Biden's green hydrogen plan hits climate obstacle: Water shortage
By Valerie Volcovici
(Reuters) — The Biden administration's climate agenda is facing an unexpected challenge in drought-prone Corpus Christi, Texas, where a proposed clean hydrogen hub would require the installation of energy-intensive, expensive and potentially environmentally damaging seawater desalination plants.
The Gulf Coast port is in the running for up to $1 billion available under President Joe Biden's 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to create a regional hub to produce hydrogen, a low-emissions fuel made by electrolyzing water that can help decarbonize heavy-emitting industries and transportation.
A hydrogen hub would require access to millions of gallons of water – a challenge in Corpus Christi which is experiencing a multi-year drought. While local officials say they can provide that water by constructing a seawater desalination plant, environmental groups and some local residents and lawmakers are lining up to oppose desalination sites.
«It makes no sense to create a purported clean energy source that in turn destroys an entire ecosystem, threatens other economies reliant upon a healthy bay system, and usurps the water supply for residents,» the Coastal Alliance to Protect the Environment, a Corpus Christi activist group, wrote in a letter to U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, shared with Reuters.
Reuters interviewed six researchers who study hydrogen as green power and had exclusive access to an analysis by Rystad Energy consultancy that showed that the Biden administration's vision of low-carbon hydrogen may run into a challenge that is itself exacerbated by climate change: water scarcity.
Producing hydrogen requires enormous amounts of fresh water in a world increasingly affected by
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