Officials ignore most Appalachian hydrogen hub worries

(The Center Square) — After an hour-long community briefing that didn’t take questions from the public until 40 minutes passed, another forum for public engagement ended for the Appalachian Hydrogen Hub, which will spread across West Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

The hub, also called ARCH2, received its first tranche of federal money in July, but critics have warned of a weak public participation process that checks boxes, but effectively locks out locals who will be affected by the hub projects.

Boosters, however, promise great benefits to the region with safeguards to ensure safety and equity in a decarbonized energy future, driven by several hubs nationwide.

“These seven hubs will catalyze more than $40 billion in private investment and ultimately create tens of thousands of good-paying jobs,” said Sarah Moore, the Office of Clean Energy Demonstration’s project manager for hydrogen.

OCED is within the Department of Energy, which is giving out more than $25 billion in taxpayer money for a number of projects from hydrogen hubs to nuclear energy, carbon management, new-tech industrial demonstrations, and long-term energy storage, among others.

“The big goal of these hubs is to catalyze a national network of clean hydrogen infrastructure to reduce pollution and carbon emissions,” Moore said. “We can’t get to a decarbonized energy system without working closely with the communities involved.”

Participants in the online community briefing, however, felt their concerns were ignored.

“If this is a ‘perfect time for communities to engage,’ how does DOE and ARCH2 intend to respond to all of the posed questions today or following this meeting?” participant Morgan King asked in the Q&A, which was filled with 225 questions and comments.

Neither DOE nor ARCH2 officials responded to the question. Fewer than 10 questions were answered directly or in a combined question posed to officials.

Though officials directed the public to its website for more information, commenters were concerned that the pages lack full information.

“According to OCED and DOE in the pre-funding phase, applicants must compile and environmental consideration summary, a techno-economic analysis, as well as a compliance and safety history description and submit that to DOE,” asked Shiv Srivastava of Fenceline Watch, an environmental justice group in Houston, which will also host a hydrogen hub. “Will DOE be making these documents public?”

That question also went unanswered.

It’s unclear how federal officials will determine the quality of community input and outreach, too.

“How does OCED evaluate (if at all), the quality of engagement involved in the development of each Hub’s community benefit plan?” asked Abbe Ramanan, a project director at Clean Energy Group. “Are metrics like the diversity of actors involved (small-scale community organizations, environmental advocates, etc.) evaluated? Are there any concerns that awardees may cherrypick actors for community engagement?”

ARCH2 and OCED officials also ignored that question.

As laid out in OCED’s community benefits commitment summary for ARCH2, the hub “will work to integrate community input into its plans to maximize the benefits for the project community.”

ARCH2 will have an advisory board and an “inclusive community benefits steering committee.” Membership on the committee will comprise regions governments, labor organizations, non-governmental organizations, academia, and regional community groups to “keep communities first,” which will give recommendations to ARCH2 leadership and the chair of the committee will hold a voting seat on the hub’s executive board.

Community benefits can take many forms, from a firm agreement to less-binding guidelines. Yet it remains unclear what form community benefits will take.

The vague understanding is partially due to the hub’s timeline: officials expect more engagement during phase one of ARCH2, which will take “up to three years” according to OCED due to the negotiation of community benefit commitments and where projects get built. The four phases of the hydrogen hub could take as few as 10 years or as many as 15 years to reach full operation.

On the question of making community benefits legally binding, though, officials were once again vague.

“When it comes to the project-specific partners integrated with the hub, when the ARCH2 hub signed the cooperative agreement, those partners were engaged,” Kurtis Hoffman, ARCH2 program manager with Batelle, said. “Therefore, to be in alignment with what needs to be proposed and executed, each partner has to execute essentially all the deliverables that were within that cooperative agreement, including the community benefits program. We have an overarching community benefits document and guidelines and deliverables — therefore, each partner’s gonna have to execute that … they have to adhere to what they committed to under the community benefits program.”

DOE officials also cautioned that very little is set in stone.

“These projects are not finalized, the cake is not baked yet, there’s a lot of room for these to change for the next few years,” said James Winters, community engagement specialist for hydrogen hubs at OCED. “OCED’s role in all of this is really oversight. If we see the community isn’t being engaged to the level we expect or the level the community expects, we don't proceed with the next level of gated funding until that’s been managed.”

Without OCED’s approval, the hub may not happen at all.

“This is very important to us, it’s something that we’re prepared not to proceed with if we don't feel like the community’s feedback is being incorporated,” Winters said.

A fact sheet for ARCH2 has 11 potential projects listed across the tri-state area, and Hoffman of Batelle noted a handful of them during the forum: a clean hydrogen facility in Canton, Ohio; a food-waste-to-hydrogen plant near Follansbee, West Virginia; a natural gas and biowaste to hydrogen plant near Point Pleasant, West Virginia; a hydrogen fuel services depot near Fairmont, West Virginia; a hydrogen facility near Ashtabula, Ohio; and a natural-gas-to-hydrogen plant in Clinton, Clearfield, and Centre Counties in Pennsylvania.

Other projects, Hoffman said, were still being determined.

More events are expected in the next few months, officials said, with another ARCH2 webinar in September, followed by open houses throughout the region. But once again, officials remained mum on how locals would be notified of the proposed projects.

What public feedback will look like, too, remains unclear.

“Will OCED formalize the public input process PRIOR to the (National Environmental Policy Act) process?” Srivastava asked. “Specifically, required response to comment, transcript of Q&A sessions, and publishing of notice in the federal register?”

Officials did not respond before ending the briefing.