reused with carbon capture, but that is from natural gas.

And then the gray, we're gonna hear a lot more detail about this on the steam reformation process with the grey hydrogen, but there are other ones.

Pink uses nuclear, yellow uses the grid technology, and some brown with coal.

I'm gonna touch on something, I like to bring this up anytime we talk about energy, the energy triangle, my friends at Allegheny Electric Co-op, I asked this question that I really didn't expect an answer to, what is the future of energy?

I asked in Pennsylvania, but it applies anywhere.

And they really said quickly, they're like, "Well, it comes down to price, policy and technology." So if you remember one slide from today, this is a good one.

An example, this would be the natural gas, when we got into horizontal drilling that was a brand new technology that really brought down the price of natural gas.

And here in Pennsylvania it is by far the biggest producer of electricity because of that.

But you had a shift due to two parts of the triangle and they're hopefully going to see that going forward with hydrogen.

So I'm gonna talk a little bit about price.

You'll hear a little bit more about this later.

They call it the Hydrogen Shot, the US Department of Energy.

The goal is to get the cost of clean hydrogen down to a dollar per kilogram in one decade.

That's the 111 approach.

It's around $5 now.

And so getting to this price point would really unlock markets in steel manufacturing, clean ammonia and more energy storage.

So that's the price part of it.

The policy part of this started back in November of 2021 with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

$8 billion was put aside for these hydrogen hubs, two of which will be partnered here in Pennsylvania.

That was a big shot in the arm for hydrogen.

Also another billion dollars for the Clean Hydrogen Electrolysis program for demonstration projects to commercialize that.

And 500 million for the Clean Hydrogen Manufacturing Recycling Program.

Then came in August of 2022, the Inflation Reduction Act comes in.

The big one you hear talked about is the Clean Hydrogen Production Tax Credit or the 45V that's in the news quite a bit.

It creates a 10 year incentive for clean hydrogen up to $3 per kilogram.

It's in the news more because there is some clarification going on in the eligibility based on the energy generation source.

They really want it to be as much from renewables as possible.

So that's up in the air and that would affect a lot of pending projects.

There's also the Advanced Energy Project Credit 48C, that's a 30% investment tax credit.

Carbon Capture and Sequestration Credit, 45Q PTC.

Interestingly, it cannot be stacked with the 45V.

And then there's also an energy storage credit, the 48 ITC.

Onto the technology side of things.

I like this slide from the Department of Energy.

It's kind of showing where we're at now with existing demands and kind of where this will go.

You can see some examples of current growing demands in maybe buses or some handling equipment.

But you're seeing future demands get into medium heavy vehicles.

You'll see talk of hydrogen corridors, especially out west in between like Nevada and California.

Dedicated corridors where they're having large scale trucking, that's hydrogen powered.

Some maritime aviation projects in the works.

And then you have industrial applications currently around ammonia and methanol.

But you're looking at more of this getting into steel and cement manufacturing to reduce emissions.

Some synthetic fuels are in the news.

We were kinda just talking about this as a team, if you're a race car fan, they're looking to bring back some of those old V 12 engines with some of these synthetic fuels and have very little impact environmentally.

And you have some generation stuff going into hydrogen combustion with the gas and hydrogen hybrids with some carbon capture.

So those are some of the exciting things that are coming out of some of the existing demands and some of the emerging future demands.

And then I like this snapshot.

This is a conceptual hydrogen scale energy system that the Department of Energy put together.

And you can see where the supply of hydrogen on the right side is being used for transportation, synthetic fuels, ammonia, fertilizer, some industrial processes.

And then it's integrated to generate power back into the grid.

But it's also pulling power from renewables and nuclear and some carbon capture fossil to generate the hydrogen and put it back into the gas infrastructure across the country.

So the hope is to really integrate hydrogen at a large scale within the electric grid and the pipe structure and industry.

So I thought this was a really nice little snapshot of kind of what's proposed.

And then we here at the College of Agri, always interested in applications for agriculture.

We've seen some testing around fuel celled vehicles.

They're looking at hybrids, possibly hydrogen diesel engine hybrids.

The fuel cells would be much quicker to refuel than a large battery powered combine just because of the amount of power necessary for a vehicle that size.

And then looking at hydrogen generation on the farm.

Because energy is such a big cost on the farm, you could potentially heat barns and make electricity right on the farm with sources including capturing, you know, nitrogen and carbon from manure to produce that.

So there's some exciting applications that would be directly used in agriculture.

And now I'm gonna turn it over to AECOM.

They're gonna talk a little bit about hydrogen production a little bit more in depth from a technical aspect.

We have Jeff Willis here from AECOM.

He's the director of Industrial and Future Fuels.

He works with industrial petrochemical and future fuel projects.

A little bit about AECOM, they're a big company.

They had over 14 billion in revenue in 2023.

They're ranked number one in transportation design, facility design, green design by "Engineering News" in 2022.

