Responses to the new rules have been mixed, and environmental advocates worry that Trump could undermine them.
The Biden administration has finalized long-anticipated hydrogen tax credit rules just weeks before Trump takes office.
The rules, set by the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service, will determine when hydrogen producers can claim substantial tax credits intended to incentivize the production of clean hydrogen energy.
The draft rules received over 30,000 comments from industry groups and environmental advocates alike that Treasury and the IRS spent the last two years interpreting. While concessions were made on both sides, the reception of the rule has been mixed and the rule could be subject to change under the Trump administration.
The Biden administration has pushed for clean hydrogen production to decarbonize heavy industries that are difficult to electrify, like trucking and steelmaking. Hydrogen is often more expensive to produce than traditional energy sources, so the tax credits were created to decrease costs for the producer and allow hydrogen to compete with traditional energy sources in foreign and domestic markets.
Hydrogen can be produced through a variety of methods with varying carbon emissions. Clean hydrogen is defined by the new rules as creating up to four kilograms of carbon emissions per every kilogram of hydrogen produced. Credit-eligible hydrogen production has two pathways, electricity or methane. Eligible electricity sources include renewables like solar and wind, but also nuclear. Additionally, hydrogen production from methane, whether using natural gas, steam reforming or coal mining, is also included with the addition of carbon capture technologies to reduce emissions.
The tax credit, which producers can claim for up to a decade, operates on a tiered system that rewards hydrogen producers with the lowest carbon intensity with the largest credit of $3 per kilogram and is scaled down to about 60 cents per kilogram. The program will expire on Jan. 1, 2033, meaning facilities must begin construction by this date if they wish to claim the credit.
Nearly 70 petrochemical companies across the nation, including 30 in Texas, are sending millions of pounds of pollutants into waterways each year due to weak or nonexistent regulations, according to a report published by the watchdog group Environmental Integrity Project.
The report analyzed wastewater discharges from petrochemical companies that produce plastics across the U.S., finding that a majority of the facilities had violated Clean Water Act permits and few were punished. In addition, only a few states are regulating some of the hazardous chemicals or substances of concern, and there are currently no limits set from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for these contaminants in effluent water guidelines for the plastics industry.
In the past 30 years, plastic production at petrochemical facilities has skyrocketed. The EPA estimates that plastic production in 1990 was at 17,130 tons, and by 2018 it had doubled, reaching 35,680 tons. Producing these plastics results in industrial wastewater discharges, some of which contain pollutants unregulated by federal wastewater guidelines. If the pollutant does have limits, they have been set by individual states.
The report found the following pollutants:
Dioxins, recognized as one of the most toxic classes of compounds by the World Health Organization, can be a byproduct of producing plastics like poly-vinyl chloride, or PVC. Out of the 17 facilities that produce PVC, only three have site limits set by states.
1,4 dioxane, classified as a potential carcinogen, only had limits set at two facilities.
An estimated 9.9 million pounds of nitrogen and 1.9 million pounds of phosphorus (known as nutrient pollution when combined) enter waterways from these plants annually, and can cause toxic algal blooms and fish-killing low-oxygen zones. Only one facility had limits for phosphorus pollution and none had total nitrogen limits.
Plastic pellets, known as nurdles, are entering waterways in 27 states.
Polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are not currently considered in wastewater samples for petrochemical plant permit applications.
A majority of the facilities have poor compliance records. Out of the 70 facilities, 83% had violated the Clean Water Act at least once in the last three years (58 facilities violated permits, yet only 8 were penalized). Nearly 40% of the facilities were operating on water pollution control permits that are outdated, “but have been administratively continued by state agencies,” according to the report.
Outdated Clean Water Act regulations
The Clean Water Act, issued by the EPA in 1972, has historically been enforced through effluent water guidelines. The petrochemical facilities in the report are regulated under a category of guidelines for organic chemicals, plastics and synthetic fibers.
“The (plastics) industry has experienced significant, rapid growth in recent decades and is continuing to grow,” lead author of the report and research director at the Environmental Integrity Project, Kira Dunham, told EHN. “But…wastewater discharges are being regulated by standards from over 30 years ago.”
This category of guidelines Dunham mentions has not been updated by the EPA since 1993, despite requirements for the agency to “periodically” update guidelines in accordance with technological updates for pollution control.
Texas petrochemical pollution
With 17 of the 30 facilities in Texas, the Houston area — known as the petrochemical capital of the U.S. — is the number one exporter of petrochemicals in the nation.
Nearly one-third of these Texas facilities discharge wastewater into the Houston Ship Channel. Earlier this year, EHN investigated community member concerns about wastewater contamination potentially entering dredge material removed from the channel. Independent analysis from Healthy Port Communities, a collaborative of Houston-based environmental groups, noted high levels of dioxins in the soil surrounding dredge material.
“Some of the places touched on in the (Environmental Integrity Project’s) report might have one major facility that has this… pattern of discharging pollutants into waterways,” Kristen Schlemmer, senior legal director of Houston- based water justice group Bayou City Waterkeeper, told EHN. “I don't want to discount that … but it at least makes it clear who you can focus on to address the problem. Whereas in Houston, we have so many different facilities that are polluting into our waterways, that it often just makes it seem like that's normal, and that's just the way things are going to be.”
Schlemmer added that these concerns for pollution related to wastewater discharges are heightened by disasters, like this year’s derecho storm and Hurricane Beryl, in which water grows contaminated across large portions of the region. Beyond climate disasters, the Houston region is prone to chemical disasters and the state averages about one chemical release a week based on 2023 data.
“I'm hoping through this work to show that this is not normal, and (to) raise the bar in terms of what our expectations are for the facilities that live in our backyards,” Schlemmer said. “If they're not going to comply with the law …I want them to … know that they're going to be facing legal action, either from us or for government regulators.”
Earlier this year, the Environmental Integrity Project sued the EPA along with Bayou City Water Keeper, the Center for Biological Diversity and nearly 300 water justice groups in the Waterkeeper Alliance. In the original intent to sue, the group states that the EPA “has failed to perform its mandatory duty under (the Clean Water Act) ... to biennially submit state water quality reports and an analysis thereof … to Congress.”
Just last week, the EPA released its biannual preliminary plan for effluent limitations guidelines and the announcement states that the EPA plans to conduct new studies that will clarify the impact of discharges from certain industries on waterways. The plan is open for public comment here.
HOUSTON — Harris County, which encompasses Houston, is projected to lose nearly $1 billion in revenue over the lifespan of current tax breaks, many of which are given to top polluters, according to a new report from the environmental advocacy group Texas Campaign for the Environment.
The group commissioned a study with economists from the economic analytics company Autocase to analyze industrial companies for three types of tax code agreements given by cities or school districts in Harris County that would provide tax breaks. The study revealed active tax break agreements with 83 companies in the county in which the company receives things like long term property valuations. In return, companies promise economic growth, job opportunities and adherence to state and federal law, though many of the corporations receiving the tax benefits routinely break environmental laws.
The largest source of tax breaks are Chapter 313 agreements, which limit property value increases for 10 years on businesses that promise economic development and investments in the local school districts, resulting in lower taxes paid. For such agreements the report estimated nearly $788 million in revenue lost over the agreements’ lifespan — some of which are 10-15 years — even after investments from the corporations were paid. Autocase economist Stefan Dindayal said this trend differed from previous county studies where a majority of agreements are with the cities or counties themselves, not the school districts.
Although this type of tax break was replaced by a similar program in June 2023, all current agreements are honored until their expiration.
“It is primarily the state that reimburses the majority of losses (from the tax breaks) through providing state aid,” the report authors wrote. “The loss felt by the state is the foregone school property tax revenue that would otherwise have reduced the need for state aid. As a result, state taxpayers are the prime stakeholders affected.”
The school districts Channelview, Clear Lake, Goose Creek, La Porte, Deer Park and Sheldon are participating in agreements in the county.. Many of these districts are in eastern portions of Houston near heavy industry, and they experience 95% to 100% higher air toxic releases than the rest of the state according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s environmental justice screening tool.
“The loss felt by the state is the foregone school property tax revenue that would otherwise have reduced the need for state aid. As a result, state taxpayers are the prime stakeholders affected.” - Stefan Dindayal, Autocase
The largest recipient of tax breaks was ExxonMobil, approaching $198.2 million, representing nearly 20% of all tax revenue lost in the county. The ExxonMobil complex in Baytown, TX, is the third largest petrochemical complex in the U.S. and spans 3,400 acres, or about 2,576 American football fields pieced together. With three individual sites within the complex – the olefins unit, the chemical plant and the refinery – the plant and refinery have several quarters of violations or noncompliance for the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act from the EPA. Yet, the fines from these violations total $2.46 million, less than 1.25% of the money they save in tax breaks according to this report.
ExxonMobil was followed by Lyondell Chemical, which represents 13% of Harris County’s lost revenue; and Chevron Phillips, which represents 8% of Harris County’s lost revenue. Both of these companies also have histories of environmental noncompliance and illegal emissions events, leaving community members, like Jen Hadayia, the executive director of Air Alliance, to question why “top polluters are being met with top economic incentives.”
“The study …shows that these same industries are preventing economic benefits from returning to the communities they are polluting,” Hadayia said.
At the time of publishing, Lyondell Chemical and Chevron Phillips have not responded to EHN’s requests for comment. Exxon Mobil responded, but did not comment.
The study revealed that, on average, each job created by the industries receiving these tax breaks cost $1.2 million in lost revenue. The costs ranged from $31,000 to $38.7 million per job promised. The highest tax break per job was Occidental Petroleum promising two jobs in their agreement and receiving $38.7 million per job.
