Hubs

The U.S. is gearing up to provide billions of dollars in financial support for a series of regional clean hydrogen hubs and had what amounts to an informal cutdown at the end of December, announcing that 33 project proponents had been formally encouraged to submit a full application this spring. Although the Department of Energy (DOE) didn’t name any of the projects on the “encouraged” list, we’ve been able to identify many of the proposals — and add five more in today’s blog — even though a lot of project details remain under wraps. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll look at the new projects on our list and examine the major factors that are likely to influence a project’s viability.

Prior to the adoption of the assembly line, automotive production was slow and expensive, with Ford needing about 12 man hours of labor to do the final assembly for each new car. With Henry Ford’s installation of the first moving assembly line for mass production in December 1913, followed by additional refinements in future years, the average time dropped to about 90 minutes, with manufacturing costs also falling significantly. Those are the types of improvements in cost and efficiency the carbon-capture industry — which to date has been largely limited to smaller, individual projects — is anticipating as hub-style projects gain wider acceptance and begin to take shape. In today’s RBN blog, we look at the two basic concepts for carbon-capture hubs, the key advantages of the hub approach, and the complications inherent in that strategy.

Did you miss our School of Energy a few weeks back in Houston? Not a problem! The entire School of Energy conference is now available online in streaming video format. The conference video, presentation slides and spreadsheet models are available for purchase as individual Modules or as a full conference package. It’s the next best thing to being there!  School of Energy is unlike other natural gas, NGL or crude oil conferences.  It combines all three!  And the curriculum includes a comprehensive analysis of current energy markets and in-depth instruction on how to use RBN spreadsheet models covering everything from production economics to gas processing.  We walk through key developments for each of the three hydrocarbons including the increasingly important links between them.  Fair warning – today’s blog is a blatant advertorial.