Hydrogen, meet salt cavern

A massive green hydrogen project in Utah has won a $504.4 million conditional loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office. The project, called Advanced Clean Energy Storage (ACES), will generate hydrogen from renewables and store it deep underground in what’s called a salt dome. ACES will use that stored hydrogen to generate electricity in a hybrid power plant, running on both natural gas and hydrogen.

ACES is one of the many planned hydrogen hubs in the U.S., and once completed it would be one of the largest in the country. The loan will finance an initial 220 megawatts of hydrogen production and 300 gigawatt hours of storage.

What did it take to put this deal together, and what does it say about the future of hydrogen hubs more broadly?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Jigar Shah, director of the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office (LPO) about the project. The LPO is the government agency behind the conditional loan guarantee.

Shayle and Jigar talk about what made this particular project attractive to the LPO. They talk about why the salt dome storage was essential to making the project work, and the other uses for hydrogen beyond power, such as a feedstock for ammonia production and other heavy industries. They also break down the difficulties in transporting hydrogen and the need to site hydrogen production near consumption.

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