“Countless times we hear these industries say that these companies are important to our region because they bring economic prosperity and they bring jobs,” the Houston regional coordinator for TCE, Dominic Chacón, said. “This (study) directly undermines that message as well. We know none of these workers are receiving millions of dollars per job like these companies are receiving.”
Houston residents, however, have seen their property taxes climb. For South Houston resident Erandi Treviño, that tax amounts to nearly one-third of the average income of her neighborhood.
“We can see here that home taxes are extremely high and truly, really onerous,” Treviño, founder of the environmental advocacy organization the Raíces Collaborative, said. “And when you have…billion dollar entities that are getting these tax breaks, clearly something here is off.”
The study projected that if revenue had been retained by Harris County city budgets could have increased funding across all budget items, including public safety and public works, from 0.2% in Houston to as much as 25% in Morgan’s Point, a city about 30 miles East of Houston.
“We can compare how many dollars are being lost for each service,” Dindayal said. “And this is kind of a neat way to get the community to actually understand what they're losing. They're not just losing a dollar amount. What they're losing is dollar amounts in these potential services that could have benefited the city and the community at large.”
The incoming Trump administration could decrease the viability of the nascent U.S. hydrogen economy with changes in clean energy funding, trade, climate and environmental policies, according to legal and industry experts.
The Biden administration made a big bet on hydrogen — with seven proposed, federally funded hydrogen hub networks, an initiative born from the administration’s 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The hubs are all still in early phases of development, however, the Department of Energy (DOE) has allocated $7 billion in federal funding for the hubs, which support the Biden administration's objective of reaching net-zero carbon emissions nationwide by 2050 and achieving a 100% “clean” electrical grid by 2035.
The projects, which will use both renewable and fossil fuel energy to create hydrogen, have already faced criticism from community members and advocacy groups who say details of the projects remain hazy, public input is being planned after industry partners have already received millions of dollars in public funding, and communities don’t have agency in the decision-making.
While much remains uncertain with the upcoming Trump presidency, experts said it’s unlikely the projects would be abandoned entirely. However, the initiative could be harder to fund, less focused on slowing climate change – which could impact production sales to places with stricter environmental rules, like the EU – and deepen the lack of community engagement many advocates have denounced.
“I think there will be a lot of pressure from the oil and gas industry on the Trump administration to basically keep the hydrogen provisions but to make them more lenient and friendly toward fossil fuel interests,” Matt Lifson, an attorney with the Institute for Policy Integrity at the NYU School of Law, told EHN.
Policy shifts that could impact the the hydrogen hubs
The seven proposed, federally funded networks of hydrogen hub infrastructure announced a year ago are an initiative born from the Biden administration’s 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.Credit: OCED
The DOE has already provided some funding for five of the seven hubs — $131.7 million, with the Gulf Coast and Midwest hubs receiving funds most recently on November 20 — but much of the $7 billion earmarked for the hubs is set to be distributed over the next decade.
Any funding that hasn’t been distributed when Trump takes office could be reallocated through federal budget reconciliation, according to legal and policy experts. Reconciliation bills can’t be filibustered and the process has been used to pass at least 22 bills since the process was established in 1974, including the Biden administration's 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
“A lot will depend on the contracts the federal government has already signed with the hydrogen hub developers,” said Lifson. “Even if Congress changes the law, there could potentially still be a contractual claim the hubs could pursue for the money.”
Trump’s policies on clean energy tax credits could also impact the hubs. Trump has repeatedly called into question the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which doled out clean energy tax credits over the past four years. Trump’s pick to head the Treasury Department Scott Bessent recently called the IRA a “doomsday machine for the budget.”
If Trump cuts tax credits for the industry, that means he would most likely get rid of a 10-year tax credit for hydrogen production established by the IRA but not yet finalized. The tax cut “has been a cornerstone for accelerating clean energy investments and job creation,” Katie Ellet, chief executive officer of ETCH, a decarbonization and hydrogen production company, and previous president of hydrogen energy and mobility for Air Liquide North America, told EHN.
“While the hydrogen market’s transition was underway before the IRA … the legislation significantly amplified this momentum,” Ellet added.
Before the recent election, the Biden administration promised to finalize the clean hydrogen production tax credit by the end of the year. However, the rule could be overturned under the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to overturn final rules issued by federal agencies within 60 days. If that happened, it would also bar “substantially similar legislation” from being passed in the future, so it’s unclear if the Biden administration will finalize the rule.
As currently written, the tax credits incentivize lower levels of carbon emissions in hydrogen production.
“Whether the Biden administration finalizes the rule and it gets repealed, or whether they don’t finalize it and the Trump administration proposes a new rule, it’s not hard to imagine the Trump administration issuing a final rule that’s extremely lenient toward emissions accounting,” Lifson said. “That would be very bad from a climate perspective.”
Trump’s final decision on the hydrogen energy tax credits will also influence markets. The EU is currently finalizing policies that will prevent it from buying hydrogen produced using fossil fuels rather than clean energy sources, and if the tax credit incentivizes the creation of hydrogen using fossil fuels, the U.S. could end up with a surplus.
“While the hydrogen market’s transition was underway before the IRA … the legislation significantly amplified this momentum." - Katie Ellet, ETCH
In addition to the $7 billion in federal funds that have been set aside for the hubs, an estimated $40 billion in private investments will also be needed to complete the projects. If Trump rolls back climate policies, as he did during his last presidency and has vowed to do again, it could lessen demand for hydrogen energy in the U.S., which could scare away the necessary private investors.
“Federal policy plays a critical role in shaping the pace and scale of clean energy adoption,” said Ellet, who oversaw $1 billion in investments across the U.S. for Air Liquide, a partner in six of the seven hubs. “That said, global market dynamics and established corporate commitments continue to offer a solid foundation for sustained private sector investment in clean energy.”
Environmental justice deprioritized
Environmental justice frameworks that aren’t part of legal statutes are some of the easiest targets for elimination.
A prime example is the Biden Administration’s Justice40 initiative, a federal mandate to allocate 40% of federal investments in climate, clean energy, housing, among others, to “disadvantaged communities that are marginalized by underinvestment and overburdened by pollution.”
The federal hydrogen hub networks are one of the first major tests of the Justice40 initiative, but even in pre-development phases advocates and communities shared grievances around community engagement and transparency.
Most recently, advocates were notified just hours before the DOE announcement of phase one funding for the Midwest Hydrogen Hub, according to the advocacy group Just Transition Northwest Indiana. “We were literally in a meeting with DOE and the [Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations] minutes before the announcement was made, with no mention that the award was being dropped today,” the group said in a press release. “We are justifiably stunned to see it suddenly flash over our news feed. We are fed up with the continuous lack of transparency.”
Many worry that these issues will worsen under the Trump administration. Project 2025 — a policy blueprint that Trump distanced himself from on the campaign trail but that now seems central to his Cabinet picks and plans — explicitly calls into question whether the government should be addressing the roles of race and income in pollution exposure, and aims to dismantle the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
“A lot of the alarming practices we were seeing under Biden are likely to continue under Trump, if not worsen,” Batoul Al-Sadi, a senior associate at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), told EHN.
Margaret Cook, deputy director of climate equity and resilience at the Houston Advanced Research Center, said the Center’s position as one the hub’s community engagement partners was finalized last week with phase one awards.
“The contract signed recently with DOE for the first phase includes community engagement,” Cook said. “I can’t speculate about how a new administration would affect the project. Updates to the Justice40 Assessment and Implementation Strategy will be made at the end of each phase, and relevant information will be shared for community input.”
While the future of the hubs' community engagement and emissions reduction rollout remains unclear until Trump begins his term, out of the four hubs EHN was able to reach none stated concerns for the continuation of their projects.
Trump has also vowed to fast-track industrial development permitting, which could hamper community engagement but help projects get developed faster.
“The incoming administration has clear goals around energy independence, job creation and boosting domestic production … all priorities deeply embedded in the hydrogen hubs,” Ellet said. “I anticipate that there will be continued support for the hubs.”
It’s possible that companies and investors might plan for the longer term by taking climate needs and importance of community buy-in into account even if they aren’t required to by law. During the last Trump presidency, for example, large auto manufacturers including Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Ford, Volkswagen and BMW announced they wouldn’t adhere to the Trump administration’s rollback of emission standards and would instead continue to comply with the previous standards enacted by the Obama administration to reduce planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions.
“We know there’s bipartisan support and that both blue and red states have benefitted from clean energy investments,” Lauren Piette, a senior associate attorney for EarthJustice’s clean energy program, told EHN. “I worry about what the next administration could do with those investments, but my hope is there’s a groundswell of support from members of the public, legislators and policymakers who understand our future runs on clean energy and we need to get there sooner rather than later.”
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Credit: Top right photo - Kristina Marusic for EHN; other photos courtesy of Jennifer Gazdick for Just Transition Northwest Indiana
On a rainy day in September, Veronica Coptis and her two children stood on the shore of the Monongahela River in a park near their home, watching a pair of barges laden with mountainous heaps of coal disappear around the riverbend.
“I’m worried they’re not taking into account how much industrial traffic this river already sees, and how much the hydrogen hub is going to add to it,” Coptis told EHN.
Coptis lives with her husband and their children in Carmichaels, Pennsylvania, a former coal town near the West Virginia border with a population of around 434. The local water authority uses the Monongahela as source water. Contaminants associated with industrial activity and linked to cancer, including bromodichloromethane, chloroform and dibromochloromethane, have been detected in the community’s drinking water.
Coptis grew up among coal miners, but became an activist focused on coal and fracking after witnessing environmental harms the fossil fuel industry caused.
Now, she sees a new fight on the horizon: The Appalachian Regional Hydrogen Hub, a vast network of infrastructure that will use primarily natural gas to create hydrogen for energy. Part of the new Appalachian hydrogen hub is expected to be built in La Belle, which is about a 30 minute drive north along the Monongahela River from her home.