And they are number 260 on the Fortune 500 as one of the largest companies.

So we're excited to welcome Jeff and AECOM and I will close my slides and hand it off to Jeff.

- [Jeff] All right, thank you.

You guys should be able to see my screen.

Lemme know if it's coming in.

- Yes, you got it there.

- [Jeff] Perfect, well I appreciate the introduction.

Yeah, so AECOM, we are a global company.

We've got a focus on producing emissions across the entire company.

I think you touched on that and right now we're gonna focus on hydrogen.

So let's see.

So we do always take a safety moment.

We like to, you know, reaffirm that culture of safety.

So here we want to kind of compare hydrogen to existing fuels, natural gas and gasoline.

I think there's a lot of kinda misconceptions and not understanding some of the details.

It is on par with natural gas and lower explosion limits.

Upper explosive limits are a little higher and it's got a much lower vapor density.

So a lot of what this is saying, looking at this slide, it's not as dangerous as as perceived, right?

It's kind of on par natural gas.

It does dissipate quickly because of the lower air density.

And I think, you know, we think of the Hindenberg, we can move on from that and know the industry is ready to use hydrogen in a safe, efficient manner.

So that's kind of our free safety moment.

So we're gonna run through the different types of production and then methods that we can use it and some of the challenges that we have.

And I think some of the hub discussions and economic discussions we're gonna hold for a little later.

We'll have another guest speaking on that.

So I think, you know, I appreciate the introduction.

Jeff Willis engineering, got 16 years experience with industrial and oil and gas engineering kind of skimmed through that.

So we did kind of touch on hydrogen.

I think, you know, it's very abundant.

We know it's 75% of the matter in the entire universe is hydrogen.

It's the lightest element, it's colorless, non-toxic.

It is combustible.

And that's one of the reasons we're interested in it.

It's very simple.

It's a proton with an electron circling around it.

That's what you see, you know, kind of here on the screen right now.

And with that simplicity, we can do a lot of very unique and fun things with it.

Kind of skip through here.

So this is kind of the value chain of hydrogen and kind of where we see it moving.

This is focused on the green production and I think we've talked about that.

So you've got your different colors and we can skim through that as well.

The nuclear, solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, et cetera, using that to produce hydrogen using electrolysis.

That's the cleanest, most efficient method.

Well not most efficient, least carbon intensive method right now.

So the goal is to get there and reduce the carbon footprint one way or another.

And they're different paths.

And we're gonna touch on that as we go through each of these sections.

So from a production standpoint, there's really three main ways to do that.

The electrolytic, so that's your electrolyzers and we just talked about, you know, energy being pushed in and splitting the atom.

Reforming is a very efficient process that's been used in industry for, you know, over a hundred years.

But it is also carbon intensive.

And then gasification is similar to reforming in that it's taking organic hydrocarbon containing matter and converting that into hydrogen.

So we're gonna touch on each of these and look at the pros and cons and how there's not always a perfect fit.

So grey hydrogen fossil fuel, blue hydrogen fossil fuel, but we capture the carbon that comes off the process.

Green is the end goal, you know, fully renewable.

There's no CO2 produced through those electrolyzers.

Pink nuclear, turquoise is pyrolysis, yellow is coal gasification with carbon capture.

I think there's white, there's several other ones.

A colleague of mine describes it with strawberries.

And I think it's kind of funny, you know, buying the organic strawberries at the grocery store versus the ones that are, you know, flown in that are organic.

It's not always the least carbon footprint, if that makes sense.

So you've gotta take a look at the entire value chain of how those strawberries got there to understand what the real impact is.

So if you have an abundance of green renewable energy in an area, then that may make the most sense.

But if there's not an abundance of that renewable energy, another option like blue hydrogen or pink may be a better route to go and just capture the carbon off the back end of the process.

So I think that's something, you know, to keep in mind with all of the different projects and pathways coming out, you know, what makes sense for the given area, for that hub location or you know, for the industries in the area, who's gonna be the end user and what the hydrogen's gonna be used for.

Alright, so taking a closer look at the value chain, we're gonna do a deeper dive into the production.

Again, we touched on that.

It's, you know, electrolysis, reforming and gasification or thermal conversion.

Electrolysis, I think we all did the eighth grade science experiment where, you know, you plug an electrode in a, you know, a cup of water, you've got a cathode and the anode, one side's bubbling out oxygen, the other side bubbles out hydrogen.

The concept is relatively simple, but when you get into the different technologies available, it does get complicated and there are specific instances where one's better than the other.

So we'll touch on, you know, alkaline, this is kind of the most basic and goes back to that eighth grade chemistry example.

You've got a liquid electrolyte solution and you've got your anode and your cathode.

So this is a very efficient model when used with a steady current and kind of an uninterrupted production method.

It does not react well to changes in current or changes in conditions.

