The Los Angeles region is setting some precedent for moving forward with clean energy projects in one of the largest metropolitan areas in the United States, with ongoing efforts that include the commissioning early next year of one of the country’s first utility-scale power plants powered by 30% hydrogen.
Public agencies and companies in the Los Angeles area are working to produce and transport cleaner sources of hydrogen fuel to reduce emissions at natural gas-fired power plants and hard-to-decarbonize sectors in Southern California, according to the public agency and company officials who spoke to ENR. LA Infrastructure Forum this month.
California was chosen by the U.S. Department of Energy in 2023 as a “hydrogen powerhouse,” selected to receive $1.2 billion in federal funding for projects. One of seven selected US centers receiving a total of more than $7 billion, it is the only one that is a single state, with Los Angeles as “the epicenter of a new green hydrogen economy” , said Janice Lin, founder and president of the Green Hydrogen Coalition, a nonprofit market development and policy advocacy group.
Public and private sector experts providing updates on green hydrogen energy projects in metro Los Angeles include (left to right) Janiceaddressing Hydrogen panel tktk.
Photo by Russell Marquez for LA County Public Works
The federal funding is going to the centerpiece of California, the Alliance for Renewable Clean Hydrogen Energy Systems (ARCHES), a 400-member public-private development consortium that will generate $10 billion in private investment, advocates say. ARCHES recently chose 37 responses to a request for proposals, out of hundreds received, for potential projects to produce, extract and transport hydrogen, its CEO Angelina Galiteva said at a separate conference in LA this month. “That’s $56 billion in creditworthy projects,” he said. Challenges to creating a reliable hydrogen ecosystem include price and supply consistency, and plug connections Challenges to creating a reliable hydrogen ecosystem include price and supply consistency, and plug connections , added Galiteva.
better mix
One of the most prominent projects regionally and nationally is at the site of a 1.8 GW coal-fired power plant in Utah that has long supplied metro Los Angeles and is being converted to a natural gas mix and 30% of hydrogen produced from renewable energies. energy like solar. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the largest municipal utility in the US, will begin operation early next year of the 840 MW combined cycle gas turbine plant, which aims to 100 % hydrogen fuel by 2045.
“We are putting a lot of our efforts into hydrogen as the fuel of the future for our baseload generation,” agency CEO and Chief Engineer Janisse Quiñones told ENR LA Infrastructure attendees. “What’s important about this project is that it’s no longer a conversation. It’s a reality. Nobody in the world is doing this, it’s a big risk we took.” Nearly $450 million in federal project funding “allows us to make it more economically viable for our customers and have an active generation facility where we can test the technology and drive the market to get prices down,” he added .
LADWP also has an $800 million project underway to retrofit two units of its 830 MW Scattergood gas-fired power plant near Los Angeles International Airport by 2029 to a hydrogen blend of 30 %, and plans to do the same in three other local plants. But environmental advocates and affected community members oppose Scattergood’s new draft environmental review and want battery storage added, according to media reports.
Also testing hydrogen fuel technology is the Port of Los Angeles, the largest container port in the United States that set a goal in 2017 to be “the world’s first zero-carbon, zero-emissions port complex.” said Eugene D. Seroka, its executive director. conference attendees. “Hydrogen will play a key role in our migration. However, it’s early days and there’s a lot to do. How do you get there with an unproven technology that looks very, very different of a transportation network that was designed around fossil fuels?”
Noting that only 66 of some 22,000 trucks now licensed to access the port are powered by hydrogen fuel cells, Seroka noted “a lot of hurdles,” estimating the production cost for each at $750,000. “We have to keep chipping away at this and finding better ways. We can’t over-commit and under-deliver.”
The port is using a total of $600 million in US Environmental Protection Agency funds and port-generated and private investment “to help accelerate the development of infrastructure and equipment that will come online.” But he cautioned, “it’s not going to be a one-year change and no more port emissions. We’ll see what works and what doesn’t, with our private sector partners … to give them the confidence to come in and test their equipment “.
Southern California Gas Co. has won some approvals to plan and build a green hydrogen pipeline for Central and Southern California with the Port of LA and LADWP facilities as “major anchors,” said Neil Navin, senior vice president of engineering and major projects and head of the company. clean fuels officer.
“But there are many, many other end users that need to decarbonize over time,” he said. “If you can bring all these end users together with a connective infrastructure, you can start to bring down [hydrogen fuel] cost over time, and today we’ve done that with things like natural gas.”
There are 1,600 miles of pipeline in the U.S. for fossil fuel-generated hydrogen, so the SoCalGas Angeles Link project is “the first significant trunk system in North America proposed” for green hydrogen, he said. Navin said. The company has said the first constructed segment of the pipeline could be completed by the end of the decade. But further regulation remains uncertain, according to a media report.
“I’m very optimistic and very excited,” Navin said. “These are the first days, but the trajectory is very similar solar Ultimately, we need to start mass-producing the equipment that can produce hydrogen, just like we did with solar panels 50 years ago.”
He sees growth in hydrogen technology “and the ability to scale it up and bring down the cost,” but also predicts that the fuel will continue to rely on “some natural gas.”