“I have a lot of concerns about how large that facility might be and what emissions could be like, and whether it’ll cause increased traffic on the river and the roads,” said Coptis, who works as a senior advisor at the climate advocacy nonprofit Taproot Earth. “I’m also worried that because this will be blue hydrogen it will increase demand for fracking, and I already live surrounded by fracking wells.”
Veronica Coptis worries the Appalachian hydrogen hub would further stress the Monongahela River near her home.
Credit: Kristina Marusic for EHN
Carmichaels, Pennsylvania, a former coal town near the West Virginia border with a population of around 434. The local water authority uses the Monongahela River as source water, which residents and activists worry could be further polluted from the hydrogen hub.
Credit: Kristina Marusic for EHN
The Appalachian Regional Hydrogen Hub is one of seven proposed, federally funded networks of this type of infrastructure announced a year ago — an initiative born from the Biden administration’s 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The hydrogen created by the hubs using both renewable and fossil fuel energy will be used by industries that are difficult to electrify like steelmaking, construction and petrochemical production.
The hubs support the administration's objective of reaching net-zero carbon emissions nationwide by 2050 and achieving a 100% “clean” electrical grid by 2035. All seven hydrogen hubs, which are in various stages of development, but mostly in the planning and site selection phases, are considered clean energy projects by the Biden administration, including those that also use fossil fuels in production.
The seven proposed, federally funded networks of hydrogen hub infrastructure announced a year ago are an initiative born from the Biden administration’s 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
In March and May, Coptis attended listening sessions hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), which is overseeing the hubs’ development and distributing $7 billion in federal funding for them, alongside representatives from industrial partners for the project. She hoped the sessions would provide answers — like exactly where the proposed facilities would be and what would happen at them — but she left with even more questions.
The initial applications from industrial partners to DOE, which included timelines, estimated costs, proposed location details and estimates of environmental and health impacts, were kept private by the agency despite frequent requests from community members to share those details.
“The Department of Energy and the companies involved have not been transparent,” Coptis said. “It’s not possible for communities to give meaningful input on projects when we literally don’t know anything about them.”
In 2023, the Biden administration passed historic federal policies directing 80 agencies to prioritize environmental justice in decision-making. The DOE pledged to lead by example with the seven new hydrogen hubs — but so far that isn’t happening, according to more than 30 community members and advocates EHN spoke to. They said details remain hazy, public input is being planned only after industry partners have already received millions of dollars in public funding, and communities don’t have agency in the decision-making.
“The promises DOE has made are just not being met, according to their own definitions of what environmental justice looks like,” Batoul Al-Sadi, a senior associate at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a national environmental advocacy group that’s been pushing for increased transparency for the hydrogen hubs, told EHN.
Our investigation also found:
In initial listening sessions for the hubs, 95 of 113 public comments submitted voiced some opposition to the projects.
49 of 113 comments submitted during the listening sessions expressed concern about a lack of transparency or meaningful community engagement.
More than 100 regional and national advocacy groups have sent letters to the DOE requesting increased transparency and improvements to community engagement processes.
Communities do not have the right to refuse the hydrogen hub projects if the burdens prove greater than the benefits.
The DOE is failing to adhere to its own plans for community engagement, according to experts and advocates.
“Right now the [federal environmental justice] regulations are in the best place they’ve ever been,” Stephen Schima, an expert on federal environmental regulations and senior legislative counsel at Earthjustice, told EHN. “Agencies have an opportunity to get this right…it’s just a matter of implementation, which is proving challenging so far.”
In response to questions about transparency and community engagement, the DOE told EHN, “DOE is focused on getting these projects selected for award negotiation officially ... Once awarded, DOE will release further details on the projects.”
Residents of the seven hydrogen hub communities fear that once millions of dollars in federal funding have already been distributed for these projects, their input will no longer be relevant.
“The Department of Energy and the companies involved have not been transparent.” - Veronica Coptis, Taproot Earth
The Appalachian and California hubs both received $30 million and the Pacific Northwest hub received $27.5 million in initial funding from the federal government in July. Funding for the other four hubs is still being processed. In total, the seven planned hydrogen hub projects are slated to receive $7 billion in federal funding.
Jalonne White-Newsome, the federal chief environmental justice officer at The White House Council on Environmental Quality, said she’s aware that communities are frustrated about the hydrogen hubs.
“I spend a lot of my time working with our partners at the Department of Energy [and other federal agencies], making sure we support the safe deployment of these different technologies,” White-Newsome told EHN. “I continue to hear in many different forms the concerns that communities have — that there is not transparency, there’s not enough information, there’s fear of the technology.”
“I understand all of those concerns,” White-Newsome said, adding that The White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council had established a work group of environmental justice leaders across the country to address carbon capture technologies and hydrogen, and was working with an internal team, including federal agency partners at the DOE, “on how to address all of the issues that have been raised by this body.”
Advocates fear these measures won’t do enough.
“Even if this was the best, non-polluting, most renewable green energy project to come to Appalachia, this process does not align with environmental justice principles,” Coptis said.
Environmental justice and pollution concerns
Community members representing Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living at the Mid-Atlantic hydrogen hub meeting held March 11, 2024 at the Steamfitters Union Hall in north Philadelphia.
Credit: Fred Stine, Delaware Riverkeeper Network
The hydrogen hubs were pitched as a boon to environmental justice communities that would bring jobs and economic development, cleaner air from reduced fossil fuel use and the promise of being central to America’s clean energy transition.
But more than 140 environmental justice organizations have signed public letters highlighting the ways hydrogen energy could prolong the use of fossil fuels, create safety hazards and worsen local air pollution, according to a report by the EFI Foundation.
The Mid-Atlantic and Midwest hubs plan to use renewables and nuclear energy in addition to fossil fuels, while the California, Pacific Northwest and Heartland hubs plan to use combinations of renewables, biomass and nuclear energy. The Appalachian and Gulf Coast hubs plan to use primarily fossil fuels.
Hydrogen hubs are dense networks of infrastructure that will span large regions. Many hydrogen hub components are being planned in communities that have historically been overburdened by pollution, particularly from fossil fuel extraction, so they can take advantage of that existing infrastructure.
For example, Houston’s Ship Channel region, California’s Inland Empire, and northwest Indiana all include environmental justice communities that are tentatively expecting hydrogen hub infrastructure, and all three regions routinely rank among the worst places in the country for air pollution.
“I spend a lot of my time working with our partners at the Department of Energy [and other federal agencies], making sure we support the safe deployment of these different technologies.” - Jalonne White-Newsome, the federal chief environmental justice officer at The White House Council on Environmental Quality
DOE has said projects will only be awarded if they demonstrate plans to minimize negative impacts and provide benefits for environmental justice communities, but so far communities expecting hydrogen hubs say they haven’t seen information about how project partners plan to do this, though some information has been provided in the California hub's community benefits plan.
Communities are worried the hubs will add new industrial pollution sources to already-polluted communities, while data on the cumulative impacts from existing and expanded networks of energy infrastructure remains scarce.
Concerns about health risks are especially acute around the Appalachian and Gulf Coast hubs because of their planned reliance on fossil fuels. EHN heard concerns about new emissions from truck and barge traffic, the potential use of eminent domain to seize private property for pipelines, the risk of pipelines exploding or leaking and increased nitrogen oxide emissions from the eventual combustion of hydrogen fuel, which contributes to higher levels of particulate matter pollution and ozone. Exposure to these pollutants are linked to health effects including increased cancer risk, respiratory and heart disease, premature birth and low birth weight.
There are also concerns about these hubs’ reliance on carbon capture and storage technology, which is required in order to convert fossil fuels into hydrogen but won’t be required for hubs using non-fossil fuel feedstocks.
Two residents at an event by Just Transition NWI to stop a proposed CO2 pipeline by BP.
Credit: Jennifer Gazdick for Just Transition Northwest Indiana
Credit: Jennifer Gazdick for Just Transition Northwest Indiana
Credit: Jennifer Gazdick for Just Transition Northwest Indiana
Carbon capture technology is controversial, as many experts and advocates consider it a way to prolong the use of fossil fuels, and have expressed how the technology could actually worsen climate change due to high energy consumption and leaks. Because captured CO2 contains toxic substances, like volatile organic compounds and mercury, the technique can pose risks to groundwater, soil and air through leaks.
Just last month, officials reported that the first commercial carbon sequestration plant in Illinois sprung two leaks this year under Lake Decatur, a drinking water source for Decatur, Illinois. The company that owns the plant, ADM, didn’t tell authorities about the leaks for months.
“These are communities with deep roots in extractive processes like coal mining and natural gas, so developers coming in and proposing something is nothing new for them, but when they learn that developers are interested in not extracting but depositing, injecting, their eyes widen,” Ethan Story, advocacy director and attorney at the Center for Coalfield Justice, a community health advocacy group in western Pennsylvania, told EHN.
Fossil fuel partners
Each hydrogen hub has a corporate, nonprofit or public-private partnership organization that oversees the project. The partnership organization is in charge of putting together the proposal, selecting projects, facilitating engagement, receiving and distributing federal funding and acting as a liaison between the DOE and industrial partners. In addition to the $7 billion federal investment, funding for the hydrogen hubs will include substantial private investments, incentivized by the Inflation Reduction Act.
Some of the prime contractors existed prior to the hydrogen hubs launching, like Battelle, which is overseeing the Appalachian hub, and the Energy & Environmental Research Center, which is overseeing the Heartland hub. Others were formed specifically to oversee the hydrogen hub projects, like the Alliance for Renewable Clean Hydrogen Energy Systems (ARCHES), which is overseeing the California hub, and HyVelocity, Inc., which is overseeing the Gulf Coast hub.
