Van Rossum: Hydrogen hubs are a Biden boondoggle
Maya K. van Rossum is the leader of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, founder of the national Green Amendments for the Generations movement and author of “The Green Amendment: The People’s Fight for a Clean, Safe and Healthy Environment.”
President Joe Biden’s announcement that his administration will invest over $7 billion in advancing “hydrogen hubs” — one of which will be somewhere along the Delaware River — is a betrayal of the public trust and his stated commitment to addressing the climate crisis. The $7 billion allocation under the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Act of 2021 throws taxpayer money at a false solution to the climate crisis by stimulating dirty energy development that will increase greenhouse gas emissions and increase pollution harmful to communities and our environment. What’s worse for the Delaware River region is the $750 million earmarked for the MACH2 hydrogen hub here in the Delaware River watershed. The MACH2 “hub” targets the Delaware River in southeastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey and Delaware, and threatens one of the most densely populated regions of the nation with more unwanted pollution.
Despite claims from the industry and politicians, hydrogen is not clean and is not intended as an alternative to fossil fuels. The opposite is true.
Despite the hype, most hydrogen produced today uses fossil gas for the extremely energy-intense process to create hydrogen. Advocates for the MACH2 “hub” admit that fossil gas will be a feedstock for the operation. Fossil fuel infrastructure, such as pipelines to transport hydrogen, are also part of the MACH2 plans, despite the environmental and community damage pipelines bring.
This reliance on fossil fuels is part of the hydrogen hub picture nationwide. According to the proposals submitted to the Department of Energy for this federal funding handout, as well as what we know from experts and experience, hydrogen hubs are closely linked with the fossil fuel industry. Many hubs are fueled by fracked fossil fuel gas and, as a result, will perpetuate and grow the fossil fuel-fracking industry that is already harming the health and safety of our communities, our climate and the water, air and environments we depend upon. Hydrogen hubs often tout the inclusion of carbon capture and sequestration elements, but notably, the captured carbon is generally used for the extraction of additional fossil fuels, and carbon capture is not a proven technology.
The MACH2 project is also to be supported, in part, by nuclear power. The nuclear power plants in our region are already nearing the end of their targeted lives. Extending operations of these facilities, including the Salem Nuclear Generating Station that inflicts significant environmental harm, would be ill-advised but is not an unlikely goal and outcome of the funding for this region.
Hydrogen production is known to be a source of air pollution, releasing particulate matter, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxide emissions, all known to contribute to health harms, such as asthma and respiratory infections. The Delaware River Valley already doesn’t meet minimum federal clean air standards. Our communities cannot tolerate one more molecule of the pollutants that plague us.
Hydrogen burns extremely hot, can explode if not precisely handled and embrittles steel, making its storage and transport problematic and expensive. And the entire hydrogen-making process is so expensive that, without subsidies and taxpayer funding, it simply wouldn’t compete with other energy sources. It certainly is not an alternative to truly clean, non-greenhouse gas-emitting, efficient, renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind.
To waste wind energy on the dangerous and inefficient process of making hydrogen, as the MACH2 hub proposes, is not only illogical but an inexcusable waste of money and clean energy. It would be much more efficient, cost-efficient and effective to directly use that wind energy for electric power.
President Biden’s commitment to advancing hydrogen hubs nationwide is misplaced and ill-advised; will have devastating consequences for our environment and for the safety of future generations; and is a misuse of government dollars that should be helping advance the clean energy revolution we need. Hydrogen is a boondoggle that will perpetuate dirty fossil fuels and dangerous nuclear operations. Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey must aggressively move to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, not add to them through the proposed MACH2 hub that the federal government will now be funding.
With his hydrogen hub pronouncement, President Biden is betraying those communities of Delaware and Pennsylvania that he calls home.
The Delaware Riverkeeper Network will be working with partner organizations and communities to oppose this misdirected funding, which displaces the real solution to the climate crisis, i.e. truly clean, efficient, renewable and affordable greenhouse gas-free energy sources and systems.
Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org.