So in, you know, examples of that would be if you have a data center and it's operating on solar energy for some period of time, at night it needs to kick over to some kind of alternate method.

Alkaline electrolysis is not ideal.

Proton exchange membranes are more versatile in that sense.

So that's PEM.

They've got a solid polymer electrolyte and they typically run at a higher pressure and are able to adjust to that flow current a little bit better than say alkaline.

It is a newer technology, it's got a significantly higher capital cost, but it's also very promising, especially the amount of investment going in.

Solid oxide, these are high temperature, very efficient, but also again, high capital cost, a newer technology and kind of a good option for specific applications where high temp is already required.

Not necessarily for just straight hydrogen generation, but if you are in a plant or in a unit, you have a process that does generate heat and you need that heat, the solid oxide becomes a very viable addition to help decarbonize whatever your process is.

Alright, so this is a little bit of a deeper dive into kind the existing methods that we use.

You'll hear SMR, steam methane reforming.

I don't wanna get into all the specifics of these different chemical reactions taking place, but it is important to kind of note that we're using the same feedstocks and we're generating the same type of, yielding the same products through all of these.

And with our main goal here is to capture the carbon dioxide, the carbon monoxide that's coming off these various reactions.

So SMR that is probably the most hydrogen used today is produced using SMR, steam methane reforming.

It's a carbon intensive process.

You generate a significant amount of CO2 and it's a great candidate for that blue hydrogen where we capture the CO2 off the backside of the reaction.

So it will play a major role moving forward with the blue hydrogen.

Some other options there are gasification and anaerobic digestion.

So these will again, use kind of carbon containing feed stocks and you know, in the similar process you're gonna use heat or they will be endothermic or exothermic and then generate hydrogen and CO2 or carbon monoxide.

Right, and I think the key to this, and I may mention it more and you may hear this more, it may be too technical, I'm not sure, but syngas, the synthesis gas.

At high temperature, these molecules start to dissociate and you end up with your hydrogens, your carbons, your oxygens, nitrogens if you use air or if you use pure oxygen, that that would be excluded.

But the syngas that you produce in an industrial process can then be used to create just about anything else that you want.

And that's where the flexibility of hydrogen really comes into play.

So we can take, you know, this is one way to produce it and we'll kind of touch on this later as once you have hydrogen from whatever process, you can then convert it to just about anything else depending on the energy you put into the system.

So here you see methane and oxygen and water.

So this is your steam methane reforming, this is under high heat.

You can reverse that process.

So if you've produced hydrogen and you need methane for whatever purpose, you can generate renewable methane straight from, you know, water and green produced hydrogen.

So kind of a lot of chemistry.

But I think the key takeaway is that syngas is flexible, hydrogen's a feedstock for that.

And then we can kind of flip to different chemistries as needed.

So touching on storage, sorry, as we move through, I think we noted the cavern option, you know, hydrogen does have some issues with it when it comes to storage, right?

So when we compress it, we're storing it around five to 10,000 PSI, which is fairly significant.

That does create some concerns and difficulties.

You've gotta have a different specific infrastructure in place to handle that.

And then in liquid form, which I think we've all, you know, we're aware of liquid hydrogen, it's extremely cold.

So you've got cryogenic equipment that's required to keep that.

So negative 420 degrees Fahrenheit is fairly significant.

Now there's various, sorry, there's, you know, various grades between that.

But understanding what's available, what the storage is for really will dictate what you're gonna use.

So one thing to note on here, I don't think it's on the slide, but the energy density becomes a key role, key player as well.

And then the infrastructure required to move it from whatever stored state, so say if it's liquid to some kind of usable state, you've gotta kind of keep all that in mind.

So it's not a one size fits all solution.

You gotta look at what you're using it for.

If it's a semi-truck versus industrial process, you're gonna want different storage methodologies.

So tank spheres and caverns, you know, again, so caverns are great, it's where a lot of the natural gas came from originally.

So deep within the earth, five, 10,000 feet down, you can, you know, generate those high pressures needed to have a, you know, sufficient storage capacity.

And I think the Utah example is a great one of that.

You've got loading and containment issues that, you know, the industry is not, hydrogens is not new to the industry.

So we have methods in place, there's ASME code, design codes, there's loading codes, there's storage codes.

So it's not totally new, but using on the scale that we're planning in the next 10, 20 years, you know, those are things that are gonna be revisited and kind of come up and there's kind of touch on that.

It's one of the challenges down the road.

Pipeline, so this is again, you know, we've got an existing infrastructure for natural gas pipelines.

We talk about, you know, converting some of those to hydrogen and possibly running new dedicated hydrogen pipelines.

There's, you know, high costs associated with that.

But a, you know, more tangible option is blending.

So just about all existing infrastructure can handle some additional input of hydrogen, which would help to reduce, you know, one the reliance on any, you know, natural gas that's fossil based and hydrogen which will burn a little bit cleaner.

