Illustration by Stephanie Dalton Cowan
The seven hydrogen hubs selected for U.S. Department of Energy funding are propelling hydrogen toward full-scale viability, and natural gas utilities are in the mix.
From inside the hubs and within their orbits, natural gas utilities are exploring intriguing theories or testing hydrogen in real-world settings. All are confirming hydrogen’s potential to transform the energy future into a place where hydrogen is produced, transmitted and delivered by utilities that are leveraging their core competencies, deep benches of talent and years of experience.
“A confluence of factors has led to this,” said Brett Radulovich, vice president, strategy and risk for NiSource, which is involved in the Midwest Alliance for Clean Hydrogen Hub and the Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub, among others. “From a NiSource standpoint, this isn’t something new that we’re thinking about. Hydrogen’s been something we focused on, but we’re seeing an evolution in what the broader industry is doing. These forces are starting to come together to really spur innovations in production and also, hopefully, lead consumers to demand the product.”
Pacific Gas & Electric Corporation is leveraging its dual expertise in gas and electricity to sustain Hydrogen to Infinity, a project initially aligned with a hub that didn’t wind up receiving U.S. Department of Energy funding. The 130-acre, standalone pipeline transmission system is expected to test production, pipeline transportation, storage and combustion of varied hydrogen blends and their impacts at various pressures on transmission systems.
The project, which could be operational by 2029, is designed to address blended transmission. Funding derives from a joint filing with California’s three other investor-owned utilities and through a joint industry project, inviting other utilities to invest and conduct their own tests on-site.
“If you have a valve to test, we’ll test it,” said Austin Hastings, senior director, gas strategy execution and system planning, PG&E. “Let’s do this in a joint way to benefit the whole country and even benefit the entire world.”
The comprehensive concept is planned for Lodi, California, at a serendipitous confluence of natural gas transmission pipeline, cityowned greenfield for solar panel installations, electric transmission lines carrying significant renewable power, and a city wastewater treatment facility providing reclaimed water for splitting.
Northern California Power Agency’s Lodi Energy Center, with a Siemens turbine repurposed recently to accept up to 45% hydrogen, solves the question of consumption. The energy center could store green hydrogen created from solar energy for nighttime use, considered a top priority in California’s race to decarbonize.
The project aligns with the state’s decarbonization goals—netzero by 2045—not only by demonstrating the feasibility of replacing carbon molecules with emission-free hydrogen molecules but also by confirming the safety parameters that make the swap possible.
“This project will prove we can maximize the amount of hydrogen that we can receive while still being able to do it safely,” said Hastings.
Natural gas systems will play a key role in decarbonization for operations and customers “due to the sheer magnitude of the energy that can be delivered through our systems,” said Radulovich, whose NiSource is testing hydrogen handling and end uses through a blending skid in Monaca, Pennsylvania.
Utilities within the hubs are bringing their findings to a broader table, said Jeff Nehr, senior vice president of gas supply and development, Hope Gas. “Being in a hydrogen hub, you’re trying to create kind of a circular economy,” he said. “You have the generation piece, you have the transmission piece, and you have the end-use piece.”
Gas utilities are devising projects that address their serviceterritory needs and answer remaining questions about producing and moving hydrogen, including:
The NiSource blending skid began with a white paper consolidating existing research on the properties of hydrogen, safety and operational considerations. The custom-designed blending skid that resulted allows the utility, Columbia Gas of Pennsylvania, which is owned by NiSource, to dial in the hydrogen blend, from zero to 20% and down to 100th of a decimal point, although NiSource “typically sticks with the whole number,” said Erich Evans, director of sustainability strategy, NiSource. Consistency helps ensure the steady Btu that industrial and commercial customers count on.
“They’re going to want to know exactly what they’re getting, so if we can control that blend, we know the exact content it’s going to have,” Evans said.
Trucked-in gray hydrogen is supplying the site because operators couldn’t find any immediately available green sources, but they hope to shift to green, turquoise or blue hydrogen when possible.
“Hydrogen is a promising solution,” said Radulovich. “In the next 10 years, you can start seeing dedicated lines to some industrial customers, or blends of hydrogen with natural gas or potentially RNG in our distribution systems. But it’s important that we’re doing the work today in order to build our knowledge and build our capabilities so that we’re ready for that future state when hydrogen is playing a larger role in energy supply.”
