The Advocate. January XX, 2023.
Editorial: Louisiana looks to a clean-hydrogen future in industry
Like a latter-day Gold Rush, the cry goes up for hydrogen, maybe the ticket to a cleaner environment and, not least for Louisiana, the preservation of today’s vast petrochemical manufacturing complex in a new, more carbon-free world.
Gov. John Bel Edwards’ administration, working with counterparts in two neighboring states, is now advocating a cleaner source of fuel for those plants. Louisiana, Arkansas and Oklahoma have been asked to submit an application to the U.S. Department of Energy to develop a $1.25 billion regional clean hydrogen hub. Called HALO — the three states and hydrogen, kind of clever as these acronyms go — the hub would be aimed at creating, and just as importantly using for manufacturing and transportation purposes, two kinds of hydrogen.
Green hydrogen would usually involve producing the gas from water using energy sources that don’t emit carbon dioxide. The blue process often uses natural gas or other carbon-based materials to create hydrogen, with carbon emissions captured and either permanently stored in other products, like concrete, or sequestered deep underground.
Both colors are part of the HALO effect: As Edwards said, there are already large amounts of time and money invested in clean-hydrogen processes in the three states. The next step, he said, “will be making sure all that hydrogen becomes low-carbon and making it more available and accepted as a major energy source.”
Lower emissions are hugely important to the success of industrial facilities in the Mississippi River corridor, particularly between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Lowering CO2 emissions over time is vital to reducing the threats of climate change, with which anyone living on the Gulf Coast is very familiar during hurricane season.
We hope that this effort is successful, for it can provide money for university research and ultimate commercial development in our region.
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