Delaware Riverkeeper Network Condemns Hydrogen Hub Awards in Region & Nationally

• Delaware Riverkeeper Network protests the allocation of federal funding for what are dubbed “hydrogen hubs” announced in Philadelphia by President Joe Biden. The $7 Billion allocated under the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Act of 2021 throws taxpayer money at a false solution to the climate crisis by stimulating dirty energy development that will increase greenhouse gas emissions and pollution and degrade air and water quality despite claims that hydrogen is “clean” and an alternative to fossil fuels. What’s worse for the Delaware River region is the $750 million earmarked for the Mach 2 Hydrogen Hub here in the Delaware River Watershed.
   
• “President Biden’s commitment to advancing hydrogen hubs nationwide is misplaced, ill-advised and will have devastating consequences for our environment, for the safety of future generations, and is a misuse of government dollars that should be helping to advance the clean energy revolution we need rather hydrogen boondoggles that perpetuate dirty fossil fuels and dangerous nuclear operations,” said Maya van Rossum, the Delaware Riverkeeper.
   
• The Mach 2  “hub” targets the Delaware River in southeastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey and Delaware, threatening communities and the environment in one of the most densely populated regions of the nation, already overburdened by environmental damage. In fact, most hydrogen produced today uses fossil gas for the extremely energy-intense process to create hydrogen. The “hub” being funded in the Delaware River Watershed reportedly would use nuclear energy, wind, and fossil gas.
   
• The process consumes enormous amounts of water, uses so much energy to make that it is actually a net loss, and requires huge infrastructure with an enormous environmental footprint. This means both building new and re-purposing now-dormant industrial systems. The Mach 2 developers state they will “reuse and revitalize significant existing pipeline infrastructure.”
   
• Hydrogen hub projects, according to the proposals submitted for Department of Energy funding, as well as experts and experience, are closely linked with the perpetuation and growth of the fossil fuel industry. Many hubs are fueled by fracked fossil fuel gas and as a result will perpetuate and grow the fracked gas fossil fuel industry, harmful for the health and safety of communities, for climate, water, air, communities, and ecosystems.
   
• Hydrogen hubs often tout the inclusion of carbon capture and sequestration elements, but notably the captured carbon is generally used for the extraction of additional fossil fuels. The nuclear power plants in our region are already nearing the end of their targeted life; extending operations of these facilities, including the Salem Nuclear Generating Station that inflicts significant environmental harm as it is, would be ill-advised but is not an unlikely goal and outcome of the funding for this region.
   
• Hydrogen burns extremely hot, can explode if not precisely handled, and embrittles steel, making its processing, storage and transport dangerous, problematic and expensive. The entire hydrogen making process is so expensive that without subsidies and taxpayer funding, it simply wouldn’t compete with other energy sources. It certainly is not an alternative to truly clean, non-greenhouse gas emitting, renewable energy sources such as solar and wind. To waste wind energy on the dangerous and inefficient process of making hydrogen when we could directly use wind energy for electric power is not only illogical but an inexcusable waste of money.
   
• “The last thing the Delaware River Watershed needs is the development of hydrogen and the pollution it will bring. The Delaware River Valley already doesn’t meet minimum federal clean air standards and our communities cannot tolerate one more molecule of the pollutants that plague us. Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey must aggressively move to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, not add to them through the proposed Mach 2 hub that the federal government is funding,” said Tracy Carluccio, Deputy Director, Delaware Riverkeeper Network.
   
• With this pronouncement, President Biden is betraying the communities of Delaware and Pennsylvania he calls home. The Delaware Riverkeeper Network will be working with partner organizations and communities to oppose this misdirected funding that displaces the real solution to the climate crisis, i.e. truly clean, efficient, renewable and affordable greenhouse gas-free energy sources and systems.

Delaware Riverkeeper Network | https://delawareriverkeeper.org/