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Appalachian groups express frustration over first $30 million in federal hydrogen hub funding
“This award represents a continued commitment to invest in a natural gas industry that has added to the pollution and health burdens in the region.”
PITTSBURGH — On July 31, the federal government announced $30 million of funding for the Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub, or ARCH2, which plans to create hydrogen from natural gas and other sources.
ARCH2 is one of seven planned, federally funded hydrogen hubs across the country, and one of two (along with the Gulf Coast hub) that will rely primarily on fossil fuel sources rather than renewables to create hydrogen.
The $30 million award represents the first round of funding for ARCH2, with a total of $925 million available for this project over the next seven to twelve years. In total, the seven planned hydrogen hub projects are slated to receive $7 billion in federal funding.
The $30 million will be used to “solidify planning, development, and design activities around site selection, technology deployment, community benefits and engagement, labor partnerships, and workforce training,” according to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).
The announcement comes just weeks after Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro signed into law a controversial bill allowing carbon capture and storage in the state, which will be required for the development of the hydrogen hub.
The award announcement frustrated local environmental and community advocates, who say the DOE has not been transparent about the details of the project, its climate and economic benefits, or its potential to add pollution and cause health harms in environmental justice communities that are already overburdened with existing pollution sources.
“This award represents a continued commitment to invest in a natural gas industry that has added to the pollution and health burdens in the region while failing to deliver any measurable growth in jobs, income and population,” Sean O’Leary, senior researcher with the Ohio River Valley Institute, a progressive think tank, said in a statement.
Earlier this year, the Ohio River Valley Institute delivered a letter to the DOE on behalf of 54 Appalachian organizations and community groups calling for the suspension of ARCH2. The letter called on the DOE to release additional information about the projects and offer impacted communities more meaningful opportunities for engagement prior to awarding additional funds — neither of which has happened, according to the organizations that signed the letter.
“Affected communities know little about the proposed projects and their impacts,” the No False Solutions PA Coalition said in a separate statement about the award. “Nevertheless, millions of dollars are being awarded to projects that will surely impact our health and environment BEFORE affected communities have had a chance to weigh in.”
Critics of the ARCH2 project say that carbon capture and storage technology hasn’t yet proven effective as a climate solution and it remains unclear whether hydrogen energy will abate or worsen climate change.
“There’s been a lot of talk about how hydrogen will be a cleaner energy source, but that overlooks the entire picture which includes reliance on the natural gas industry, which we know pollutes and harms communities and drives climate change with methane leaks,” Talor Musil, a field manager with the Environmental Health Project, a public health nonprofit, told EHN.
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Peter Dykstra: Meet the Zeroes
Back in the day, even the climate-denying, drill-baby-drill zealots tried to maintain a saving green grace. Not anymore.
Once upon a time, environmentalists’ favorite villains always kept a pet green cause in their back pockets.
James G. Watt, Ronald Reagan’s pious, libertarian Interior Secretary, sought to lease every square inch of American coastline whether or not it bore potential for oil and gas. He also suggested that if environmental regulation could not be overcome with the ballot box, then the “cartridge box” awaited. But even Watt tipped his political hat to environmental values, endorsing a halt to global commercial whaling during a 1991 whale watch excursion.
Years later, Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe was well on his way to establishing himself as the alpha dog of congressional climate deniers. But in 2004, he became champion of the endangered Kemp Ridley sea turtles, co-sponsoring a measure to protect their nesting grounds along the Gulf Coast.
But now, when the most basic environmental questions have turned brutally partisan, things have shifted. Conservatives no longer feel they need to put up a green show to keep appearances, according to the scores of the League of Conservation Voters (LCV), a half-century-old, non-partisan organization that tracks the behavior of congressional committees or individual congresspersons.
LCV bases its rating on key environmental votes in the House and Senate. What it shows is alarming.
Peter Dykstra is our weekend editor and columnist and can be reached at pdykstra@ehn.org or @pdykstra.
His views do not necessarily represent those of Environmental Health News, The Daily Climate, or publisher Environmental Health Sciences.
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Ruth Greenspan Bell: Wealth and the climate dilemma
Developing countries that increase their fossil fuel production are at a crossroads: securing their own long-term well-being or earning revenue to finance programs to support immediate economic growth.
Irony abounds as we close out a summer that brought the death of the climate truthteller, scientist James Lovelock, along with news that more countries in Africa and South America have decided to exploit, aggressively, their fossil fuel production – protected areas and former promises be damned.
The Democratic Republic of Congo, had, less than a year before at the annual climate negotiation in Glasgow, signed on to a 10-year agreement to protect its rainforest, part of the vast Congo Basin. In shifting to extraction, they seem to be saying, basically, everyone’s doing it; why not us?
Congo is not alone in this choice. In 2015, Guyana discovered off-shore oil reserves. More recently, it is sprinting to exploit at least 11 billion additional barrels of oil off its coast. Like Congo, Guyana’s leadership says it will use the proceeds to improve the lives of its people – in this case, infrastructure and health and education systems.