“These are communities with deep roots in extractive processes like coal mining and natural gas, so developers coming in and proposing something is nothing new for them, but when they learn that developers are interested in not extracting but depositing, injecting, their eyes widen." - Ethan Story, Center for Coalfield Justice
In addition to these contractors, the hubs have individual project partners that include fossil fuel companies. In the Gulf Coast hub, Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell are among the fossil fuel companies listed as project partners. The Appalachia hub’s partners include CNX Resources, Enbridge, Empire Diversified Energy and EQT Corporation; and the California hub lists Chevron among its partners.
This is creating distrust in some communities.
Community members with the MACH 2 Exchange Coalition protesting outside of SEPTA (public transit agency) Headquarters in Philadelphia while handing out educational flyers to people on the street about the Mid-Atlantic hydrogen hub in July 2024.
Credit: Ray Bailey
Community member with a STOP MACH2 button outside of the SEPTA (public transit agency) Headquarters in Philadelphia, PA, where the Mid-Atlantic hydrogen hub and SEPTA held a meeting that the public had to pay to attend.
Credit: Ray Bailey
For example, in a DOE document released in August, the agency reported that EQT Corporation, the second-largest natural gas producer in the country, would host community listening sessions and work toward establishing a community advisory committee for its projects in the Appalachian hydrogen hub. EQT has racked up environmental violations at its fracking wells that caused multiple families in West Virginia to move out of their homes. The company has also promoted misinformation about the natural gas industry’s role in worsening climate change.
“Choosing EQT to run this part of the project shows the lack of real community engagement, the lack of community trust, the lack of community transparency that surrounds the [Appalachian hydrogen hub] community benefits process,” Matt Mehalik, executive director of the Breathe Project, a coalition of clean air advocacy nonprofits in western Pennsylvania, told EHN. “This choice of manager illustrates the lack of interest in establishing any sort of trust with impacted communities.”
Karen Feridun, a cofounder of the Better Path Coalition, a Pennsylvania climate advocacy group, said “If EQT creates a [community advisory committee], it'll be to find out what color ARCH2 [Appalachian hydrogen hub] baseball caps they prefer.”
EQT Corporation and Battelle did not respond to multiple requests for interviews, nor to specific questions about the community engagement process and the alleged lack of transparency.
The DOE also outsourced community engagement in the Gulf Coast to a local organization — the Houston Advanced Research Center, or HARC. The organization was founded in 1982 by George Mitchell, known as the “father of fracking,” who was credited for the shale boom in Texas. In 2001, HARC updated its mission on its website to reference mitigating climate risk and advancing clean energy, and in 2023 the organization included hydrogen energy in its strategic planning and company vision.
“Choosing EQT to run this part of the project shows the lack of real community engagement, the lack of community trust, the lack of community transparency that surrounds the [Appalachian hydrogen hub] community benefits process.” - Matt Mehalik, Breathe Project
Community engagement representative and HARC deputy director of climate equity and resilience, Margaret Cook, told EHN the organization had reached out to a few local advocacy groups to discuss its role in the hub’s community engagement. Cook said they plan to include a community advisory board that will interact with the companies involved and advise on how DOE dollars are spent at the community and regional levels. Additionally, the group will be tasked with organizing community benefits.
“We need to understand what their concerns are so that we can address them,” said Cook. “And we need to understand what they would perceive as a benefit that is actually going to help them, so that the project can do that.”
Shiv Srivastava, research and policy researcher for Fenceline Watch, a Houston-based environmental justice organization, told EHN, “I think that this is a fundamental problem … you have organizations that are chosen to basically be the community connector, the proxy for the hub with the community. This is something the Department of Energy should be doing directly.”
A lack of transparency and meaningful engagement
Some describe Houston’s East End as a checkerboard, where the borders of their homes, schools and greenspaces are marked by industrial plants, parking lots, entry docks, smokestacks and refineries.
The East End community is in the 99th percentile for exposure to air toxics and home to the state’s largest sources of chemical pollution. Residents of these neighborhoods, like Srivastava and Yvette Arellano, executive director of Fenceline Watch, worry that this enormous industrial presence will only increase with the introduction of hydrogen.
“When it comes to things like carbon capture, sequestration, direct air capture, these are almost like supporting tenets for hydrogen,” Srivastava said. “We see hydrogen rapidly being posited as the new feedstock for petrochemical production, to displace fossil fuels, which, for our community, doesn't work, because they're just still continuing to produce these toxics [with hydrogen production].”
Arellano told EHN that Fenceline Watch educates the public about industrial projects, but for hydrogen that’s been complicated by “the lack of a formalized community engagement process across all seven hubs.”
The DOE’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED) held nine initial listening sessions for the hubs and summarized the feedback received during those meetings on its website. The DOE did not make recordings of these meetings publicly available, but an EHN analysis of the DOE’s transcripts shows that a majority of commenters voiced concerns about issues like employee safety, pipeline siting, carbon capture efficacy, emissions impacts, who will regulate these projects, permitting, site locations, language barriers and environmental injustice.
For the Gulf Coast Hub, the community asked for formalized sessions where they could write in questions and get written responses using simple language. “What we have heard is that this is not how this process goes,” Arellano said.” We have heard dead silence.”
Of the 113 comments the DOE transcribed from the listening sessions, 95 voiced some opposition to the projects, and calls for greater transparency and better community engagement were issued at least 49 times.
EHN also heard calls for transparency beyond the listening sessions, particularly concerning environmental justice and community engagement, for all hubs except the Heartland hub, which would span across North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota (the hub lost its key project partners Marathon Petroleum and TC Energy, so it’s unclear if or how that project will move forward).
In response to complaints about engagement for the hubs, the DOE published a summary outlining key themes it heard during the listening sessions and how that feedback has been incorporated into the planning process for the hubs. An agency spokesperson said this type of community engagement is new for the DOE and the projects are all in early stages, so the agency is still learning and is working to ensure that community concerns are adequately addressed.
They added that the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED) has held more than 70 meetings with community members and groups, local elected officials, first responders, labor and other community groups, and has provided informational briefings to more than 4,000 people in the hydrogen hub regions.
“I have questions and concerns,” Democratic North Dakota state senator Tim Mathern said. “Thus far I support it as it is presented as a cleaner fuel than fossil fuels and better for our environment. Very little information is provided about the environmental impacts, and I would like to know more.”
EHN reached out to other policymakers in the 16 states with proposed hydrogen projects and received five responses, with four coming from states in proposed Pacific Northwest hydrogen hub regions. Most responses from policymakers noted a need for more information, similar to their constituents.
“There has been involvement with local officials in my area as well as some state officials,” Republican Montana state representative Denley Loge told EHN. “Most (people) do not fully understand but do not dig deeper on their own. On the local level, when meetings have been held, few attend but rumors go rampant without good information.”
Democratic Texas state representative Penny Morales Shaw expressed support for the Gulf Coast hub.
“As a state representative, I receive feedback from my constituents every day about poor air quality and environmental conditions impacting their health and quality of life,” Morales Shaw told EHN. “Hydrogen hubs can help bring us to net-zero carbon emissions, and we all want to make sure it’s done in an effective, collaborative way.”
“Hydrogen hubs can help bring us to net-zero carbon emissions, and we all want to make sure it’s done in an effective, collaborative way.” - Democratic Texas state representative Penny Morales Shaw
The listening sessions are just one way communities have requested improvements to the DOE’s engagement process. EHN also tracked the written requests made to DOE regarding transparency around the hydrogen hubs outside of the listening sessions. We found that:
A group of leaders from numerous national advocacy groups, including Clean Air Task Force, the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Counsel, also formally asked the DOE for increased transparency and engagement around the hydrogen hubs
54 Appalachian organizations and community groups signed a letter to the DOE calling for the suspension of the Appalachian hub, citing a lack of transparency and engagement
32 groups from the Mid-Atlantic hub region signed a letter to the DOE stating that the first public meeting on the hub was inaccessible to many residents and requesting increased transparency and engagement.
15 advocacy groups sent the DOE a letter expressing frustration over the lack of transparency and engagement for the Midwest hydrogen hub
Nine environmental and justice advocacy groups in California made similar requests related to transparency and engagement
A coalition of groups from Texas, California, Washington, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Indiana requested improved transparency and engagement around hydrogen energy in a published report
In the absence of meaningful engagement on the projects, a coalition of advocacy groups also recently published their own “Guide to Community Benefits in Southwestern Pennsylvania” with the hopes that the Appalachian hydrogen hub project, and others like it, will use it as a reference.
A DOE spokesperson said the agency has responded directly to more than 50 letters, but most of those responses have not been made public. Community advocates who received responses to these letters told EHN they were dissatisfied. The agency declined to answer EHN’s questions about whether it was working to meet the specific requests in these letters.
Resident speaks at an event about the Midwest hydrogen hub organized by Just Transition NWI in August 2024.
Credit: Jennifer Gazdick for Just Transition Northwest Indiana
Woman looking at materials at an event about the Midwest hydrogen hub organized by Just Transition NWI in August 2024.
Credit: Jennifer Gazdick for Just Transition Northwest Indiana
In initial presentations about the hubs, the DOE discussed “go/no-go” stages for the projects, which require community engagement before the projects can move forward. This led many community members to believe this meant the projects could be stopped if communities decided the costs outweigh the benefits. That turned out not to be the case.
“Communities will not have a direct right of refusal,” DOE said in an emailed response to questions from community groups about the Mid-Atlantic hub in July. “This is not a requirement of the H2Hubs program.”
Some people, including Feridun of the Better Path Coalition in Pennsylvania, felt misled. “We've been fed a line over and over about these go/no-go decisions and how we'll be engaged when each one is being made, but that's simply not what's happening.”
