STATEMENT: Proposed hydrogen hub projects in Pennsylvania approved

PHILADELPHIA — During a visit here last Friday, President Joe Biden unveiled a list of seven new regional hydrogen hub projects spanning 16 states. These energy projects will receive a combined $7 billion in taxpayer funding through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

Pennsylvania will participate in two of the U.S. Department of Energy’s projects, including the “MACH2” project in southeastern Pennsylvania.

In response, David Masur, PennEnvironment Executive Director released the following statement: 

“While it may take a rocket scientist to figure out how to develop hydrogen energy, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that continuing to get energy from fossil fuels is bad for our environment, health and communities. 

“Hydrogen fuel is neither inherently renewable nor inherently clean because you need other energy sources — either renewables or fossil fuels — to produce it. Federal, state and local officials should only support hydrogen energy projects that meet a set of basic, crucial criteria to ensure that they help reduce the nation’s carbon footprint, instead of potentially adding to it. 

“They include: 

• Generating hydrogen fuel only from truly green energy sources, such as wind and solar; 
• Powering only hard-to-electrify areas of the economy such as steel production, shipping and air travel. Hydrogen energy shouldn’t be used to power sectors of our economy that can currently run efficiently and effectively on electricity produced from wind, solar or geothermal energy; and
• Requiring proposed hydrogen hub projects to go through normal environmental review and public input processes. 

“However, it appears that almost all of the hydrogen hub projects approved by the Energy Department do not meet these important principles. Both the MACH2 project proposed for southeastern Pennsylvania and the ARCH2 proposal slated to include the Pittsburgh region will likely extend our reliance on dirty fossil fuels and deliver energy to sectors of our economy that already can be powered efficiently with clean, renewable energy. 

“Sadly, the process for proposing and approving these expensive and controversial projects was incredibly secretive and lacking in detail. And even though taxpayers will foot a significant portion of the bill for these hydrogen hubs, zero public input was required or requested by federal officials or the corporations putting the project concepts forward.” 

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PennEnvironment is a statewide citizen-based non-profit environmental advocacy organization working to promote clean air, clean water, and protect our open spaces. To learn more about our work on this or other issues, please visit www.PennEnvironment.org.