California was chosen by the U.S. Energy Dept. in 2023 as a “hydrogen hub,” selected to receive $1.2 billion in federal funding for projects, One of seven selected U.S. hubs that are receiving a total of more than $7 billion, it is the only one that is a single state, with Los Angeles as the “epicenter of a whole new green hydrogen economy,” said Janice Lin, founder and president of the Green Hydrogen  Coalition, a nonprofit policy and market development advocacy group.

Public and private sector experts offer green hydrogen energy project updates in metro Los Angeles during panel discussion.  
Photo by Russell Marquez for L.A. County Public Works

The federal funding goes to California's hub, the Alliance for Renewable Clean Hydrogen Energy Systems (ARCHES), a 400-member public-private development consortium that is set to generate $10 billion in private investment, proponents say. ARCHES recently chose 37 responses to a request for proposals, out of hundreds received, for potential projects to produce, offtake and transport hydrogen, its CEO, Angelina Galiteva, told a separate L.A. conference this month. “That’s $56 billion in credit-worthy projects,” she said. Challenges to creating a reliable ecosystem for hydrogen include consistency of pricing and supply, and offtake connections, Galiteva added.

Better Blend

One of the most high profile projects regionally and nationally is at the site of a 1.8-GW coal-fired power plant in Utah that has long supplied metro Los Angeles and is being converted to a blend of natural gas and 30% hydrogen produced from renewable power such as solar. The Los Angeles Dept. of Water and Power, the largest U.S. municipal utility, is set to start operation early next year of the 840-MW combined-cycle gas turbine plant, which aims for 100% hydrogen fuel by 2045.

“We are putting a lot of our efforts into hydrogen as the fuel of the future for our baseload generation,” agency CEO and Chief Engineer Janisse Quiñones told ENR LA Infrastructure attendees. “What's important about this project is that it is no longer a conversation. It's a reality. No one in the world is doing this, it is a big risk that we took.” Nearly $450 million in federal project funding “allows us to make it more economically feasible for our customers and have an active producing generation facility where we can test the technology and drive the market so that prices come down,” she added.

LADWP also has an $800-million project underway to retrofit by 2029 two units of its 830-MW Scattergood gas power plant near Los Angeles International Airport for a 30% hydrogen blend, and plans to do the same at three other local plants. But environmental advocates and impacted community members oppose Scattergood's new draft environmental review and want battery storage added instead, media reports say.

Also testing hydrogen fuel technology is the Port of Los Angeles, the largest U.S. container port, which set a goal in 2017 to be “the first zero carbon, zero emission port complex in the world,” Eugene D. Seroka, its executive director, told conference attendees. “Hydrogen will play a key role in our migration. Yet, it's early days, and there is a lot to do. How do you get there with technology that has yet to be proven and looks very, very different from a transportation network that was designed around fossil fuels?”

Noting that only 66 of about 22,000 trucks now licensed to access the port are powered by hydrogen fuel cells, Seroka pointed to “a lot of hurdles,” estimating production cost for each at $750,000. “We've got to keep chipping away at that and finding better ways. We cannot overcommit and underdeliver.”

The port is using a total of $600 million in U.S. Environmental Protection Agency funds and private and port-generated investment “to help accelerate infrastructure development and equipment that's going to come online.” But he cautioned, “it's not going to be the flip of a switch in one year and no more port emissions. We're going to see what works and what doesn't, with our private sector partners ... to gives confidence that allows them to come in and test out their equipment.”

Southern California Gas Co. has gained some approvals for planning and building a green hydrogen pipeline for central and southern California with Port of LA and LADWP facilities as “primary anchors,” said Neil Navin, company senior vice president of engineering and major projects and chief clean fuels officer.

“But there are many, many other end users that have to decarbonize over time,” he said. “If you can bring all those end users together with connective infrastructure, you can start to bring down the [hydrogen fuel] cost over time, and we've done that today with things like natural gas.”

There are 1,600 miles of U.S. pipeline for fossil-fuel generated hydrogen, so the SoCalGas Angeles Link project is “the first significant backbone system in North America to be proposed” for green hydrogen, Navin said. The company has said the pipeline's first constructed segment could finish by the end of the decade. But further regulation remains uncertain, according to one media report.

“I’m very bullish and very excited,” said Navin. “It is early days, but the trajectory is very similar to solar. We have to ultimately start mass producing the equipment that can produce hydrogen, just like we did for solar panels 50 years ago.”

He sees growth for hydrogen technology “and the ability to scale it and get the cost down” but also predicts the fuel will continue to be supported by “some natural gas.”