It’s hard to fault an impoverished country with no historical responsibility for the fast-accelerating climate crisis for wading in at this late date to exploit their fossil fuel resources. And it is clearly impertinent, at the minimum, for those of us who have led gilded privileged lives rooted in huge fossil fuel consumption to fault a country that has decided to try to leverage its natural resources to better the lives of its people.
And there lies the dilemma. Congo itself sets up the choice as between global interest and national-interest, between saving the planet and earning revenue to help an impoverished country finance programs to support economic growth.
Yes, revenues will increase and we can hope they will be spent wisely. At the same time, extraction feeds the beast that inevitably makes their own countries less livable. It lets the wealthy countries off the hook, supporting their continued extravagant energy consumption.
The missing factor in Congo’s calculation is that extraction itself is far from costless. It has profound, permanent domestic impacts. These are hard to manage in normal times and in affluent countries. In the increasingly challenging conditions of a changed climate, countries should be focused on how to sustain life in uncertain times, when they may be thrown on their own resources to survive.
Countries that host extraction must live with the detritus of extraction, which is by definition intrusive. Even responsible extraction of natural resources imposes environmental costs. Digging hydrocarbons disrupts the landscape in a variety of ways. Ground is broken and earth is moved. Roads and power transmission corridors are cut through pristine areas. Workers and often their families must be housed and provided attendant services. All of this produces waste which must be disposed of or trucked out.
The activity of building roads and then the use of those roads and equipment introduces fuels and exhaust fumes. Extraction operations often use hazardous chemicals. Sometimes companies cheat and use illegal chemicals rather than those considered appropriate and for which there are technologies to capture and clean or separate. Offshore drilling brings its own set of disruptions. On land and at sea, there are oil spills that contaminate soil and water and may cause devastating explosions and fires.
All of this wreaks havoc on natural systems, fracturing the complex web of ecological interactions and processes that strain to support local life and downstream communities and cities, especially agriculture. Water is unclean or more toxic or less available as natural flows and connections between water bodies are irreparably cut. It is these flows that are essential for sustaining life. When mining finally leaves, lost topsoil, vegetation and forest cover constitute a broken natural chain that is rarely restorable.
Some impacts are obvious and visual, for example table top removal to extract coal. Others are more difficult to track and comprehend. When pollution enters an ecosystem, it is often difficult to trace its source and attribute responsibility. This is true even in countries with vast resources, empowered citizens with the tools and legal recourse to play a watch-dog role and well-functioning systems of law.
Dr. Lovelock’s legacy is the knowledge that destroying the living organism that is Earth has huge costs. Extraction and the exploration that leads to it breaks communities, piece by piece. Deciding to engage in these activities now comes at a very bad time in the history of the Earth and of human kind's existence on it.
Of course, companies promise to clean up their mess. Experience tells us not to rely on such promises – not only because promises are broken but because much of this damage is irreparable. Reconciling extraction and protection of the environment is an ongoing challenge even in places with well-established regulatory systems. Look at West Virginia, albeit a different kind of extraction. Despite requirements that coal companies remediate, bankruptcies of coal giants like Peabody have thrown into doubt who is responsible for abandoned strip mines and denuded mountains. Impoverished countries will have even less leverage to manage the damage when the corporations leave.
As climate change fully hits vulnerable countries, heat will buckle roads and rail beds; erratic precipitation will make hydropower unreliable and make it harder to move product on water, much less to provide for domestic water needs. There comes a point where working in the heat is not just oppressive but fatal.
It would be a bold option for these countries to take control of their destinies. One way to do this is to reject extraction and adopt a self-protective plan shifting to more fundamental but sustainable endeavors. A tortoise rather than hare strategy better positioning them for the inevitable shift could range from diversifying into alternate energy sources to water harvesting, dry farming and building soil capacity to retain water. These are all techniques recommended for water-poor, stressed geographies such as Gaza. The inevitable changes on the horizon argue for making a virtue of what has been seen in the past as a liability — small scale survival.
In an ideal world, the wealthier countries would contribute to this strategy, but realistically, help at scale from abroad is unlikely. Countries at risk have pleaded for climate adaptation or compensation funds – some of which could in theory help with these kinds of transitions. In reality, what funds that exist are chronically underfunded and unreliable. Congo came out of Glasgow with such promises, which it clearly decided were not sufficient.
Is this advice realistic? Maybe not, but humanity is in uncharted waters, meanwhile trying to pretend that everything is manageable. The truth is: any big challenge requires political will. Sometimes survival is achieved by defying conventional wisdom.
These are not easy choices, but rejecting extraction would engage a very different vision of self-interest. And one that might be more appropriate for the disaster we find ourselves in.
Ruth Greenspan Bell is a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, and affiliated with The Environmental Law Institute. Her views do not necessarily represent those of Environmental Health News, The Daily Climate, or publisher Environmental Health Sciences.
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