US ports program to help boost wider hydrogen adoption
A program to introduce clean hydrogen in U.S. ports will complement the hub initiative and pave the way for a wider use of the gas in the maritime and industrial sectors.
Article by Paul Day from Reuters
In October, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began its Clean Ports Program with nearly $3 billion in investments in 55 projects across 27 states and territories.
The program, when announced in February, received applications for over $8 billion.
The grants aim to support infrastructure, climate, and air quality projects at ports across the country as well as the deployment of zero-emission equipment via the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
The funds will go towards the purchase of over 1,500 units of cargo handling equipment, 1,000 drayage trucks, 10 locomotives, and 20 vessels, as well as shore power systems, battery-electric and hydrogen vehicle charging and fueling infrastructure, and solar power generation, the EPA said.
Port operations are mostly run on highly contaminating fuels, with handling equipment, trucks, and trains often running on diesel, while ships coming in and out of the ports are mostly powered by bunker fuel.
Government aid is seen as vital to support the conversion of ports from diesel to hydrogen or electricity.
“Hydrogen infrastructure is still in its early stages. Its (growth has been) slower than anticipated, and at this time, the high production costs really limit its competitiveness with traditional fuels,” says Pooja Jain, Senior Vice President at the engineering, environment, and professional services firm WSP.
“These subsidies and tax credits help bridge this cost gap. Without this support, we probably will expect the hydrogen adoption at the U.S. ports to be significantly delayed, simply because the financial burden will be too high for many operators and ports.”
Hub build-out
The Clean Ports Program is a foundational step toward a larger vision of industrial decarbonization and will help boost regional hydrogen hub creation, Jain says.
The United States plans to build seven centers of large-scale, commercially viable hydrogen supply centers across the country as part of its Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs (H2Hubs) strategy with $7 billion from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL).
The expansion of hydrogen use in ports may provide exactly the demand signal needed for hubs needing a customer.
Also, hydrogen production infrastructure is unlikely to be located within the ports themselves.
“It doesn’t really make sense to do it at a port where real estate is very limited and expensive, and where you’re trying to save every square inch to store and move cargo,” says Ian Gansler, Director of Government Relations at American Association of Port Authorities (AAPA).
The supply chain build-out will be essential.
“If you’re talking about buying this very expensive equipment that runs on hydrogen, you’d better be sure you know you’re going to have a consistent supply of it, because the last thing you want is a stranded asset where you have all this hydrogen equipment and no hydrogen to power it,” Gansler says.
Currently, hydrogen is being transported by truck, but over the next couple of decades, Gansler hopes a dedicated hydrogen pipeline could run directly into ports’ refilling systems.
By treating the ports as a central node connected to hydrogen producing hubs, the programs help to establish an efficient hydrogen supply chain that can create demand centers and support broader infrastructure development.
“If you look at the map of the national freight corridor strategies, you see that they all begin at some of the large industrial activity locations, which are the ports,” says Jasna Tomic, Vice President of nonprofit clean fuel and technologies group CALSTART.
The National Zero-Emission Freight Corridor Strategy, a four-stage plan through to 2040, establishes the ports and the surrounding zero-emission hubs as main focal points of clean hydrogen consumption, connected by zero-emission corridors.
“We think this is really important in terms of catalyzing and initiating some of those zero emission hubs,” says Tomic.
Clean, and quiet, cranes
Mitsui E&S’ Pacific Coast Engineering Company, PACECO, piloted a fuel cell rubber-tired gantry (RTG) crane at the Port of Los Angeles in May, the world’s first and the first of three for the company as part of a four-year trial to test the technology and fuel.
A typical RTG crane emits the carbon dioxide equivalent of burning over 400 barrels of oil a year, the company says, and if the trial is successful, and the hydrogen infrastructure is in place, more of its cranes can be easily converted into hydrogen by switching out the diesel generation set for a fuel cell.
The move to hydrogen reduces emissions and noise levels at the port since the fuel cells run quietly compared to their diesel equivalent.
Hydrogen refueling trucks meet the crane where it is in the yard, making recharging easier and more flexible than the battery-powered, electrical alternative, says PACECO General Manager of Sales Troy Collard.
“The idea behind using hydrogen was to avoid any more civil work. Your operation stays the same. The operators are already familiar with the crane, even if it’s a hydrogen unit. The only difference that an operator would feel is it’s a little bit zippier because of the battery directly powering the crane,” he says.
Hydrogen is currently considerably more expensive than diesel for the terminal operator. Initial results show the RTG using around 30 kilos of hydrogen a day.
However, expansion of the program to PACECO’s other RTGs at the port would require additional investment in the supply chain and a subsequent drop in the price of hydrogen, Collard says.
“With additional demand, ordering directly from a production facility, on some sort of a forecast, the price of hydrogen will go down. It’s still not going to be at the diesel, one-to-one level, but that gap will greatly decrease,” he says.