Why is Los Angeles building a hydrogen plant in Utah?
L.A. is building a hydrogen plant in Utah — yes, Utah — but will it actually produce clean energy?
And for tonight’s special report, we turn to Utah, to a smokestack that L.A. Mayor Garcetti once called the “death cough of gas-based electricity generation.”
It’s the Intermountain Power Plant — L.A.’s largest source of power, coal-fired and operated by the L.A. Department of Water and Power some 500 miles of transmission lines away in the town of Delta, population 3,678.
When a light bulb brightens up overhead, it’s in part because you had an idea and in part because they put coal in the furnace there.
But not for long. The plant is being converted to burn natural gases — cleaner than coal, but still producing heat-trapping carbon emissions. Once open in 2025, it’ll be the world’s largest hydrogen-fueled generating station, burning an initial mix of 30% hydrogen and 70% natural gas, and aiming for 100% hydrogen by 2045.
Meanwhile, in our own backyard, DWP is retrofitting the city’s largest gas-fired plant with turbines to burn hydrogen instead and has plans to do the same with three other local power plants.
Hydrogen is all the craze and is being touted as a pathway to decarbonization, meaning a lot of money is flowing in that direction. California was just awarded a federal grant of $1.2 billion.
But is it clean? Depends on how you make the cake.
Green hydrogen uses clean energy, like solar or wind, to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen … a process called electrolysis — costlier, less efficient, but made competitive with the help of federal regulations for tax credits.
According to the Department of Energy, 95% of hydrogen in use today is produced by burning fossil fuels. They call that “grey hydrogen.”
It feels a bit silly, doesn’t it? Using clean electricity to combust a gas to produce clean energy… It’s almost like electricity is a threat to gas utilities.
That could explain, in part, why SoCalGas is hoping to invest billions in “Angeles Link,” hundreds of miles of pipeline to bring green hydrogen to the L.A. Basin.
And you’d be right to be suspicious, given that the private utility’s shareholders were fined only a couple years ago for obstructing climate policy with ratepayer money.
But it’s not like a warming world, for which their industry and its product is responsible, won’t affect them too, or at least their bottom line.
Especially when there’s money to be made, what with the energy transition — building up transmission lines and supplying our city’s electric infrastructure.
Perhaps gas companies, like people, can change?
It’s a question Sammy Roth asked in last week’s Boiling Point:
“Maybe there are no heroes or villains. Maybe we all just do our best, and we live, and we die, then we move on. The end.”
It’s the Intermountain Power Plant — L.A.’s largest source of power, coal-fired and operated by the L.A. Department of Water and Power some 500 miles of transmission lines away in the town of Delta, population 3,678.
When a light bulb brightens up overhead, it’s in part because you had an idea and in part because they put coal in the furnace there.
But not for long. The plant is being converted to burn natural gases — cleaner than coal, but still producing heat-trapping carbon emissions. Once open in 2025, it’ll be the world’s largest hydrogen-fueled generating station, burning an initial mix of 30% hydrogen and 70% natural gas, and aiming for 100% hydrogen by 2045.
Meanwhile, in our own backyard, DWP is retrofitting the city’s largest gas-fired plant with turbines to burn hydrogen instead and has plans to do the same with three other local power plants.
Hydrogen is all the craze and is being touted as a pathway to decarbonization, meaning a lot of money is flowing in that direction. California was just awarded a federal grant of $1.2 billion.
But is it clean? Depends on how you make the cake.
Green hydrogen uses clean energy, like solar or wind, to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen … a process called electrolysis — costlier, less efficient, but made competitive with the help of federal regulations for tax credits.
According to the Department of Energy, 95% of hydrogen in use today is produced by burning fossil fuels. They call that “grey hydrogen.”
It feels a bit silly, doesn’t it? Using clean electricity to combust a gas to produce clean energy… It’s almost like electricity is a threat to gas utilities.
That could explain, in part, why SoCalGas is hoping to invest billions in “Angeles Link,” hundreds of miles of pipeline to bring green hydrogen to the L.A. Basin.
And you’d be right to be suspicious, given that the private utility’s shareholders were fined only a couple years ago for obstructing climate policy with ratepayer money.
But it’s not like a warming world, for which their industry and its product is responsible, won’t affect them too, or at least their bottom line.
Especially when there’s money to be made, what with the energy transition — building up transmission lines and supplying our city’s electric infrastructure.
Perhaps gas companies, like people, can change?
It’s a question Sammy Roth asked in last week’s Boiling Point:
“Maybe there are no heroes or villains. Maybe we all just do our best, and we live, and we die, then we move on. The end.”
