New Texas Fuel Cell Gigafactory Pours Cold Water On Fossil Fuels

Join daily news updates from CleanTechnica on e-mail. Or follow us on Google News!

Everyone seems to be speaking in regards to the goings-on over on the iconic oil and fuel producing state of Texas, the place public officers have been pulling out all of the stops to impede clear power funding. However, the hits simply carry on coming. Within the newest growth, Ballard Energy Programs is transferring ahead with plans to arrange a 3-gigawatt gasoline cell manufacturing facility in Texas, to assist squeeze fuel and diesel out of the mobility market.

Texas Loves New Giga-Scale Gasoline Cell Manufacturing facility

Should you’re considering gasoline cell vehicles, guess once more. This explicit manufacturing facility just isn’t about vehicles. Ballard is a worldwide agency, primarily based in Canada, and it’s banking on the demand for zero emission gasoline cell buses, vans, and locomotives to justify its gasoline cell investments world wide. The corporate has adopted a strategic plan that focuses on constructing factories within the nations the place its prospects are located (see more Ballard coverage here).

Texas is a part of the plan, and at the least some public officers within the state are on board with it. The concept is to construct a brand new gasoline cell manufacturing facility on 22 acres of commercial land situated on the Rockwall Know-how Park in Rockwall, which is managed by the Rockwall Financial Growth Company.

“The REDC has provided an attractive mix of land, financial, fee and permit incentives for the facility, while assisting in the planning and approval process,” Ballard famous in a press launch dated March 14, through which it described its resolution to take a position an preliminary $160 million within the venture.

CleanTechnica is reaching out to Ballard for extra particulars in regards to the monetary angle and different components of the inducement package deal, if out there. We’re guessing that it was substantial sufficient to lure Ballard away from investing its preliminary $160 million in another website someplace else.

There are nonetheless some procedural bins to examine off earlier than Ballard and Rockwell give the ultimate inexperienced gentle to the venture. Assuming that the bins will all be checked, the manufacturing facility shall be absolutely constructed out by 2027, churning out the equivalent of 3 gigawatts of gasoline cells. Ballard gives the next breakdown: “8 million membrane electrode assemblies (MEAs), 8 million bipolar plates, 20,000 fuel cell stacks, and up to 20,000 fuel cell engines per year.”

That’s only for starters. “The land acquisition rights and facility design provide Ballard with optionality for additional future phases at the Rockwall site,” Ballard explains.

“Future phases are expected to further increase production scaling and capacity expansion with much lower capital requirements,” Ballard provides, which is especially attention-grabbing. The comparatively excessive price of gasoline cells is among the many the reason why they’ve been lagging behind battery-powered automobiles within the race to decarbonize the automotive business. Apparently Ballard is aiming to slim that hole.

The US Division Of Vitality Loves Texas, Too

The REDC just isn’t the one gasoline cell fan on the town. The US Division of Vitality has been banking on gasoline cells to assist speed up the power transition alongside lithium-ion batteries and different zero emission expertise.

In the identical March 14 announcement, Ballard additionally famous that the Vitality Division has really useful it for 2 grants totaling $40 million, to be put in direction of fantastic tuning its gasoline cell manufacturing programs. The funding got here by the company’s “Clean Hydrogen Electrolysis, Manufacturing, and Recycling Program.”

The 2 grants are a part of a newly introduced $750 million program, funded by the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Regulation, that helps the Vitality Division’s purpose of juicing the gasoline cell business to assist bring down the cost of green hydrogen.

If permitted, one grant will put $30 million into tweaking Ballard’s current programs in partnership with the Nationwide Renewable Vitality Laboratory, with the purpose of offering “high-throughput manufacturing of 20,000 fuel cell stacks per year for a range of stationary and transportation applications.”

One other $10 million will go in direction of bringing down power and water consumption associated to the manufacturing of gasoline cell parts.

