AN INSIDER TAKE ON THE APPALACHIAN HYDROGEN & CCUS CONFERENCE

Guest author Kelly Yagatich, Regional Campaign Manager with The Climate Reality Project, shares her takeaways from the recent Appalachian Hydrogen and Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS) conference. The conference follows the Department of Energy’s (DOE) announcement for federal funding to develop hydrogen hubs across the United States. While the DOE has promoted hydrogen and carbon capture technology as a way to accelerate the transition to clean energy, extractive industries are eager to use this funding to prolong Appalachia’s dependence on fossil fuels and prevent investment in more effective climate solutions.  

This is the second article in our series on hydrogen and carbon capture technology. Click here to read the first article, Does Hydrogen Have a Role in Our Energy Future? 

On April 21st, 2022, oil and gas industry leaders gathered just south of Pittsburgh, PA for the Appalachian Hydrogen and Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS) conference. I had the opportunity to sit in on this conference, which sought to give updates on projects happening in the region, give attendees an opportunity to network, and provide information on how to support the industry moving forward. The agenda of the conference included speakers from Shale Directories, Long Ridge Energy, Monolith Chemicals, Westinghouse, In2Market, Shell, Equinor, US Steel, Washington County, Wishguard, Navigator, the American Petroleum Institute (API), and Keystate to Zero. The room was filled with many of the same people and companies that have been pushing Appalachian petrochemical development for the past decade. At this event, however, fracking and plastic were not the central points of discussion; the focus was instead on the next frontier of Appalachian natural gas development: hydrogen and carbon capture.

Here are a few of my main takeaways:

While not every speaker and attendee seemed to agree on the severity of the climate crisis, most speakers acknowledged their company’s commitment to the planet. Multiple speakers addressed goals to reach net zero by 2050, and although science tells us that net zero by 2050 isn’t nearly ambitious enough to keep us below our global temperature rise targets, the repeated invocation of climate commitments signaled that many people in the room are feeling the increasing global pressure to address the impact of their industry’s emissions. At one point, an attendee asked a tongue and cheek question of Marcus Koblitz, the speaker from the American Petroleum Institute (API), about if anyone will actually care about climate after the next presidential election cycle. Despite chuckles from several members of the audience, Mr. Koblitz answered with a straight face, saying that there is increasing pressure globally for companies to lower their carbon output and that independent of American politics, industry needs to be focused on reducing emissions to stay competitive in the global market. 

Most speakers, though, were not convinced that lower carbon emissions necessarily meant shifting away from fossil fuel extraction. Perry Babb, from Keystate to Zero, started off his presentation by saying that we aren’t in an energy transition but rather an emissions transition. His claim was that the industry will continue to burn as much carbon in 2050 as they do now, but the only difference will be the way that emissions are dealt with. Mr Babb was not alone in his assertion that carbon capture is the next frontier for the energy industry. Both Long Ridge Energy and Wishgard LLC spoke about the future potential for carbon storage on properties that they currently own in OH, and Navigator touted their Heartland Greenway project, an interstate CO2 pipeline proposed in the midwest, as exemplifying the future potential for carbon capture and storage technology. Despite all of the recent studies that have emerged citing a lack of evidence that carbon capture is effective and economical at scale (IEEFA), the room was full of optimism and enthusiasm for further development of this technology —mostly as it pertained to hydrogen generation.

Figure 1. This map shows major powerplants and industrial sites that the industry could target for carbon capture technology. It also shows potential carbon dioxide pipeline routes connecting those sites and existing hydrogen production facilities. Data Sources: EPA Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, Labor Energy Partnership Report “Building to Net Zero” and EPA Envirofacts. Map made in March, 2022 using 2020 datasets.

As the hope of federal funding continues to loom over the region, I’m sure we will be hearing a lot more from industry about the potential benefits of hydrogen and CCUS infrastructure in Appalachia. It is clear, though, that the industry is hearing the voices of community members speaking out about the climate impacts and safety concerns of continued extraction and fossil fuel production in the region. We must learn from others in the movement and continue to make our concerns heard at the local, state, and federal level to ensure that our narrative does not get overtaken or greenwashed by the industry narrative.

• Read the first article in this series: Does Hydrogen Have a Role in Our Energy Future?

DATASETS USED IN THE MAP ABOVE

Name: Hydrogen Production Sites
Date: 2020 Dataset, retrieved March 2022
Source: US EPA, available for download here

Name: Potential CO2 Pipelines in Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania.
Date: Data from June 2021, digitized in March 2022
Source: Labor Energy Partnership Report “Building to Net Zero,” digitized by FracTracker Alliance. Shapefile can be downloaded here.

Name: Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania Sources of CO2 Emissions
Date: Obtained in March 2022, using a 2020 emission dataset.
Source: Facilities were obtained from the EPA’s FLIGHT dataset, which can be downloaded here. A shapefile of the selected sites, filtered and mapped by FracTracker Alliance can be downloaded here. Notes: This shapefile shows uses EPA FLIGHT data filtered to include powerplants that reported >500,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions and industrial sites that reported greater than >100,000 metric tons of CO2 in 2020. These sites reported could qualify for the 45q tax credit. This methodology was based of the report, An Atlas of Carbon and Hydrogen Hubs for United States Decarbonization. These are not the only sites in the region that could have future carbon capture technology.