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The U.S. Department of Energy has launched a program for clean hydrogen (H2 is the chemical formulation) hubs across the nation. West Virginia has tossed its hat in the hydrogen ring.
A U.S. Department of Energy diagram of what a future “hydrogen economy” could look like for the energy industry.
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The U.S. Department of Energy has launched a program for clean hydrogen (H2 is the chemical formulation) hubs across the nation. West Virginia has tossed its hat in the hydrogen ring.
A U.S. Department of Energy diagram of what a future “hydrogen economy” could look like for the energy industry.
Gas and Oil Association of WV Executive Director Charlie Burd sees — and foresees — the state’s copious natural gas supply ushering in a cleaner environment coupled with a profound economic impact for the Mountain State.
Burd said he was contacted in February by Sen. Joe Manchin’s office with an intriguing energy initiative proposal. “They indicated they were interested in trying to develop a hydrogen hub in West Virginia and they wanted us, the Oil and Gas Association of West Virginia, to be engaged in it. We immediately said yes,” he said.
Last August, at the Department of Energy’s first-ever Hydrogen Shot Summit, Manchin was extolling the need to address climate change through investment in clean energy.
“Hydrogen is a versatile fuel that is a prime example of what can be achieved through innovation,” Manchin said. “As with many emerging technologies, we need to invest in the entire hydrogen value chain to bring down the cost and overcome deployment barriers. That is why I made research, development, and demonstration of these technologies a central part of my Energy Infrastructure Act.”
Earlier this month, Manchin said he opposed new climate spending because of inflation concerns. But on Wednesday, Manchin and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-New York) announced an agreement on a $670 billion spending deal that includes $369 billion on energy security and climate change. The full Senate is expected to consider the bill next week. The legislation will also have to pass in the House before going to President Biden’s desk.
Despite alternately burning hot and cold on climate change, it seems Manchin wants West Virginia to be in the clean energy mix and become the “new home of hydrogen energy production,” according to an announcement he made in March, after speaking with Burd in February.
“I found out shortly after that that several large natural gas-producing companies and users in the state — EQT, Marathon Petroleum, and some others — had formed a consortium,” Burd said.
“The reason is pretty doggone simple. When you take a look at West Virginia, in 2021, we produced 2.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the state. If you add West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania together, the amount of natural gas they produce collectively would be the third largest natural gas producing entity in the world.”
Burd said only the United States as a country (33.5 trillion cubic feet) and Russia (22 trillion cubic feet) rank ahead of the tri-state Appalachian Basin area (approximately 12 trillion cubic feet) in natural gas production globally. “We’re ahead of Iran after that.”
The hydrogen energy efforts being undertaken at West Virginia University, if successful, would lead to cleaner energy production among its assets.
“With hydrogen, you take natural gas, introduce it to a steam process and then you develop the catalyst to produce hydrogen and carbon dioxide,” Burd said. “You can take the CO2, liquify it and store it underground. Now you’ve produced an energy that’s carbon free.
“That, in itself, is what I think is the goal of the president’s agenda, also of the hydrogen hub: to take the natural gas that’s so plentiful here and and other places and convert to it to carbon-neutral fuel, while still taking the natural gas and having drilling wells, still employing workers with good paying jobs, and generating taxes.
“It’s sort of a win/win, no matter how you look at it,” Burd said.
He said West Virginia possesses an “energy/industrial mindset.” “We have a great workforce. As other energy forms and sources are diminished, we have workers that can be converted and, we assume, being retrained into jobs that would be created for a more advanced energy source.
“I think that’s how the coalition is looking at this: taking what we have and finding out how we can make it better.”
While natural gas has been used chiefly as a heating fuel or a component for by-products such as propane, butane, ethane, and ethylene, which Burd called “the building block of all plastics and synthetics we use in the world.”
“We produce hundreds of thousands of barrels a day of liquids in West Virginia which are shipped other places to be processed into these value-added products. Historically, that’s where our natural gas is being used.
“With the onset of the need to reduce to our emissions to help us better address global climate change, there’s been a real push to reduce emissions,” Burd said, “and our companies have done an extraordinarily good job in doing that. It started with reducing fugitive emissions from natural gas piping. Companies have taken it upon themselves to reduce those fugitive emissions to the tune of about 70% in recent years, producing fewer emissions at a time when there’s a louder cry to reduce emissions.”
Burd acknowledged that coal is an important asset to West Virginia, and that coal once produced “probably 90%” of all the electricity in the nation.
“That has changed dramatically in the last few years. Natural gas is producing about 33% of all the electrical energy in the country,” he said.
“Natural gas burns much cleaner than coal. That has reduced emissions, and now, maybe, this next step is the transition to hydrogen power production by the process of using our abundant natural gas resources,” Burd said.
“As we move forward as a nation in our efforts to produce cleaner energy, the ability to use, for example, natural gas to convert to another fuel source that burns virtually carbon free could be good news for West Virginia.
“Of course, I have no crystal ball, but this is something West Virginia seems to be a good testing ground for. It’ll be interesting to see where this all goes in the future,” Burd added.
Production slowdowns, however, may stall benefits for a while. In a May Fortune.com article, writer Tristan Bove said that Appalachian Basin natural gas production numbers have decelerated in recent months, citing a U.S. Energy Information Administration report.
“Production dropped 2.2% between November and December 2021, and while output temporarily returned to earlier levels in February 2022, production in the region fell again by 2.4% in April,” Bove wrote.
Bove said infrastructure development has been reduced, in part, by cancellations or delays of proposed pipelines in Appalachia, such as the scrapped Atlantic Coast pipeline. More pipelines are crucial to transport liquified natural gas abroad, he said.
“With production in Texas nearing capacity — and Appalachia already at near capacity — the country’s natural gas supply might soon be facing a bottleneck, at the worst possible time,” Bove concluded.
But Burd remains optimistic. “To have so much abundant, affordable natural gas in proven reserves in our state and region and developing the processes to take that natural gas to a carbon-free energy source, I don’t know that the state could be in a better position as it is — as maybe a national leader in our ability to do that,” he said.
Metro reporter Clint Thomas can be reached at cthomas@hdmediallc.com or by calling 304-348-1232.
More than 50 years after scientists first coined the term “hydrogen economy,” the movement to make hydrogen a predominant global fuel source c…
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