As Dominion Energy drives toward net-zero by 2050, a Dominion Energy Utah team devised the four-phase ThermH2 project, part of the Western Interstate Hydrogen Hub. Although not selected for DOE funding, the project is ongoing, and the successful Phase One test of hydrogen blending has evolved to Phase Two—distributing a 5% hydrogen blend to 1,800 customers in and around Delta, Utah.
An on-site electrolyzer produces hydrogen from electricity provided by Rocky Mountain Power, chosen for the availability of accredited renewable energy credits that make the electricity green.
The project is no silver bullet, said Andrew Hegewald, gas business development manager, Dominion Energy, but “it’s one of the arrows in the quiver that we can use to help decarbonize our infrastructure.”
Dominion Energy Utah chose Delta because of its location at the end of a system, which allows team members to maintain control of the gas’s movement. The city was also selected for its largely high-density polyethylene pipelines to “expose hydrogen to the pipe of the future, not the pipe of the past,” said Hegewald.
Phase Two, which is progressing smoothly, has been funded entirely by Dominion Energy and, as a partner, the Low-Carbon Resources Initiative, a consortium of GTI Energy, the Electric Power Research Institute and partner utilities.
When developing a project aligned with the ARCH2 Hub, Hope Gas chose “a product out of the box, ready to use,” said Nehr. It’s a hydrogen-compatible fuel cell that converts natural gas to hydrogen, which in turn makes electricity, slated for installation in 5,000 West Virginia homes.
The fuel cells reduce carbon emissions by 35% compared to West Virginia’s electric grid. Adding hydrogen to the mix makes achievement of zero emissions possible eventually, Nehr said.
Hope Gas sees the hub-related fuel cell project as contributing, in part, to the hydrogen hubs’ community engagement and social justice requirements. About 2,000 of the fuel cells are committed to disadvantaged and low-income customers. With the DOE hub grant and investment tax credits, Hope Gas is providing fuel cells, built by partner WATT Fuel Cell, at no cost to customers in exchange for 10-year energy-services agreements.
West Virginia is one of the nation’s top three states for electric reliability issues, and the fuel cells outrank backup generators on every front—standby power at no or minus cost, with fewer emissions and zero cost to maintain, Nehr said. To showcase the technology, a fuel cell is powering the auditorium of Hope Gas’ headquarters in Morgantown.
“We check a lot of boxes by adding a service that’s lowmaintenance, convenient and not hassling customers with noise or smoke,” said Nehr. “If you’re comfortable with a refrigerator in your garage, this is no different.”
EQT is generating the hydrogen from natural gas for injection into a Hope Gas well site, Nehr said.
As part of the hub, Hope Gas is conducting a required study, through a contractor, to ensure that the technology is ready for deployment and meets all the criteria stated by the manufacturer for energy output, duration and durability.
“We’re going to do a study so we can assure the DOE and the public that the fuel cell does what it’s supposed to do,” said Nehr.
In December 2022, Dominion Energy launched Hydrogen Heights. In Boston Heights, Ohio, a safety-training village was adapted with a hydrogen facility and piping to accommodate a closed-loop hydrogen blending test. While Hydrogen Heights is not hub-funded, it builds experience in managing blended hydrogen and facilitates investigation of hydrogen use outside of blending.
Now an Enbridge project (see Editor’s Note on page 16 ), Hydrogen Heights is showcasing hydrogen’s capabilities through education, raising awareness and demystifying processes. Public officials and students have toured the site, and two classes of chemical engineering graduate students from Cleveland State University have worked with site officials to develop hydrogen feasibility studies.
“It’s educating people on the capabilities of hydrogen and showing how safe and reliable it is,” said Joshua Davis, Hydrogen Heights project lead and a Cleveland State alumnus now working with some of his former professors. “We can lower our carbon footprint by blending hydrogen and still have that same safe and reliable energy resource.”
Education that dispels false narratives about hydrogen is a key value of situating similar blending tests in different regions, added Mack Smith, gas development services adviser, Enbridge. Enbridge is a member of ARCH2.