Advocates question the ethics of the federal government citing new pollution sources in environmental justice communities whether or not they consent to it. There’s also a widespread perception that the hubs’ industrial partners are forging ahead with planning in closed-door meetings with agency officials, without community input.
“Communities will not have a direct right of refusal. This is not a requirement of the H2Hubs program.” - Department of Energy
“The DOE appeared on the very first listening session as a co-host of the call with [the industrial partners],” Chris Chyung, executive director of the environmental advocacy group Indiana Conservation Voters, speaking about the Midwest Hydrogen hub. “It creates an ethical dilemma since DOE is supposed to be a mediator, providing oversight of this money and advocating on behalf of the taxpayers who are funding it.”
On the East Coast, the prime contractor leading the Mid-Atlantic hub set up monthly networking meetings for corporate partners that cost $25-$50 to join and were not open to the public. It also established a tiered membership program that cost between $2,500 and $10,000 and gave members free access to educational webinars, free registrations for an “annual MACH2 Hydrogen Conference,” and access to members-only events and a members-only online portal with additional information about the projects.
In an email to local advocates who asked why these opportunities weren’t open to the public, a DOE spokesperson said the networking meetings were “for businesses, startups and other parties engaged in the clean energy economy” and “are not intended to be a substitute for community events.”
Community members protesting outside of the SEPTA (public transit agency) Headquarters in Philadelphia, PA, where the Mid-Atlantic hydrogen hub and SEPTA held a July 2024 meeting that the public had to pay to attend.
Credit: Anneke van Rossum, Delaware Riverkeeper Network
“Our biggest concern is that many projects that are already set as key components to [the Mid-Atlantic hydrogen hub] are being advanced with no community outreach,” Tracy Carluccio, deputy director of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, told EHN. The nonprofit Carluccio heads filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to gain access to these applications and other materials related to the Mid-Atlantic hydrogen hub in November 2023. When they received responses in August 2024, they learned that numerous projects were further along in the planning process than they’d realized.
Similarly, near the California, communities have heard promises that hydrogen production will only come from renewables, according to Kayla Karimi, a staff attorney for the California-based nonprofit Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment. Her organization has not seen any contracts or documents supporting those promises beyond the initial announcements made prior to funding.
“Our biggest concern is that many projects that are already set as key components to [the Mid-Atlantic hydrogen hub] are being advanced with no community outreach.” - Tracy Carluccio, Delaware Riverkeeper Network
Karimi said that her organization was asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) to obtain information about the California hub beyond what’s on its website. She found the NDA “very punitive” and said those who signed it could face legal ramifications for speaking negatively about the California hub. Karimi’s organization did not sign the NDA, and advocated against community members doing so.
EHN also spoke to Steven Lehat, managing director of the investment banking company Colton Alexander, who agreed to sign NDAs to gain access to three otherwise-private planning committees for the California hub. While the NDA provided more information, that information legally could not be shared with community members. Barriers like these raised the question of how equitable the community engagement process is, even for the hubs that are slated to use mainly renewable energy sources.
“The community's comments thus far have been really limited because we don't know what we're commenting on,” Karimi told EHN, “but also we wouldn't know if they're being incorporated whatsoever, because we haven't been told anything [and] have not been communicated with.”
When asked about the NDAs, a spokesperson for ARCHES, the organization managing California’s hydrogen hub, told EHN that NDAs were not required in order to join workgroups related to community engagement or benefits.
“ARCHES stands by our principle of being stakeholder and community engaged and will continue to work to ensure that all stakeholders can participate in our community meetings,” the spokesperson said in an email. “However, NDAs are necessary for becoming an ARCHES member, as member companies must feel confident sharing sensitive or proprietary information.”
The Pacific Northwest hub was distinct in having public information available compared to the other six hubs. Keith Curl Dove, an organizer with Washington Conservation Action, told EHN his organization was able to access proposed project locations and tribal outreach history, and said that the Washington Chamber of Commerce attempted to respond to all questions and concerns that his organization had.
Policymakers in Washington mirrored Dove’s perspective.
“I will say, I feel like there has been a pretty broad stakeholder engagement process, which is different than a community engagement process, early on to figure out which businesses, which industries, etc., were going to be ready to make the investments to match Washington state's and the federal investment in our [Pacific] Northwest hydrogen hub,” Democratic Washington state representative Alex Ramel told EHN.
“Two of the state's five refineries are in my district, and two more are in the next district, north of me,” Ramel said. “So about 90% of the state's refining capacity is right next door, and the refineries are going to be a major place where hydrogen is deployed in Washington State, and I think they're an important early customer… because they're already using dirty hydrogen, and this is a chance to replace it with green hydrogen.”
In U.S. Environmental Protection Agency documents, the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Councilshared concerns about hydrogen hubs and other carbon management technologies, stating, “This investment in ‘experimentation’ of technology that lacks sufficient research of both its safety and efficacy further creates barriers of distrust between impacted communities, particularly those who have been historically and currently disenfranchised, and the respective government agencies.”
The Council added that “a humane approach to carbon management would be to prioritize sound research (not influenced by polluters) that includes a robust focus on potential public health and environmental risks.”
These concerns mirror those of individuals working on the ground.
“Can we really rely on another potential polluter?” asked Arellano of Fenceline Watch.
One Wednesday evening last May, Yukyan Lam stared into the camera on her computer, delivering carefully prepared remarks during a virtual listening session convened by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).
The goal of the event was for the federal agency to hear concerns and questions from communities that could be impacted by the Mid-Atlantic hydrogen hub, one part of a massive federal program working to establish a national hydrogen energy network.
Lam, the director of research at The New School's Tishman Environment & Design Center, had just three minutes to present research on a wide range of potential health impacts associated with carbon capture and storage and hydrogen energy deployment, including increased rates of respiratory issues, premature mortality, cardiovascular events, and negative birth outcomes. Later, after reading the DOE's public summary of the event, she felt frustrated.
“I didn’t feel like they accurately summarized the research I shared, or that the DOE really heard or valued what was said in the listening session,” Lam told EHN. “They’re moving these projects forward but they haven’t meaningfully engaged with communities yet.”
Lam, who had been providing research and technical assistance to the New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance, a nonprofit following the development of the hub, wasn't alone in her frustration.
The Mid-Atlantic hub is one of seven proposed, federally funded networks of infrastructure — an initiative borne from the Biden administration’s 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law — that aim to use both renewable and fossil fuel energy to create hydrogen for energy use by heavy industries that are difficult to electrify like steelmaking, construction and petrochemical production. The hubs support the administration's objective of reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 and achieving a 100% clean electrical grid by 2035.
The seven proposed, federally funded networks of hydrogen hub infrastructure announced a year ago are an initiative born from the Biden administration’s 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Credit: OCED
In 2023, the Biden administration passed historic federal policies directing 80 agencies to prioritize environmental justice in decision-making. The DOE pledged to lead by example with the seven new hydrogen hubs, but impacted communities across the country say that just isn’t happening.
EHN spoke with more than 30 community members and dozens of organizations in the regions where the hydrogen hubs are planned. They said details of the projects remain hazy, public input is only planned after industry partners have received millions of dollars in public funding, and communities feel that they have no say in the decision-making.
Community members have also expressed concerns about the alleged climate benefits and potential pollution from the hubs.
“This hydrogen hub is just one piece of this larger picture about the U.S.’s carbon management strategy,” Lam said. “These technologies are risky, with a lot of potential to cause health harms in environmental justice communities, and they also don’t work particularly well … If they were a great climate solution we still wouldn’t be on board if it was unjust, but the fact is that carbon capture is not even a great climate solution.”
Experts say evolving federal regulations and well-intentioned but hard-to-implement federal environmental justice initiatives are keeping communities in the dark. They also say including communities in the early stages of project development isn’t just about advancing environmental justice — it’s also about efficiency.
“Studies have shown that when you meaningfully engage communities on the front end of a project, it results in less litigation and quicker finalization times,” Chris Espinosa, legislative director for climate and energy at EarthJustice, a nonprofit legal advocacy group, told EHN.
NEPA unknowns
Under the National Environmental Policy Act (commonly referred to as NEPA), federal agencies are required to assess the environmental and health impacts of proposed development projects, disclose those findings to the public and provide opportunities for public engagement. But the specifics of how that works varies across agencies.
“There are ways to do this really well,” Espinosa said, “but there are also ways to just do the required steps and check the boxes that aren't really going to produce the tangible outcome of having communities’ input, concerns and aspirations reflected in the end product.”
A year into the hydrogen hub projects, it’s still unclear which state and federal agencies may be involved and what types of public engagement will be required.
Secretary J. Granholm at a Department of Energy Town Hall meeting in September 2024.
“How exactly NEPA is going to be applied depends very much on what the project is, and we don’t know that without the transparency these communities have been asking for,” Espinosa said. “There are also many ways federal agencies can go above and beyond what’s required by NEPA … but so far the Department of Energy has done none of those things.”
“There are ways to do this really well but there are also ways to just do the required steps and check the boxes that aren't really going to produce the tangible outcome of having communities’ input." - Chris Espinosa, EarthJustice
One challenge with the hydrogen hubs is that NEPA-mandated public engagement opportunities are planned, but not until after funding has already been awarded to industrial partners — at which point community members fear their input will be irrelevant.
“The DOE keeps saying to wait until awards have been announced and then there will be more engagement opportunities,” Ben Inskeep, a program director for the nonprofit Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana who is concerned about the Midwest hydrogen hub, told EHN. “But that’s setting these projects in motion before asking communities to weigh in, rather than involving us from the start to determine whether the projects are appropriate and will work for us.”
