The Appalachian region is well suited to be one of the nation’s clean energy H₂ hubs because of its natural gas resources, infrastructure, storage capacity, workforce and industrial demand, according to a recently released report conducted by NETL.

NETL Director Brian Anderson, Ph.D., said the report, “Appalachian Hydrogen Infrastructure Analysis,” studied how development of a H₂ industry in Appalachia offers a path to sustainable long-term growth.

“The Appalachian region was hard hit by declining coal production, but H₂ offers a path to sustainable long-term growth,” Anderson said. “With this study, NETL evaluated how the region’s current natural gas transportation and storage infrastructure might be adapted for use with H₂.”

An alternative fuel that has very high energy content by weight, H₂ consists of only one proton and one electron, and can be used as both an energy carrier and energy source. H₂ can be stored and delivered for energy just as natural gas or can be delivered to end users as a building block for chemical production.

According to the Appalachian Regional Commission, Appalachia is made up of 423 counties across 13 states and spans 206,000 square miles, from southern New York to northern Mississippi. The region’s 26.1-MM residents live in parts of Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia and all of West Virginia.

The report’s authors, said development of Appalachian H₂ infrastructure will help create new clean energy jobs, revitalize distressed communities, advance environmental justice and help achieve the administration’s goal of a net-zero carbon emissions in the electricity sector by 2035.

“H₂ is being positioned as a critical solution in efforts to decarbonize the global economy,” according to the authors. “H₂ produced from fossil energy can be a bridge in the clean energy transition. The study demonstrates that Appalachia has the resources and infrastructure in and around its borders to lead a clean energy revolution by using natural gas with carbon capture and storage to produce and store H₂.”

The study concluded that H₂ could replace fossil fuels in many aspects of the energy economy, delivering high-quality industrial process heat, onsite industrial electricity generation, large-scale electricity generation, transportation and as a building block for thousands of downstream chemicals. While there are multiple pathways to produce H₂ from water, biomass and hydrocarbons, the most economical way is currently from natural gas through steam methane reforming and autothermal reforming.

The study noted that the region possesses enough natural gas resources to feed a H₂ production future.

“With a combination of energy exports, long-term reduction in natural gas consumption for electricity through grid decarbonization, and utilization of biomass opportunities to produce renewable natural gas, there would be a significant amount of natural gas as feedstock for H₂ production plants in the region,” the study reported.

H₂ storage potential was also highlighted by the study that noted “there is enough potential CO₂ storage for 60 plants producing around 550 tpd to last 28 years.”

The study specifically notes that the region also possesses sufficient pipeline, truck, barge and rail distribution infrastructure to grow a H₂ economy from the region’s abundant fossil fuels reserves.

The study estimated the number of additional jobs by area that could be supported by advanced H₂ infrastructure development for every million dollars in output generated by industries involved in the H₂ supply chain.