The B.C. government plans to open a new hydrogen office to promote and support the development of hydrogen related businesses in B.C., and B.C. Premier John Horgan made it clear Thursday that there won’t be any colour discrimination. The B.C. government will support the production of hydrogen in B.C. from either natural gas or electricity.
“We have an abundance of natural gas here, which would be the feedstock for blue hydrogen,” Horgan said at a press conference Thursday, where he announced a new BC Hydrogen Office.
"The BC Hydrogen Office will work with federal and local governments to help attract investments and simplify the multi-jurisdictional review and permitting processes," the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Low Carbon Innovation says in a press release.
B.C. is already a leader in hydrogen fuel cell production. But there is, as yet, little domestic production of hydrogen in B.C. – a market that is expected to have huge growth potential, since hydrogen is a carbon-free energy source that has multiple applications, from powering vehicles with fuel cells, to clean steel production and as a blending fuel to reduce the carbon intensity of natural gas and renewable natural gas.
Horgan said there are a number of hydrogen production proposals in B.C., and that the new hydrogen office is intended to support them.
“We know there is a line-up of proposals,” Horgan said. “But they need a framework. They need to know what the policy initiatives that governments are bringing forward are going to mean to their investments.”
According to the mines and energy ministry, there are 40 hydrogen-related projects proposed for B.C.
"These projects represent $4.8 billion in proposed investment in the province," the ministry says. "Many are small or medium-sized projects to provide local hydrogen supply or solutions, but some are major investments, including some of the largest proposed green hydrogen-production projects in the world."
Horgan confirmed there are both green and blue hydrogen proposals being pitched. Green hydrogen is produced from water and electricity with electrolyzers. It is the “cleanest” form of hydrogen, but also the most expensive to produce.
Hydrogen can also be made from natural gas – so-called “grey” hydrogen, which is the cheapest way to make hydrogen, but also the most carbon intensive. When CO2 is captured and sequestered from grey hydrogen production it becomes “blue.”
Horgan suggested his government will not discriminate in its support for hydrogen projects.
“That’s going to be a mix, I’m confident, at the beginning,” he said. “And as time goes by and technologies improve, we’re going to see, absolutely, a shift to almost exclusively green hydrogen.
“But we don’t want to foreclose on that innovation by making declarative statements at this early stage in the development in the strategy.”
There is already one major green hydrogen proposal that has been in the works for years now in B.C.
Renewable Hydrogen Canada (RH2C) proposes to build a series of plants that would make green hydrogen, methanol and renewable fuels. The Sundance Hydrogen project near Chetwynd would use wind power and BC Hydro grid power to produce green hydrogen for injection into the FortisBC natural gas stream to reduce its carbon intensity. That may require Enbridge (TSX:ENB) to make upgrades to the pipeline that feeds FortisBC its natural gas.
RH2C also has a proposed subsidiary, Pacific Hydrogen Canada, which would build an export terminal on the B.C. coast to export green hydrogen to California, Japan and South Korea.
RH2C's plans would require the building of a dedicated 500 megawatt wind farm, as well as carbon capture to capture CO2 from a bioenergy plant on the West Coast, with the captured CO2 and hydrogen being used to make renewable fuels.