The Appalachian and California hubs both received $30 million and the Pacific Northwest hub received $27.5 million in initial funding from the federal government in July. Funding for the other four hubs is still being processed. In total, the seven planned hydrogen hub projects are slated to receive $7 billion in federal funding.
Federal environmental justice efforts
Experts involved with the planning process for the hydrogen hubs said the DOE asked consultants for help incorporating the tenets of the proposed national Environmental Justice for All Act, which is considered the “gold standard” for community engagement.
The directives include recommendations to “engage early with methods that are not a formal process,” and facilitate “discussion of whether there is a pathway for the project to propose multiple sites or consider changing the proposed site based on project learnings from engagement.” It also states that effective engagement “should allocate sufficient time for relationship building, incorporating or responding to input, sharing the results of engagement with the community, and any plans for negotiating formal agreements with labor and community partners.”
A resident at an event by Just Transition NWI to stop a proposed CO2 pipeline by BP.
Credit: Jennifer Gazdick for Just Transition Northwest Indiana
Residents at an event by Just Transition NWI to stop a proposed CO2 pipeline by BP.
Credit: Jennifer Gazdick for Just Transition Northwest Indiana
“This document seems like a great model for how to do this all right,” Lauren Piette, a senior associate attorney for EarthJustice’s clean energy program, told EHN. “The problem is we’re just not seeing any of it done yet.”
DOE said it would provide summaries of the community benefits plans on its website for “transparency and accountability,” but it has yet to do so for six out of the seven hubs, with the exception of the California hub, which was required to publish its community benefits plan under state law.
“This document seems like a great model for how to do this all right. The problem is we’re just not seeing any of it done yet.” - Lauren Piette, EarthJustice
For the other hubs, none of the community groups EHN spoke with had been invited to participate in discussions about community benefit plans with industry partners or the DOE. The publicly available materials related to community benefits plans reference jobs and economic benefits. They don’t mention monitoring new air pollution sources or minimizing public health impacts, bolstering local emergency services in case of leaks or explosions, or ongoing assessments of the climate, economic and environmental health costs and benefits for the projects, all of which residents have requested. The DOE has declined to share how it’s assessing the strengths and weaknesses of those plans.
“It's all smoke and mirrors,” Karen Feridun, a Pennsylvania-based environmental activist who leads a national hydrogen hub working group, told EHN. “The hubs have not been engaging communities. Every decision that has been made has been made behind closed doors.”
The DOE did not respond to questions about how the hydrogen hub projects advance the climate and environmental justice objectives of the Biden administration, whether there are mechanisms in place for incorporating community feedback into the planning process, or whether the agency has adjusted the community engagement and/or decision-making process for any of the hydrogen hub projects based on requests from members of potentially impacted communities.
Federal limitations in pursuing community engagement
There’s a widespread perception among both community members and experts that the DOE is well-intentioned but lacks the tools and infrastructure to live up to its community engagement promises. The DOE’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED) was created in 2021 with a budget of $62 billion, and the agency is charged with distributing up to $7 billion for the hydrogen hubs.
“This is a brand new office that’s still trying to figure out its mandates and internal processes and has been given a massive budget, and it takes time to be successful — in fact, I’d be surprised if it went smoothly from the get-go,” Darshan Karwat, an associate professor of engineering at Arizona State University who researches engineering ethics and environmental justice, and who previously worked at the DOE, told EHN. “Three years is not enough time to establish an office, figure out a funding process, go through all the bureaucratic and legal requirements, then do community engagement work — which itself takes a significant amount of time — and then distribute this huge budget on these projects.”
The Biden administration’s environmental justice directives also represent a major shift in priorities for the DOE, which “has been set up to maximize other values and prioritize technological and economic metrics,” Karwat said. “It would be difficult for it to do a good job at aligning with new kinds of values without the appropriate time to create buy-in at all levels of the agency. Organizational change in large bureaucracies takes time.”
“It's all smoke and mirrors. The hubs have not been engaging communities." - Karen Feridun, a Pennsylvania-based environmental activist
To help address that, Karwat received funding from the DOE Water Power Technologies Office and Office of Energy Justice and Equity to develop tools for assessing how well the agency is meeting its environmental justice goals, and approaches to embed environmental justice into DOE programs and processes. Details about how to use the tool were published alongside a case study in a paper in 2023 with new work ongoing, but as far as Karwat knows, the tool is not being used for the hydrogen hub projects. “Please let them know we’d be happy to help them with this,” he said.
An August 2024 event in California showcasing hydrogen-powered transportation projects in Oakland, and previewing the California renewable hydrogen hub.
People across the country said the lack of transparency and meaningful community engagement for the hydrogen hubs seems to be at odds with the Biden administration’s stated commitments to environmental justice.
“I don't think the president is aware that his environmental justice priorities are being ignored for the [Midwest hydrogen hub] proposal,” Chris Chyung, executive director of the environmental advocacy group Indiana Conservation Voters, told EHN.
Jalonne White-Newsome, federal chief environmental justice officer at The White House Council on Environmental Quality, pointed to several measures that are meant to ensure that federal agencies are complying with the spirit of Biden’s executive order on environmental justice, rather than just checking the necessary boxes. She said the order requires the development of agency-specific strategic plans to advance environmental justice and plans to assess them along the way, “so it's not just going to be words on a paper that nobody looks at and just shelves.”
White-Newsome also pointed to the establishment of the Environmental Justice Interagency Council, which brings together representatives from different agencies who are “committed to making sure that what is in the executive order, the initiatives that the president is driving, are actually operationalized.”
What happens next for the hydrogen hubs?
The future of the hydrogen hubs is uncertain with the upcoming Trump presidency.
The three hubs that have received federal funding — the Appalachian, California and Pacific Northwest hubs — have begun “phase 1” of the development process, during which they’re expected to advance planning, development and design for hub components; begin deploying technology; and do additional community benefits planning and community engagement, according to the DOE. Additional opportunities for community engagement have been announced for some of these hubs.
California’s hub proclaimed itself as the first to officially launch on Aug. 30 of this year. If there are no construction, legal or governmental roadblocks, the hub could be complete in eight to 13 years, according to OCED projections. The Appalachian and Pacific Northwest hubs are also expected to take around a decade to complete after they officially launch — along with billions of dollars in private investment and additional public funding from tax breaks.
For the remaining four hubs, additional community engagement opportunities aren’t expected until the first round of federal funding has been distributed.
The hydrogen hubs and other clean energy projects will look different in the new year when Donald Trump is president again. Even if funding for the hubs remains untouched, public engagement requirements could change, as Trump has already gutted NEPA once and has promised to undo environmental regulations on the campaign trail. As president, Trump rolled back more than 100 environmental regulations, some of which took nearly all of Biden’s four years as president to reinstate.
While the fate of the hydrogen hubs could be determined by changes under the incoming Trump administration, community advocates aren’t waiting to take action.
“I would want the Department of Energy and the federal government to interact with our communities in the manner in which they interact with industry,” said Shiv Srivastava, research and policy researcher for Fenceline Watch, a Houston-based environmental justice organization. “DOE has had a hydrogen moon shot for a very long time, and they've been working very closely with their industry partners. Where are the community partners? Outreach looks like what they start doing decades prior with industry, because they have a concerted effort.”
Virginia Wiltshire-Gordon, the community engagement manager for Pipeline Safety Trust, a national nonprofit that promotes pipeline safety and transparency, told EHN, “I think the main thing is that the Department of Energy needs to do more work to meet community members where they are. So that means doing education. It means thinking about who's trusted sources in the community and connecting with people.”
“I would want the Department of Energy and the federal government to interact with our communities in the manner in which they interact with industry." - Shiv Srivastava, Fenceline Watch
White-Newsome, the federal chief environmental justice officer at The White House, encouraged community members who are frustrated with the process to reach out to the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality.
“We have an open door,” White-Newsome said. “If there are conversations that communities are not able to have, or not able to connect, or don't feel satisfied about with some of our agency partners, it is [the Council on Environmental Quality’s] role to help intervene where possible.”
“While I have not heard from constituents directly about the hydrogen hubs, I do recognize concerns regarding the use of hydrogen and issues such as the cost, efficiency, sustainability and water usage to name a few,” Oregon state representative John Lively said. “The project is still early in the process and any project in Oregon will need diverse community engagement to succeed. I will work with constituents and I urge the federal government, as they move forward, to seriously engage with local constituents, stakeholders, activists and leaders.”
Robert Routh, a policy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said that despite the challenges so far, he hopes communities won’t give up on fighting for meaningful engagement around the hubs.
“This will play out over the course of the next decade, so we’re still in a window of time here where both federal agencies and project partners can and must make improvements,” Routh told EHN. “Even though we’re a year in with less engagement and transparency than we’d like, I hope community members don’t feel like it’s too late for their input to make a difference.”
Video production and editing: Jimmy Evans
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Crédito: Fred Stine, Delaware Riverkeeper Network; : Kristina Marusic/EHN; Ray Bailey
En la tarde de un miércoles del pasado mayo, Yukyan Lam miraba a la cámara de su computadora, mientras pronunciaba comentarios cuidadosamente preparados durante una sesión de escucha virtual convocada por el Departamento de Energía de Estados Unidos (DOE, por sus siglas en inglés).
La meta del evento era que la agencia federal escuchara las preocupaciones y preguntas de las comunidades que podrían verse afectadas por el centro de hidrógeno del Atlántico Medio. El centro hace parte de un enorme programa federal que busca crear una red nacional de producción de energía del hidrógeno.
Lam, la directora de investigación del Tishman Environment & Design Center de The New School, tenía tan solo tres minutos para presentar toda la información científica disponible sobre una amplia gama de impactos potenciales en la salud asociados con la captura y almacenamiento de carbono y la construcción de infraestructura para el hidrógeno, incluyendo mayores tasas de problemas respiratorios, mortalidad prematura, eventos cardiovasculares y problemas en el nacimiento. Más tarde, después de leerel resumen que publicó el DOE de la reunión, se sintió frustrada.