So those same kind of concerns from a loading and containment exist and truck, rail, and shipping.

But again, we have infrastructure in place.

We do this with natural gas.

We have the ability to do it.

But it does kind of push us into, you know, this physical versus material shift.

You know, physical hydrogen's, what we've been talking about.

Going back to that idea of synthesizing different chemicals and different substances.

You know, we don't necessarily need to compress all the hydrogen to ship it.

We could convert it to ammonia, to methane, to methanol, to countless other items.

And I think I touched on that here.

So where, you know, using it, shipping it, moving it, we can either use it for power generation, mobilities, actually driving the equipment that's gonna move it, be it ships, semi trucks, rail.

And then there's the decarbonization of industrial process.

So that was kind of my focus was where can we use hydrogen to replace our reliance on fossil fuel and say, you know, the production of ammonia.

And I think that's something that's gonna be critical going forward.

So that's kinda the end stage of that hydrogen value chain.

So converting to energy, you've got your, you know, fuel cell, the same way we use an electrolyzer to create the hydrogen.

Which needs a fuel cell to convert it back into electricity and water and we just capture the power generated off that.

And again, kind of the same types of technology, the proton exchange membrane can be used for this as well.

So the fuel cell's great 'cause it doesn't produce any carbon.

So when we talk about the carbon issues, we don't have to worry about capturing it or anything like that.

So on the combustion side, now a lot of existing equipment can be modified or tweaked to be able to use hydrogen and as we noted, a lot of the gas turbine generators are able to accept some degree of blend, some, you know, the newer ones up to a hundred percent.

So that's something that is definitely gonna play a major role going forward in this, you know, kind of hydrogen economy and this weaning off of fossil fuel.

And then the decarbonization of the industrial process.

So this kind of goes back to where, you know, we touched on it for the transportation aspect, you know, maybe we don't need to transport compressed hydrogen or liquid hydrogen and spend the money on the infrastructure for, you know, cryogenic systems.

We can convert it to ammonia, methanol, ethylene, you know, use that syngas to come up with the most efficient molecule or chemistry for that process.

So I think it's kind of neat how flexible it is.

And then from a heat standpoint, you know, there's a lot of processes that rely on coal due to the heat, you know, natural gas, these things are able to get to those high temperatures.

Well so is hydrogen and the fact that we can create totally renewable sources of hydrogen is really the only way to decarbonize some of these industries, you know, steel and concrete specifically.

They're carbon intensive and in order to generate the heat needed for those processes, you know, hydrogen's one of the few contenders to do that.

So we'll touch on some of the challenges.

I think we kind of mentioned a few going through, but it is new, so there's some education that needs to take place.

You know, it, we've had processes in place and we've had codes in place and we've had, you know, specifications on how to use hydrogen and handle it within industry.

Educating everybody else on that is one of the hurdles.

So as we go through, we're permitting new pieces and parts, new equipment, new pipelines and facilities that are gonna be dedicated to hydrogen.

There needs to be kind of a focus on this, though it's new use of some of the technology or a greater reliance, it's not all new.

It's been done before and safely for a long time.

And that's, you know, again, getting over some of the negative connotations and, sorry.

And then, you know, shoring up some of the government regulations.

So again, ASME, they dictate a lot of the design standards for pipelines for all the different hydrocarbons that we have out there running across the country at any given moment.

They've been updating some of their codes and specifications to match up with the growing needs for hydrogen.

So the physical and technical challenges that we have, size, it's a very small molecule and then we've already gone over some of those different properties of it, you know, having to store it cryogenically or under high pressure and that kind of thing.

So gone through that.

The finance and project execution.

So I think this is an important thing, you know, we see all these big numbers and headlines and amounts of money being put into the hydrogen economy, but it's important to understand those steps that take place.

So major projects go through kind of a intensive feed process, we call it's, front end, engineering and design.

And that will also kind of tie to this new technology aspect where we're, you know, you've got something that works great in the laboratory, you need to roll that through bench scale, pilot plants, demonstration units, then production.

But when we talk about this production aspect that's, you know, our feed process and each of these projects need a financial justification or some type of justification to be built.

And the government, the tax credits coming out in the hubs are a great way to spur that and get it going.

And I think there'll be further discussion on that in a few minutes.

So one thing that we are kind of seeing is major, major investments on utility scale are gonna take a bit of a wait and see approach.

There are a lot of technologies that are moving rapidly, they're moving from that laboratory bench scale to production plants.

And then once we see some performance data on it, so it may not happen this year or next year, but once there's enough performance data, I think it'll open up significantly on the production side.

So I think that's all I had and I'm gonna hand it off.

- Okay, hey, thanks so much Jeff.

Really appreciate the overview of the technical side.

I think it just scratches the surface on kind of where the potential for hydrogen is in a number of industries and power generation.

So thank you for that.