“Everything is local,” he said. “It’s going to make a big difference to have our local legislators come in, be hands on and talk to our project team about what we’re doing, why we’re doing it and why it’s important that we’re doing it.”
The Hydrogen Heights project incorporates multiple generations and vintages of natural gas appliances as a training ground in hydrogen for field staff while also validating the ease of on-system blending.
“We don’t want customers to have to change out their appliances for blended hydrogen,” said Smith. “We need to ensure their existing processes and appliances work seamlessly. Operationally, they wouldn’t know the difference whether there was a hydrogen blend or just pure natural gas.”
Across the Atlantic, the European Commission’s decarbonization goals are matched by the equally urgent priority of reducing reliance on Russian fossil fuels.
Hydrogen players include the European Hydrogen Backbone, a coalition of European Union energy providers cultivating projects that address demand, supply and transport. EHB projects spanning the continent include:
Nordic-Baltic Hydrogen Corridor–DE section, Elering AS: Transmission is planned from Finland to Germany along a hydrogen corridor connecting Baltic Sea countries and their industries to green hydrogen.
H2-Sauerland, Westnetz GmbH: By converting existing infrastructure, H2-Sauerland will establish clusters to supply customers in mobility, industry and medium-size businesses in Germany with 100% green hydrogen.
RHYn Interco, terranets bw GmbH: Now in the advance commissioning phase, the project envisions linked pipelines and an underground Rhine River crossing to connect large German customers with French-produced hydrogen.
BenortH2 Pipeline, Nortegas: One of several Nortegas projects, the pipeline will connect hydrogen from the Bay of Biscay to industries inland in Spain.
Hydrogen City, Stedin: By 2025, Stad Aan’t Haringvliet could be the first city in the Netherlands to be fully heated with hydrogen. The project will convert 628 addresses from natural gas to hydrogen connections.
In Southern California, Southern California Gas Company is developing the Angeles Link, planned as the nation’s largest pipeline system for clean, renewable energy, as part of the Alliance for Renewable Clean Hydrogen Energy Systems Hydrogen Hub. The project is meant to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions by distributing green hydrogen created through renewable power to essential, hard-to-electrify industries, such as heavy-duty transportation and manufacturing.
By integrating, generating and storing large supplies of energy made from renewable sources, the Angeles Link is poised for safe delivery of power through sunshiny days and dark nights. The as-yet-undetermined mileage of hydrogen infrastructure would deliver green hydrogen to the Los Angeles Basin. Under the plan, SoCalGas would leverage existing relationships with thousands of industrial end users to distribute and help decarbonize multiple sectors.
As their hydrogen projects move forward, natural gas utilities are applying lessons learned. As always, safety occupies the heart of every test and trial. NiSource is using its Monaca blending skid to train field staff in handling hydrogen. Dominion Utah’s ThermH2 tests researched national and county fire codes as they created standard operating procedures for handling and storing hydrogen.
Communications and public education are also integral to every project. When Dominion Utah reached out to the town of Delta, it conducted meetings with local officials and hosted community open houses.
“We’re not in a Dominion piece of property. We’re out in the real world,” said Hegewald. “[So] the risk just went up. The number of approvals just went up. The cost just went up. Now it gets serious. Our goal was to make this as innocuous for those people as possible to derisk it for that community.”
Some residents got a tour of the electrolyzer site. One early skeptic, the local school district facilities director, became an enthusiastic supporter. “All of this was educate, educate, educate, and really hammering in the message that 5% hydrogen blending is, first and foremost, safe, and secondly, that this isn’t going to cost you a nickel,” said Hegewald.
At Monaca Safety Town, NiSource custom-built a tiny home—600 square feet—with gas generator, lights, grill, firepit, fireplace, range, oven, dryer, furnace and tankless water heater. All can run hydrogen blends of up to 20%. Visitors touring the site get a better sense of hydrogen at work than just seeing the pipes of the blending skid and the utilitarian huts used for training.
“They can actually see the flame,” said Evans. “We’ve made cookies”—chocolate chip—“and you could never tell it’s hydrogen because every day, normal appliances are working as they should. You can cook, dry your clothes, heat your water.”