“No sentí que hubieran resumido con precisión toda la investigación que compartí o que el DOE realmente hubiera escuchado o valorado lo que se dijo en esa sesión de escucha”, Lam le dijo a EHN. “Están avanzando con estos proyectos pero todavía no se han involucrado con la comunidad”.
Lam, quien había estado prestando ayuda técnica y en investigación a la organización sin ánimo de lucro New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance, que le ha hecho seguimiento al proyecto, no está sola en su frustración.
El centro del Atlántico Medio es una de las siete redes de infraestructuras propuestas y financiadas con fondos federales, creadas a partir de la Ley Bipartidista de Infraestructura de 2021 del gobierno de Biden, que pretenden utilizar tanto energía renovable como fósil para crear hidrógeno destinado a industrias pesadas difíciles de electrificar, como la siderurgia, la construcción y la producción petroquímica. Los centros apoyan el objetivo de la administración de alcanzar emisiones netas de carbono cero en 2050 y lograr una red eléctrica 100% limpia en 2035.
Las siete redes de infraestructuras propuestas y financiadas con fondos federales fueron creadas a partir de la Ley Bipartidista de Infraestructura de 2021 del gobierno de Biden.
Crédito: OCED
En 2023, la administración de Biden pasó regulaciones históricas ordenando a 80 agencias priorizar la justicia ambiental en la toma de decisiones ambientales. El DOE prometió ser un ejemplo con los siete centros de producción de hidrógeno, pero las comunidades impactadas a lo largo y ancho del país dicen que esa promesa no se ha materializado.
EHN habló con más de 30 ciudadanos y docenas de organizaciones en las regiones en donde se planea construir los centros de hidrógeno. Expresaron que los detalles de los proyectos son confusos, que la participación ciudadana sólo ocurre después de que las empresas ya han recibido millones en fondos gubernamentales y que las comunidades sienten que no tienen influencia alguna en la toma de decisiones.
También expresaron preocupación por los supuestos beneficios ambientales y la posible contaminación proveniente de los proyectos.
“Este centro de hidrógeno es solo una pequeña pieza del rompecabezas de la estrategia de los Estados Unidos para manejar el carbono”, dijo Lam. “Estas son tecnologías riesgosas, con un enorme potencial de causar daños en la salud de las comunidades más afectadas por la injusticia ambiental y además, no funcionan particularmente bien…Aunque fueran una gran solución climática, no estaríamos de acuerdo si fueran injustas, pero el hecho es que la captura de carbono ni siquiera es una gran solución”.
Los expertos dicen que las regulaciones federales en evolución, así como iniciativas para garantizar la justicia ambiental con buenas intenciones pero difíciles de implementar, están dejando a las comunidades en la oscuridad. También dicen que incluir a las comunidades desde las primeras etapas de desarrollo de un proyecto no solo se trata de garantizar que haya justicia, sino también de eficiencia.
“Los estudios han demostrado que la participación significativa de las comunidades en la fase inicial de un proyecto reduce los litigios y acelera los plazos de finalización”, explicó a EHN Chris Espinosa, director legislativo de clima y energía de EarthJustice, un grupo de defensa legal sin ánimo de lucro.
Los interrogantes sobre la Ley Nacional de Política Medioambiental (NEPA)
De acuerdo con la Ley Nacional de Política Medioambiental (conocida como NEPA, por sus siglas en inglés), las agencias federales deben evaluar los impactos medioambientales y de salud de proyectos de desarrollo, comunicar esos hallazgos al público y garantizar oportunidades para que el público participe. Pero la forma como esta normativa se aplica varía entre agencias.
“Hay formas muy buenas de hacer esto”, dijo Espinosa, “pero también hay formas de limitarse a dar los pasos requeridos y rellenar las casillas, que en realidad no van a producir el resultado tangible de que las aportaciones, preocupaciones y aspiraciones de las comunidades se reflejen en el producto final”.
Un año después de iniciarse los proyectos de los centros de hidrógeno, aún no está claro qué organismos estatales y federales pueden participar y qué tipos de participación pública será necesaria.
El secretario, J. Granholm, en una reunión del Ayuntamiento del Departamento de Energía en septiembre de 2024.
“Cómo va a aplicarse la NEPA va a depender mucho de cada proyecto y no sabremos esto sin que haya la transparencia que han estado demandando las comunidades”, dijo Espinosa. “Hay muchas formas en las que las agencias federales pueden ir más allá de lo que es exigido por la NEPA. Pero, hasta ahora, el Departamento de Energía no ha hecho ninguna de ellas”.
Para hacer la situación aún más compleja, muchas disposiciones clave de la NEPA fueron destripadas bajo la primera administración de Trump, pero luego fueron restauradas y expandidas por la administración de Biden, dejando a las agencias federales en una situación difícil. Con el retorno de Trump a la presidencia en enero próximo, estas agencias probablemente experimentarán más cambios regulatorios.
Un reto con los centros de hidrógeno es que las oportunidades de participación que la NEPA exige sí han sido planeadas, pero después de que los fondos ya han sido otorgados a los socios industriales. Los residentes temen que, para ese entonces, su retroalimentación sea irrelevante.
“El DOE dice que esperemos hasta que los premios hayan sido anunciados y que entonces tendremos más oportunidades para involucrarnos”, dijo a EHN Ben Inskeep, el director programático de la organización sin fines de lucro Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana, que está preocupada por el centro de hidrógeno del Medio Oeste. “Pero eso es poner en marcha estos proyectos antes de pedirle a las comunidades que opinen, en lugar de involucrarnos desde el principio para determinar si los proyectos son apropiados y funcionarán para nosotros”.
Tanto los centros de producción de California y de los Apalaches recibieron $30 millones de dólares y el de el Noroeste del Pacífico recibió $27,5 millones en fondos iniciales por parte del gobierno federal en julio. La financiación de los otros cuatro centros está aún en trámite. En total, los siete proyectos de centros de hidrógeno previstos recibirán $7.000 millones de dólares de financiación federal.
Los esfuerzos federales por la justicia ambiental
Los expertos involucrados en el proceso de planeación para los centros de hidrógeno dijeron que el DOE le pidió a diversos consultores ayuda para incorporar los lineamientos de la propuesta ley nacional de justicia medioambiental para todos, que se considera la “norma por excelencia” en materia de participación comunitaria.
Las directrices incluyen recomendaciones para que “se involucren de manera temprana con métodos que no sean un proceso formal” y que faciliten “la discusión sobre si hay alguna manera de que el proyecto proponga diferentes sitios o se considere cambiar el sitio elegido basándose en los aprendizajes producto de la participación”. También dice que la participación efectiva “debería dedicar suficiente tiempo para la construcción de relaciones [con la comunidad], la incorporación y respuesta de la retroalimentación, el compartir con la comunidad los resultados de los procesos participativos y planes para negociar acuerdos formales con los socios sindicalistas y de la comunidad”.
Un residente en un evento organizado por Just Transition NWI para detener la llegada de una tubería de CO2 de la empresa BP.
Crédito: Jennifer Gazdick/Just Transition Northwest Indiana
Residentes en un evento organizado por Just Transition NWI para detener la llegada de una tubería de CO2 de la empresa BP.
Crédito: Jennifer Gazdick/Just Transition Northwest Indiana
“Este documento parece ser un modelo genial sobre cómo hacer de forma correcta”, dijo a EHN Lauren Piette, una asociada senior del programa de energías limpias de Earthjustice. “El problema es que todavía no estamos viéndolo hacerse realidad”.
El DOE dijo que proporcionaría resúmenes de los planes de beneficios comunitarios en su página web para garantizar la “transparencia y rendición de cuentas” pero todavía no lo ha hecho para seis de los siete centros, con la excepción del centro de California, que fue obligado a publicar el plan por leyes estatales.
Para los demás centros, ninguno de los grupos comunitarios con los que habló EHN había sido invitado a participar en las discusiones sobre los planes de beneficios comunitarios con los socios industriales del DOE. Los materiales disponibles para el público general relacionados con los planes hacen referencia a la llegada de nuevos puestos de trabajo y beneficios económicos. Hay muy poco o nada sobre el monitoreo de las nuevas fuentes de contaminación o la disminución de los impactos en la salud pública, reforzar los servicios de emergencia locales en caso de fugas o explosiones, o un seguimiento continuo de los costos y beneficios climáticos, ambientales, económicos y de salud de los proyectos, todas peticiones que las comunidades han hecho. El DOE decidió no compartir cómo está evaluando las fortalezas y debilidades de esos planes.
“Es una cortina de humo”, le dijo a EHN la activista de Pensilvania Karen Feridun, quien lidera un grupo de trabajo nacional sobre los centros de hidrógeno. “Los centros no están involucrando a las comunidades. Cada decisión que se ha tomado ha sido a puerta cerrada”.
El DOE no respondió a las preguntas sobre cómo los proyectos de centros de hidrógeno avanzan los objetivos de justicia climática y ambiental de la administración de Biden, si existen mecanismos para incorporar la retroalimentación de la sociedad civil en el proceso de planificación, o si la agencia ha ajustado el proceso de participación ciudadana y / o el proceso de toma de decisiones para cualquiera de los proyectos a partir de las peticiones de los miembros de las comunidades potencialmente afectadas.
