We get the sense that many hydrogen-market observers are looking for a silver bullet — the absolute best way to produce H2 cheaply and in a way that has an extremely low carbon intensity. If anything has become clear to us over the last few months, however, there isn’t likely to be an “Aha!” or “Eureka!” moment anytime soon. Rather, what we have seen so far in regard to hydrogen production has been a veritable smorgasbord of production pathways, with varying degrees of carbon intensity. While costs vary by project, it is also fair to say that a front-runner has yet to emerge when it comes to producing inexpensive hydrogen at scale. There is a silver lining though, if not a bullet, and that is the realization that there are many options when it comes to procuring environmentally friendly hydrogen. Today, we provide an update of currently proposed hydrogen projects.
It’s been a while since we wrote on hydrogen production, and various projects have popped on the scene over the last few months. Granted, they aren’t huge, but the project list in our weekly Hydrogen Billboard has continued to expand since the last time we looked at it in a blog, way back in March in I Did It. That blog focused on how to interpret hydrogen project announcements, converting the various units into terms that our fossil-fuel-oriented readers can understand. At the time, we wrote that all the projects we were tracking totaled about the same energy equivalent as one Haynesville gas well. The list has expanded by a few “wells” now, maybe even a small basin worth if the largest projects go through, so we thought it would be a good time to revisit the various project announcements to hit the market this spring.
RBN Energy’s US CO₂ Infrastructure map brings together legacy Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) assets, as well as announced large-scale Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) and Carbon Capture, Utilization and Sequestration (CCUS) projects, all in our signature concise, accurate, and intelligible style.
‘Green’ Hydrogen Projects
We almost shudder at the color schemes that have been devised for hydrogen, though it sometimes helps to be able to put things in buckets and, for lack of a better method, we have lumped some of the projects into a “green” bucket. These are projects that generally use some form of electrolysis (which we covered in our second-ever hydrogen blog) to generate hydrogen from electricity and water. Also, the electricity is usually from a source with a low carbon intensity (CI). Figure 1 below summarizes the existing and planned projects in this category. As you will quickly notice, there is only one of these “green” projects currently in service in North America, that being Air Liquide’s Bécancour facility in Quebec, which started up earlier this year and utilizes hydropower to produce hydrogen with proton exchange membrane (PEM) technology.
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About the song
“Anyway You Want It” was written by Steve Perry and Neil Schon. It appears as the first cut on side one of Journey’s sixth studio album, Departures. Released as a single in February 1980, the song went to #23 on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart. Personnel on the record were: Steve Perry (lead vocals), Neal Schon (guitars, backing vocals), Ross Valory (bass, backing vocals), Gregg Rolie (keyboards, backing vocals), and Steve Smith (drums).
Departure was recorded in November 1979 at The Automatt in San Francisco. Produced by Geoff Workman and Kevin Elson, the LP was released in February 1980. It went to #8 on the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart and has been certified 3X Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. The album would mark the last appearance of founding member Gregg Rolie, who had tired of life on the road. Rolie helped in finding his replacement in the band, Jonathan Cain from The Babys. Four singles were released from the album.
Journey is an American rock band formed in San Francisco in 1973 by two ex-members of Santana. Their biggest commercial success came between 1978 and 1987, when Steve Perry was their lead vocalist. They have released 15 studio albums, five live albums, 11 compilation albums, two EPs, and 52 singles. They have sold more than 100 million records worldwide and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2017. Twenty-five members have passed through Journey since their formation. The band continues to record and tour and will be appearing at venues across the U.S. beginning in March.