To gild the general public funding lily, earlier at present Ballard introduced that the Inner Income Service can be offering it with $54 million in funding tax credits for the new gigafactorybeneath the Qualifying Superior Vitality Venture Tax Credit score provision funded by the 2022 Inflation Discount Act.

Extra Sustainable Gasoline For Gasoline Cell Buses

Gasoline cell buses are electrical automobiles with no airborne tailpipe emissions, which implies they will present an alternate decarbonization pathway. The one tailpipe emission from a gasoline cell electrical automobile is water, because the cell catalyzes a response between saved hydrogen and ambient air to generate electrical energy.

The sticky wicket, after all, is the gasoline. Hydrogen gasoline cells run on hydrogen. The worldwide hydrogen provide chain is at the moment dominated by pure fuel, with gasified coal additionally chipping in. Inexperienced hydrogen sourced from water is a extra sustainable selection however it’s operating a distant second. Prices are excessive and authorities subsidies are usually not bridging the hole.

On the brighter facet, some power analysts anticipate that prices will decline quickly in markets the place wind and photo voltaic assets are ample, together with the US.

In that regard, the Vitality Division’s newest spherical of BIL funding is simply the tip of a really massive low-cost hydrogen iceberg.

Final fall, the Vitality Division introduced seven regional consortia to share $7 billion in BIL funding, earmarked for the institution of “Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs.” The regulation requires a carve-out for pure fuel sourcing, however the principle thrust is on inexperienced hydrogen and different various sources.

This system additionally focuses consideration on decarbonizing vans and different heavy obligation automobiles. “Zero emission fuel cell trucks have emerged as big winners in the new Clean Energy Hydrogen Hubs competition, a $7 billion Energy Department program aimed at ramping up H2 production across the US,” CleanTechnica famous again in October.

Chip in just a few {dollars} a month to help support independent cleantech coverage that helps to speed up the cleantech revolution!

Extra Gasoline Cell Love For Texas

On March 12, the Biden-Harris administration additionally supplied extra particulars on the strategic planning concerned in establishing hydrogen refueling infrastructure alongside main freight corridors within the Interstate Freeway system, as a part of a broader freight electrification plan.

Texas options prominently within the plan, with Interstates 10, 20, 35, and 45 encompassing about half the state and drifting into Louisiana.

Circling again to the hydrogen provide chain, fossil power stakeholders in Texas apparently hope to have it each methods. The brand new Texas-based Gulf Coast Hydrogen Hub is likely one of the Vitality Division awardees tasked with persevering with the pure fuel provide chain buzzing, but it surely additionally describes Texas because the “largest renewable energy market in the nation,” with 36 gigawatts of wind and 15 of photo voltaic already in hand.

We’ll see how that shakes out. Fuel stakeholders are relying on carbon sequestration to adjust to their Regional Hydrogen Hub award, although the added expense of carbon seize may tilt the stability in favor of inexperienced hydrogen and different renewable sources.

Apparently inexperienced hydrogen traders see it that method. Texas has been scoring some huge new green hydrogen investments of late, regardless of Republican-led makes an attempt to discourage such shenanigans.

Keep watch over the Hydrogen Metropolis venture in Texas, the place the Japanese agency INPEX is amongst these keen on producing green hydrogen for markets in Asia and elsewhere, with a give attention to inexperienced ammonia.

The main wind developer Ørsted can be relying on green hydrogen from Texas to decarbonize its offshore fleet with artificial methanol. Methanol can be utilized as a liquid gasoline, however we’re simply noticing that methanol can be rising in its place for hydrogen in gasoline cells.

When you’ve got any ideas about that, drop us a notice within the remark thread.

Comply with me @tinamcasey on Bluesky, Threads, Publish, and LinkedIn.

Picture: Ballard Energy Programs is planning a huge gasoline cell manufacturing facility in Texas, which is able to assist push fossil power out of the heavy duty transportation sector (photograph cropped, courtesy of Ballard).