Las limitaciones federales para perseguir la participación ciudadana
Hay una percepción generalizada tanto entre los residentes como entre los expertos de que el DOE tiene las mejores intenciones pero no tiene las herramientas ni la infraestructura para cumplir con sus promesas de participación ciudadana. La oficina de demostraciones de la energías limpias (OCED, por sus siglas en inglés) del DOE fue creada en diciembre de 2021 con un presupuesto de $25 mil millones y la agencia tiene la misión de distribuir $7 mil millones de dólares para los centros de hidrógeno.
“Esta es una oficina nueva que todavía está tratando de entender cuáles son sus mandantes y procesos internos y que además debe manejar un enorme presupuesto. Toma tiempo ser exitoso, es más, me habría sorprendido que todo marchara bien desde el principio”, señaló a EHNDarshan Karwat, un profesor asociado de ingeniería en la Universidad Estatal de Arizona que investiga la ética en la ingeniería y la justicia ambiental, y que trabajó en el DOE. “Tres años no es tiempo suficiente para crear una oficina, idear un proceso de financiación, pasar por todos los requisitos burocráticos y legales, luego hacer el trabajo de implicación de la comunidad -que de por sí lleva mucho tiempo- y luego distribuir este enorme presupuesto en estos proyectos”.
Las directivas de justicia ambiental de la administración de Biden también representan un viraje grandísimo en las prioridades del DOE, que “se ha establecido para maximizar otros valores y dar prioridad a las métricas tecnológicas y económicas”, añadió Karwat. “Sería difícil para la agencia hacer un buen trabajo alineándose con los nuevos valores si no dispone del tiempo necesario para que todos sus niveles se adhieran a ellos. El cambio organizativo en las grandes burocracias lleva su tiempo”.
Para ayudar con ese aspecto, Karwat recibió fondos de las oficinas de tecnologías del agua y de justicia y equidad del DOE para que desarrollara herramientas que permitieran medir qué tan bien estaba la agencia cumpliendo con sus metas de justicia ambiental y su forma de incluir la justicia ambiental en sus programas y procesos. En 2023, los detalles sobre cómo usar la herramienta fueron publicados así como un caso de estudio publicado en un artículo científico, mientras se seguía trabajando, pero, al menos que Karwat sepa, la herramienta no está siendo usada para los procesos de los centros de hidrógeno. “Por favor, háganles saber que estaría encantado de ayudarles”, dijo.
Un evento en California, en agosto de 2024, que mostró proyectos de transporte que usan el hidrógeno como combustible en Oakland y un abrebocas del centro de hidrógeno renovable de California.
Gente a lo largo y ancho del país comentó que la falta de transparencia e involucramiento colectivo significativo para los centros de hidrógeno parecen ir en contravía de los compromisos que la administración de Biden ha hecho respecto a la justicia ambiental.
“No creo que el presidente sea consciente de que sus prioridades de justicia ambiental están siendo ignoradas en la propuesta [del centro de hidrógeno del Medio Oeste]”, dijo a EHN Chris Chyung, el director ejecutivo del grupo de activismo medioambiental Indiana Conservation Voters.
Jalonne White-Newsome, la directora federal de justicia ambiental del Consejo de Calidad Ambiental de la Casa Blanca, señaló que hay varias medidas cuyo fin es que las agencias federales cumplan con el espíritu de la orden ejecutiva de Biden sobre justicia ambiental, en lugar de simplemente marca con una “x” las casillas de cumplimiento. Dijo que la orden requiere el desarrollo de planes estratégicos para cada agencia para incrementar la justicia ambiental y la elaboración de planes para su medición en el camino, “para que no sea letra muerta en un papel que nadie mira, guardado en un cajón”.
White-Newsome también llamó la atención sobre la creación del Consejo Interinstitucional de justicia medioambiental, que reúne a representantes de distintos organismos que están “comprometidos a garantizar que lo que figura en la orden ejecutiva, las iniciativas que impulsa el presidente, se lleven realmente a la práctica”.
¿Qué pasará con los centros de hidrógeno?
El futuro de los centros de hidrógeno es incierto con la próxima presidencia de Trump.
Los tres centros que ya han recibido fondos federales — el de los Apalaches, el de California y el del Pacífico Noroeste — ya empezaron la “fase 1” del proceso de desarrollo, durante el cual se espera que que avancen en la planeación, el desarrollo y el diseño para los componentes del centro; empiecen a desplegar las tecnologías y avancen en la planeación de los beneficios comunitarios y la participación de la gente, de acuerdo con el DOE. Se han anunciado nuevas oportunidades de participación comunitaria en algunos de estos centros.
El centro en California se autodenominó como el primero en ponerse en marcha de manera oficial en agosto 30 de este año. Si no hay problemas de construcción, legales o gubernamentales, el proyecto podría estar listo en ocho a 13 años, de acuerdo con las proyecciones de la OCED. También se espera que los centros de los Apalaches y del Pacífico Noroeste tarden alrededor de una década en completarse tras su puesta en marcha oficial, junto con miles de millones de dólares de inversión privada y financiación pública adicional procedente de exenciones fiscales.
Para los otros cuatro centros, no se espera que haya oportunidades de participación de la ciudadanía hasta que la primera ronda de fondos federales sea distribuida.
Los centros de hidrógeno y otros proyectos de energías renovables se verán muy distintos con la llegada de Donald Trump a la presidencia. Inclusive si la financiación para las centrales se mantiene intacta, los requerimientos de participación pública podrían cambiar, pues Trump ya destrozó la NEPA en una ocasión y prometió deshacer la normativa medioambiental del país durante la campaña electoral. Como presidente, Trump revocó más de 100 normativas medioambientales, para algunas de las cuales se necesitaron casi los cuatro años de la presidencia de Biden en restablecerse.
Aunque el destino de los centros de hidrógeno podría determinarse por los cambios bajo la administración de Trump, los activistas comunitarios no se han quedado de manos cruzadas.
“Me gustaría que el Departamento de Energía y el gobierno federal interactuara con nuestras comunidades de la misma manera como interactúa con la industria”, dijo Shiv Srivastava, un investigador de política pública para Fenceline Watch, una organización de justicia ambiental de Houston. “El DOE lleva mucho tiempo pensando en el hidrógeno y colabora estrechamente con sus socios industriales. ¿Dónde están los socios comunitarios? La divulgación se parece a lo que empezaron a hacer décadas antes con la industria, porque tienen un esfuerzo concertado”, añadió.
Virginia Wiltshire-Gordon, la encargada de los procesos de participación ciudadana de la oenegé Pipeline Safety Trust, que trabaja a nivel nacional para garantizar la seguridad y la transparencia respecto a las tuberías, le dijo a EHN: “Creo que lo principal es que el Departamento de Energía tiene que trabajar más para conocer mejor a los miembros de la comunidad tal y como son. Eso significa educar a las personas. Significa pensar quiénes son fuentes confiables al interior de las comunidades y conectar con la gente”.
White-Newsome, la directora federal de justicia ambiental de la Casa Blanca, animó a que los miembros de las comunidades que se sientan frustrados con el proceso se comuniquen con el Consejo de Calidad Medioambiental de la Casa Blanca.
“Nuestras puertas están abiertas”, dijo White-Newsome. “Si hay conversaciones que las comunidades con están pudiendo tener, o no están pudiendo conectarse o no se sienten satisfechas respecto a alguna de las agencias con quienes trabajamos, es responsabilidad [del Consejo de Calidad Ambiental] intervenir cuando sea posible”.
“Si bien no he escuchado directamente de ningún constituyente sobre los centros de hidrógeno, puedo reconocer las preocupaciones respecto a su uso y cuestiones como el coste, la eficiencia, la sostenibilidad y el uso del agua, por citar algunas”, declaró John Lively, representante del estado de Oregón. “El proyecto todavía está en sus primeras etapas y cualquier proyecto que se lleve a cabo en Oregon necesitará de una participación comunitaria diversa para triunfar. Trabajará con los ciudadanos y le pediré al gobierno federal que, a medida que avancen con el proyecto, se involucren con seriedad con los ciudadanos de la región, las partes interesadas, los activistas y los líderes”.
Robert Routh, un director de política pública en el Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC, por sus siglas en inglés), dijo que a pesar de los retos hasta ahora, espera que las comunidades no se rindan en la batalla por una participación significativa en los centros.
“Estos proyectos van a suceder en el curso de la próxima década, por lo que tenemos una ventana de tiempo para que las agencias federales y los socios de los proyectos puedan y hagan mejoras”, Routh le dijo a EHN. Aunque llevamos un año con menos compromiso y transparencia de lo que nos gustaría, espero que los miembros de la comunidad no sientan que es demasiado tarde para que sus aportes hagan la diferencia”.
Este artículo fue traducido por María Paula Rubiano A.
Producción y edición de video: Jimmy Evans
Sobre las autoras:
Kristina Marusic cubre temas de salud ambiental y justicia en Pittsburgh y el occidente de Pennsylvania para Environmental Health News. Su nuevo libro, "A New War On Cancer: The Unlikely Heroes Revolutionizing Prevention", revela la existencia de un naciente movimiento a nivel nacional que busca prevenir el cáncer reduciendo la exposición a sustancias químicas cancerígenas en nuestra vida cotidiana.
Cami Ferrell es una reportera de vídeo bilingüe para Environmental Health News, radicada en Houston (Texas). Ferrell informa principalmente sobre el desarrollo de la industria petroquímica en la costa del Golfo de Texas.
Prisons, jails and detention centers are placed in locations where environmental hazards such as toxic landfills, floods and extreme heat are the norm.
El impulso masivo a la energía del hidrógeno es la primera prueba de fuego de las nuevas iniciativas federales de justicia medioambiental. Hasta ahora, comunidades y activistas le dan una pésima calificación al gobierno federal.
The seven proposed, federally funded networks of hydrogen hub infrastructure announced a year ago are an initiative born from the Biden administration’s 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.Credit: OCED 