Partnerships enhance the resources and capabilities available for projects. GTI successfully requested the addition of two more criteria to Dominion Energy Utah’s trial in Delta—testing for gas homogeneity to all distribution points and assuring that the hydrogen molecules attach to the odorant injected into natural gas for detection in case of emissions. NiSource is also partnering with GTI in Monaca, where it is collecting emissions-detection data to share with the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and NiSource.
At Dominion Energy Utah, ThermH2’s Phase Three is slated to continue testing hydrogen’s mixability and pipeline compatibility in a high-pressure system serving a larger community.
Phase Four, slated for the later 2020s, sends Dominion Energy Utah into a methanation test—ThermH2’s “most innovative and aspirational” phase, said Hegewald. The methanation technology, developed in Germany and Denmark, uses hydrogen to upgrade carbon dioxide into methane, or synthetic natural gas, for injection back into the pipeline. Methanation helps solve the dilemma of hard-to-decarbonize heavy industrial users, particularly steel, cement and refineries. “It’s kind of a natural evolution, using our hydrogen expertise by that time,” Hegewald said.
That expertise will lend itself to Dominion Energy North Carolina, which is participating in the ARCH2 hydrogen hub, and projects modeled after Dominion Energy Utah’s ThermH2 are in early stages in North Carolina and Ohio. “We definitely collaborate,” Hegewald said. “We share best practices. We’re building this internal brain trust of hydrogen expertise both from a business standpoint and operational standpoint and engineering and construction standpoint here at Dominion.”
The hubs comprise different workgroups with varied projects, said Nehr. In West Virginia, that dedicated but diverse hydrogen effort can promote economic development by attracting businesses and the people who work in them.
“We all have a common goal of bringing hydrogen to the region and to see it develop and expand, and using DOE money to get over the hurdle of initial development phase so that as we get better and more efficient, we can stand up and support hydrogen in an economic way,” he said.
As for NiSource, the ARCH2 hub includes its Columbia Gas subsidiaries operating in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Kentucky, and MachH2 encompasses its NIPSCO subsidiary in northern Indiana. While the Monaca blending skid is not a hub project, the expertise developed will fuel discussions with hubs about the contributions NiSource can bring to the table.
“As these hub projects come on, we will evaluate opportunities to work with hydrogen producers to blend hydrogen into our system,” said Evans. “There are no set plans yet, but that’s one area that we could see it happening, based on this work.”
As a springboard to next phases, Enbridge’s Hydrogen Heights could evolve into tests of hydrogen production and on-system blending through a small community pilot test. A proposed hub project would explore hydrogen production for transit and transportation.
“That allows us to take some of the knowledge development with Hydrogen Heights and expand that into more of a commercial application under the hydrogen hub umbrella,” said Smith.
Cultivating end uses that justify hydrogen blending and production projects is the next frontier, Smith added. In the Cleveland region, Enbridge is “dissecting opportunities” within industries currently using hydrogen, such as the steel industry, and those with potential.
“We know there’s hydrogen use in the transportation sector for some of the customers on our system,” he said. “Those begin to surface up the industrial and commercial opportunities in addition to blending on-system, which is more of a mass-blending approach.”
While the cost of hydrogen remains a market constraint, project leads at natural gas utilities are hopeful about future affordability. Radulovich noted a pathway to bringing costs in line with natural gas, forged by the combination of hydrogen hub funding, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and Inflation Reduction Act incentives, and a wave of legislation supporting clean energy.
“The development of clean hydrogen has always been a chicken-and-egg thing,” he said. “People understand that hydrogen is an opportunity, but who’s going to produce it and who’s going to use it? From a production standpoint, the legislation has done a lot to help spur innovation and how clean hydrogen can be produced. From a pricing standpoint, there’s a lot of focus on driving the production and delivery costs of hydrogen down, which makes it possible for more customers—whether they’re industrial customers, commercial customers or even residential customers—to access hydrogen at a point that’s affordable for them and their energy uses.”
Editor’s note: Dominion Energy Utah designed and operated the first two phases of ThermH2. At publication of this edition of American Gas, Dominion Energy Utah is owned and operated by Enbridge Inc., under an acquisition that was finalized June 1, 2024.