- [Jeff] Yeah, any technical questions, send my way.

- Yeah, yeah, and again, if you have questions, go ahead and put 'em in the Q and A and then all of the panelists can take a look and try to answer them for you as you enter those in there.

I'm going to introduce the next panelist here.

See here. Oops.

- Yeah, from Team PA, we're really excited to have Tom Murphy here.

He's the Senior Managing Director for Strategic Energy Initiatives.

He was previously the director here at PennState for the Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research.

He led numerous activities here, over 40 years of experience working with government officials, researchers in the industry and landowners as part of extension and PennState as a whole.

So we're very excited to work with Tom again and he is gonna go over a little bit more detail on some of the hubs and some of the things going on in the Commonwealth.

So please welcome Tom Murphy.

- Thanks Tom. Just trying to get the slides.

I think Jeff's slides are still there.

There we go.

All right, Tom, can you see my slides okay?

- [Tom Beresnyak] Yes, looks great, perfect.

- Alright, good. Alright, good afternoon, everybody.

Tom Murphy, as was mentioned, I'm Senior Managing Director of Team Pennsylvania, working on a variety of different aspects of hydrogen development and the hydrogen hub application process that we went through with Department of Energy.

There were three hubs, as you've heard a little bit of discussion here already.

The DNA hub was one of the three as well and was the one that was not funded.

That said, the reason that we would still talk about is the fact that it's actually from a scale perspective, it's actually the larger of the three and the DNA project is still planned to go forward.

So it's still gonna be within the region and the Tri-state region and certainly a part of the broader overall topic here.

So I'm gonna talk, concentrate a little bit more on the hydrogen hub, some of the considerations why the hubs were funded, what some of the, you know, the drivers and you've heard a little bit about that as well from Tom and from Jeff as well, but maybe concentrate on some of the specifics of that.

The DNA hub was proposed to do, we as a blue hydrogen hub specific with the transition to green over the course of time and the other hub applications that were made and certainly are here within the Commonwealth and within the region, multi-state region.

One of them has blue as a key component.

And then you also have pink and green and such.

And again, you've heard a little bit about some of the color considerations there.

Again, all hydrogen is all the same color, but the carbon intensity of how it's produced is how we delineate or designate one versus the other.

And we use a color scheme, at least at the moment that's what's being done.

What's the intent of the Department of Energy when we're talking about the hydrogen hubs?

And this is really the same, doesn't matter what the color of the hydrogen is, nor which of the hubs was funded.

The intention is really the same in a broader assorted context.

Three different things we're trying to do, trying to kickstart the hydrogen economy further and faster than maybe what it has been up to this point.

And we use a certain amount of hydrogen on a national basis, on a North American basis and then certainly on a global basis.

And most of that being grey hydrogen that's derived through a steam methane reforming process coming from natural gas.

There was also the second consideration.

So the first one is trying to jumpstart or push this forward with the $8 billion that the feds have put on the table for this.

With the seven hydrogen hubs that they're now planning to fund, that's still up for negotiation for any and all those hubs.

They're also trying to remediate or to change the process and change the background when we think about some of the energy development processes that have occurred over the course of time from an historical perspective.

So due to the climate metric that all energy development is trying to address and trying to adhere to at this point, preserving the environment or improving the environment from some of those legacy issues that are there is certainly front and center for the federal government with their monies as well.

And then lastly, developing this public-private partnership.

So trying to build not just individual hubs, but trying to connect all them with an infrastructure process that ends up with a corridor ultimately leading to a national network.

So what you're hearing about or have been hearing about here, when we think about the hydrogen hubs, individual hydrogen hubs, the intent of the federal government is to build something that's much larger in nature and becomes much more ingrained in the energy economy that we have on a national basis.

It's just like we have a natural gas transmission and pipeline system that spans the country or electrical system with overhead transmission wires that move electrons from place to place.

The attempt here is to build a similar thing and then to attract industry like clean manufacturing and other types of industry that would like to co-locate in and around where some of that infrastructure would be just like you have industry now that's locating near those big transmission lines or pipelines and we'll continue to do that going forward.

So that's what the intent is and that's what the federal government is putting this money into.

And from a public-private partnership standpoint, the requirement as part of the application was that the industry has to put up at least 50% as a cost share.

And what you would find is that industry in most all cases is putting up a number that's much more substantial than 50%.

You also had to show that this technology that you're bringing to the table was commercially viable.

So this is not a science project, it's not a research project, it's something that has to be from the get go perceived to be, and in fact, based in fact and technical readiness as Jeff mentioned a moment ago, has to be up and ready to go at the onset when it's actually deployed.

The feds we're also looking, and I think you heard this comment already from Tom, this moonshot approach and you know, there's several attempts on different things out there in regards to moonshot, but in this case with energy development and with hydrogen trying to get to $1 per one kilogram in one decades worth of time.

So that's certainly a key consideration as well.

We think about, you know, why they're trying to do this.

And the other point that I wanna make in there is this thought about creating a strong community benefits plan.

And I'm gonna go into that in a little bit more detail here in just a moment, but I just wanna raise the issue that that's a very strong core consideration for any of these projects as we go forward.

When we think about the state as a whole, the southwest, when we think about the ARCH2 that spans maybe a little bit more West Virginia centric, reaches into Pennsylvania of course, and certainly in the southwestern part, some of the north central parts of Pennsylvania and then into Ohio, the southeastern and central parts of Ohio.

But these are also areas that there's a lot of coal production.

You think this is the Appalachian basis for basin for coal production now for natural gas production.

But there's been historical environmental issues that might be attached with that coal mining or that coal production.

And then certainly the utilization we think about power gen and steel making and things of that nature.

So to alleviate some of those historical burdens that were there, whether they're health or environment, hydrogen is certainly gonna be a part of that going forward, regardless of the colors that we're talking about.

And likely that will transition through a variety of colors over the course of time.

And there's a variety of different ways to measure that metrics, to measure that.

You can see the PM scores, the particular matter.

We think about, you know, where that comes from.

You know, you have a 2.5 score or a 5.0 score and we think about coal, we think about diesel burning, you know, with transportation and things of that nature.

Again, this is an effort to solve some of that and mitigate some of that issue that we've seen in the past from historical basis.

The dots on the page, you probably look through the graphic, you can see where a lot of the heavy industry that's already there that currently uses a lot of carbon based energy.

This is certainly the target, we think about ammonia and you heard about some of these from Jeff as well.

Ammonia production, glass and we think always about steel and iron production, cement would top that list.

And now with a (indistinct) plant shell, we think about petrochemicals, although there's legacy petrochemical production in a variety of different places in the Tri-state area.

And then certainly down in the southeastern part of the state, we think about the Delaware Bay area where MACH2 is located and a variety of other industries that would be spread between the two.

That's what the hydrogen hubs are or what the intent of the federal government is to resolve issues that would be there and develop a cleaner environment going forward.

Now the DNA hub, the ARCH2 hub, not so much the MACH2, looking at blue hydrogen development from natural gas with carbon capture and possibly utilization and certainly storage.

That would be geological storage.

You heard a little bit about that in just a moment ago.

But kind of a high level looking to develop both the production and the transport and then the storage with some kind of proximity as we learn more about the geology and as more of that work is completed or more of that investigation is completed as these hubs get further in their planning and that negotiation is resolved with federal government as well.

You've already heard about the different colors.

I'm not gonna go into them in any kind of depth.

Mention again, this is gonna be when we think about the DNA hub or the ARCH2 hub looking at blue, but also looking at green over the course of time.

The infrastructure that would be built as part of the blue side could be when we think about carbon capture, for instance, could be repurposed or reutilized.

It's not just a stranded asset in time, but as an asset that again, can be reused and repurposed to move carbon from other industries that are in place already.

Many of the industries that I mentioned just a moment ago and certainly you heard other comments here earlier today.

We also wanna think about the green part again as we get through this transition, more green production and the MACH2 is going to lean on that.

We think about the south, think about the Delaware Bay, the Tri-stat, in the Delaware Bay area.

And certainly more green hydrogen production.

A lot of that's gonna come mostly from solar, but we're already running into some challenges in two ways.

One, the cost for green hydrogen is very expensive relative to other types of hydrogen production.

Grey being the cheapest, blue being the next as you go down that list, green being more expensive.

They are the most expensive from what we're seeing other than if you incorporate something like turquoise, for instance, which produces a solid carbon product on the other side.

But green, we also think about the sighting of those renewables and that's a challenge that those of us that are working on the renewable side, and I spend a lot of time in that space myself on the solar side, we find a lot of challenges working with communities and sighting of solar.

And you're gonna need to have that solar production in close proximity to the hub and where that production is to be able to apply for the tax credits or utilize the tax credits that Tom talked about earlier.

So therein lies a major challenge and something that is gonna be part of the dynamic going forward in the future.

The ATR autothermal reforming or the POX, think about the partial oxidation.

Couple different technologies are out there along with the steam methane reforming, ASMR, that's currently utilized for most of the hydrogen that's produced at this point in time.

Those are the processes, again, they are kicking out carbon emissions and depending upon the process that's used, the ATR process can be anywhere between 80 and 99% efficient in the capture of that CO2 or the carbon that's coming from that process.

And then again, as I mentioned about actually moving and in that, that carbon number or that efficiency also then because we're talking about natural gas, that also takes into consideration the upstream side.

So if you're working with a newer system, a newer methane or natural gas system like here in the Marcellus where you have tighter equipment with your newer pipelines and newer compression and certainly monitoring systems that are in place and additional ones that companies are putting in place.

So the tighter the system than all the way through, thinking about the lifecycle analysis, which is part of what goes into this and is part of the negotiation with Department of Energy in which technology and which project they're funding.

All those are considerations in this as well.

On the carbon side, and you've heard several comments about that already.

But as we think about this hub, it's not just the production side, but it's the infrastructure in between that connects the production to the utilization on the downside, whatever that utilization turns out to be.

So whether we're talking about steel or cement, some of the hard to abate or whether we're talking about transportation systems and the ARCH2 for instance is looking at aviation fuels and I know there's discussion within several of the hubs.

We look at this on a national basis for marine fuels and heavy transport.

We think about trucks and things of that nature already.

So, you know, there's quite a few of those different considerations when we think about how this production will be utilized over time.

But when we think about blue, we're talking about capturing the CO2, running the CO2 through a compression system, moving it through a transport system, which would in most cases would be a new pipeline build and then either selling that to industry in that utilization piece or the storage piece or a combination of the two.

And likely we'll see a combination of the two as we go forward.

And there's a considerable amount of CO2 pipeline capacity that's been installed in the United States for a long time.

There's new installations that are on the drawing board and some that are being actually constructed in the upper Midwest at the moment to move CO2 from the upper Midwest to the Gulf state.

And likely we'll continue to see more of this.

And then again, that is part of the intent with the funding from the federal government and some of the funding that they're looking to still move out the door going forward is on the CCS or CCUS side.

Have an advance issue. There we go.

All right, so I mentioned already about the blue hydrogen and actually any hydrogen could be used in this regard.

We think about moving it as I mentioned the steel chemicals, power generation.

I know there was a question about blended and there were some comments that Jeff made about blending towards power generation, our DNA hub application and certainly our project going forward looking at potentially starting out in a blending mode.

But the technology for the power gen side is advancing so quickly that likely you're gonna see that's going to be a hundred percent hydrogen and replacing natural gas in that system and decarbonizing the power gen side and decarbonizing or working towards decarbonized.

The grid and green the grid, when we think about the PJM grid that we all receive our power from on a regional basis.

So that's the trend and that's what's being considered.

Petrochemicals, again, the (indistinct) plant was one of the considerations in the beginning and still is part of the dynamics.

US steel, we think about that in the western part of the state.

Very strong interest that there's a new techno, or not a new technology, but a technology out there that's somewhat new here to the states being used in some other parts of the world.

Direct reduction iron as a consideration taking coal out and using hydrogen as part of that and research that's being done now in that regard here nationally.

So what does this look like when you kind of chart it out?

Would look something along this line.

Natural gas again for a blue hub, natural gas going in through pipeline into the production.

Coming outta that, you would certainly have the hydrogen moving to whatever the downstream utilization would be, which a couple of us have talked about now.

And then the CO2 going to storage.

If it was green hydrogen from one of the hubs, same type process or same type overall outcome for the most part.

But you would take the natural gas out, the pipeline would be a water pipeline going in for instance.

And you'd also have power going in.

So a transmission line that would be a power transmission line that wind into there, hydrogen produced.

Then coming out of that.

Obviously with pink, you would not have the CO2, you would just have hydrogen coming out as the product that would be the a net outcome.

And we also talk about with any of these projects on a national basis, we think about the value chain, what's gonna come from this, you know, what are the different components and where are different industries able to line up to be a part of this process from a supply chain standpoint.

So whether they're downstream consumers or whether they're upstream producers, we're seeing small and medium sized businesses or enterprises that are trying to link with this and build capacity in some kind of proximity to these hubs.

And you'll see that here in the multi-state.

When you think about the MACH2, the DNA and certainly the ARCH2 hubs as they get up to speed and that move to final completion, certainly move to construction.

So more and more companies are interested in that and we'll talk about a little bit more about this as we go forward.

But again, you can see upstream, midstream, and downstream in terms of what that will look like and these other companies looking to co-locate with that going forward.

These facilities will all be purpose built.

So there'll be a new build versus retrofit where we're talking about new or especially when we're thinking about power gen, we need new turbines and you need a new infrastructure to support those same turbines.

If we're talking about the production side, so that would be on the utilization side for instance, we're talking about the production side, again, this is new technology, you can just renovate a plant that's already there.

This is new build.

So these will be greenfield type processes.

I mentioned I think earlier, and you've heard a little bit about green hydrogen is inherently more expensive at the moment.

Technology advances quickly and we'll have to see where that goes.

The expectation is it would take 10 years for the technology to get to the same place that blue hydrogen is right now in terms of the price point.

And that's why the federal government is putting additional dollars into the green hydrogen side to speed that process up.

So we'll be looking for the outcome of that going forward.

I also wanna mention as a last slide that I have and then Tom will turn it back to you, but we think about any of these large energy projects that are funded by Department of Energy at this point in time and also we'll just say the federal government has a hand in the community benefits plan is gonna be front and center or a core element of any of these plans.

I know there's been some commentary about why has there been more community voice embedded in what has happened up to this point.

But largely that was because of the competitive process that these different entities, there were 79 originally proposals that was narrowed down to 33 that again in that competitive pool.

So all the details of them were not put on the table necessarily in a, again, in a very detailed fashion.

But you're gonna see that those are gonna come out and you're gonna see that one of the things that's gonna be front and center in them as well, is giving more community voice to the discussion.

When we start thinking about construction, when we think about labor engagement and where the workforce is gonna come from, we think about the diversity considerations here with businesses and again the workforce that'll be a part of that as well.

And also where are the benefits going to accrue when we think about justice 40 initiatives are there and the 40% of the benefit has to accrue within the communities where this development will actually take place.

Now keep in mind hub development is gonna be pretty diverse in terms of that footprint of where it's gonna be across the Appalachian basin or across the Tri-state region or actually multi-state region.

When you think about the MACH2, the DNA and the ARCH2.

So there's a lot of considerations there.

Workforce is gonna be a very big part of that.

Workforce development type programs, making sure that there's a strong diversity, making sure that there's also transitioning people that we're in industries that we're transitioning away from.

The coal industry for instance, or power gen that's driven by coal.

Trying to find opportunities for those folks in these new industries going forward with new upskilling programs to train them to be able to work in the new components as they're put on the table here.

So there's a lot in there.

I know you've probably read through it, but again, those are the four key elements.

Community voice I would say is gonna be the biggest part of this.

There's gonna be a variety of opportunities to engage going forward with the different hubs.

You wanna look for that.

I know there's some frustration up to this point, you know, why has there been more of that?

But you're gonna see that the wave of that opportunity is certainly gonna come here very quickly and there'll be a lot of opportunity because that's what the community benefit plan is.

Not just to achieve benefits, but also to allow for a greater voice in the sighting and certainly the planning of these different hub initiatives.

Alright, with that Tom, I'm gonna stop sharing my slides.

I'm gonna turn it back to you and if you have any questions.

- Alright, hey, thanks again so much Tom.

That was a fantastic overview of what's kind of going on here.

I know we're kind of running up a little bit close to the end of our time here today, but just a couple things, you know, if you would like to sign up for more of this series, just go on to extension.psu.edu/signup.

You can register for that.

We have a large-scale solar in PA general update coming up February 15th, so if you have an interest in that, please sign up.

That that'll be coming up next month.

And then we have a couple minutes to see maybe if we can take some questions.

I don't know if Jeff was still here with us.

I know that he had to jump off maybe.

I guess one of the common questions coming up, I don't know Jeff or Tom if you want to take it, would be maybe what are some of the uses for the CO2 that's captured or upcoming uses or in industry uses?

I don't know if either one of you wanted to touch on that, that question's come up a few times.

- Yeah, Tom, the carbon, and that's why we talk about something like turquoise, for instance, which makes a solid carbon.

It's not commercially viable at this point, it's more of a lab scale, but there are companies that are working quickly to try to take it from, you know, lab scale or bench scale to something that would be in the commercial realm.

Now carbon is used for a variety of things.

CO2 is used, I mean, we make dry ice, we put it in a beer or soda, you know, there's a variety of places that CO2 is utilized.

It's also used in the variety of other industrial type processes.

So again, it's, you know, it's, and there we're talking about it as a gas, the carbon that's there.

You think about carbon fibers, airplane wings or the bodies of airplanes to make 'em lighter.

We use carbon fibers in our cars now again to make 'em lighter versus steel.

So there's a variety of places that are utilized, tires, for instance.

So, you know, again, there's a whole list of places that we utilize carbon, whether it's a gas or whether it's a solid and those are places that will continue to, as we lessen the burning of some other things in terms of hydrocarbons or in terms of fossil fuels.

The carbon element will have to derive from something and the CO2 would be one of the places it likely would be.

- Thanks, one of the other questions...

- [Jeff] I wanna chime in real quick.

I've gotta take off, but kind of on that same note, there's a question on syngas, you know, and where the carbon comes from.

So we talked about the hydrogen coming from a green renewable source, but when we capture the carbon, the CO2 or carbon monoxide coming off another process and we mix that in, that is how we create that syngas and from there you can, you know, then produce your ammonia, which ultimately would be used to create the acrylonitrile, which then is your carbon fiber.

So it would feed back into that kind of carbon loop depending on the use.

I do have to run and I'll do my best to answer these questions if they're forwarded to me, thank you.

- Yeah, and thanks again to both Jeff from AECOM and Tom Murphy for their expertise and coming in here.

We are kind of running up on our hour.

It is one o'clock so I can let you go, but we'll try to follow up with some of those questions from the chat with both of our guests and we look forward to possibly doing another session on this 'cause there's quite a bit of interest.

So thanks to everybody on there and enjoy the rest of your afternoon.