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Climate activists are rightfully disappointed in U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, who is supporting fossil energy instead of pushing for aggressive decarbonization. Nevertheless, it appears that Senator Manchin’s efforts will end in disappointment for fossil energy stakeholders. The electrification movement is accelerating, partly thanks to an explosion of interest in fuel cells. Fossil energy stakeholders are trying to carve out a foothold for natural gas in the fuel cell field, but now they are bumping up against new green hydrogen technology that could make fossil energy irrelevant.

SuperTruck 3 and hydrogen fuel cells

With the clock ticking on action to avert catastrophic climate change, the Energy Department’s new SuperTruck 3 initiative highlights how new fuel cell technology is accelerating the pace of decarbonization.

The Energy Department introduced the first iteration of SuperTruck in 2009, with the goal of increasing conventional fuel efficiency for freight hauling. Fuel cell technology was improving back then, but when the Energy Department introduced a second phase of SuperTruck in 2016 (as shown above), it still focused on improving petroleum-powered trucks.

Now here comes SuperTruck 3, which pushes diesel fuel aside in favor of new battery and fuel cell technologies, including green hydrogen.

Fuel cell vehicles are electric, like their battery powered cousins. However, instead of charging up and storing electricity, fuel cells produce electricity on-the-go by combining it with ambient oxygen, in the presence of a catalyst. The only emission from the pollution-free reaction is water.

The Energy Department announced its intentions for SuperTruck 3 last spring, as part of a broader initiative of almost $200 million aimed at dramatically reducing emissions from cars as well as trucks.

The SuperTruck 3 initiative took the biggest slice of the pie with $127 million going to five companies that will tackle hydrogen fuel cells as well as battery-powered electric trucks.

The Energy Department has supported electric vehicle startup companies throughout the years, most notably Tesla. However, this round of funding is specifically focused on accelerating the transition to electrification by legacy car and truck makers.

The five awardees are all well-known firms with generations of experience in conventional trucks in hand.

One is the Washington State company PACCAR, which traces its roots in the rail industry to 1905. PACCAR expanded its footprint into heavy duty trucks in 1945. The company will apply its share of the Energy Department funding to develop both battery and fuel cell electric trucks.

The other four awardees are more familiar to the general public. Volvo Group North America is tasked with bringing a 400-mile electric tractor-trailer and a megawatt-level charging station into operation. Daimler Trucks North America has a similar assignment aimed at creating 600-mile fuel cell trucks that turn in a performance equivalent to diesel fuel.

Detroit is also represented. Ford Motor Company will focus on gasoline-equivalent hydrogen fuel cell electric Class-6 “Super Duty” trucks, a category that includes school buses as well as larger beverage trucks and other medium-duty commercial vehicles.

General Motors will be working along similar lines, but in a more expansive mode. Along with Class 6 fuel cell trucks it will also tackle Classes 4 and 5, which cover everything from passenger vans to utility vehicles.

More green hydrogen for fuel cell trucks

The sticky wicket in all this is the hydrogen to power the fuel cells. Almost all of the global supply of hydrogen comes from natural gas. Most of the remainder comes from coal, and the result is a messy mix of climate impacts all through the supply chain.

If SuperTruck 3 had launched back in 2009, only these fossil sources would have been available for hydrogen to run the fuel cells. That would have clouded any progress in reducing emissions at the tailpipe. Fortunately, fossil sources are longer the only option.

General Motors, for example, is not only going to develop zero emission fuel cell vehicles. The company’s award of just over $26 million will also go to develop electrolysis systems that deploy an electrical current to push so-named green hydrogen out of water.

The green hydrogen revolution is just getting started

GM has already emerged as a leader in the areas of fuel cell vehicles and clean power for EV charging as well as clean power for general usage. The electrolysis assignment could help kickstart GM into a leadership role in the green hydrogen field as well, but they will have plenty of competition.

The green hydrogen field began gathering steam about two years ago, alongside a drop in the cost of wind and solar power. After all, it would make little or no sense to run hydrogen electrolysis systems with fossil energy.

The latest developments indicate a rapid scaling-up of the green hydrogen field.

Part of that acceleration is due to the interest of the mining sector in generating on-site power, which is a mixed bag in terms of environmental impacts. Nevertheless, green hydrogen activity in the mining sector can help build economies of scale and incentivize supply chains that help reduce costs for other applications as well.

Transforming hard-to-decarbonize industries

The global mining firm Fortescue Metals Group has staked out a pole position in the green hydrogen field, and earlier this week the company announced a supply chain deal that will make its Fortescue Futures branch the largest supplier of green hydrogen to the U.K.

The Fortescue announcement dovetails with news about the global steel industry that emerged this week. As reported by Reuters, the U.S. and the European Union reached a tariff deal that would incentivize low-carbon steel. Both countries are positioned to take advantage of the deal due to their transition to electric blast furnaces, a trend in which green hydrogen and other clean power resources are playing a role.

The U.S. - E.U. deal leaves U.K. steel makers out in the cold, but it should motivate them to take advantage of Fortescue’s plans for the U.K. market. Under the terms of the the deal, Fortescue partners J C Bamford Excavators and Ryze Hydrogen are tasked with growing the customer base for green hydrogen. Eventual expansion to the E.U. is also part of the plan.

On top of all this, Reuters has reported that Fortescue is formulating an $8.4 billion, industrial scale green hydrogen plan in Argentina, located in the province of Río Negro.

No country for natural gas, eventually

None of this means that fossil sourced hydrogen will evaporate from the global market any time soon. However, the writing is on the wall, and several U.S. states have begun seizing the opportunity to grow new jobs by establishing themselves as green hydrogen hubs in their region.

The new green hydrogen trend appears to recognize no political boundaries. The red state of Utah, for example, is already promoting the privately owned salt caverns within its borders as the linchpin of a regional renewable hydrogen hub.

Another interesting development occurred last month, when the firm Hy Stor Energy of Mississippi announced its intention to build the nation’s largest green hydrogen hub in its home state. Of particular interest is the role of legacy know-how in the venture. As reported by E&E News, Hy Stor’s CEO Laura Luce has extensive experience in the field of natural gas storage.

West Virginia could be next on the list. The state could gain a leading edge due to its proximity to major markets in the northeast and other regions. Alongside an abundance of water, West Virginia is also home to a vast store of abandoned coal fields that could be repurposed for wind and solar development, and potentially as hydrogen storage.

That is all well and good, except that Senator Manchin appears to be narrowly focused on carrying water for natural gas stakeholders in his state. It’s unfortunate that West Virginia is missing a golden opportunity for economic development and new green jobs, but at least workers elsewhere in the U.S. will benefit from the new green hydrogen trend.

Image credit via Department of Energy

There’s a raft of issues being discussed by world leaders in Glasgow, Scotland this week at COP26. But few would argue against the importance of accelerating the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy to secure global net-zero carbon emissions by mid-century and keep the 1.5 degrees of warming set out in the Paris Agreement within reach, one of the top COP26 goals.

Where does the world stand on renewable energy today? On very shaky ground: while the percentage of renewable energy in the global energy mix has been growing, albeit slowly, it still represents less than a third (29 percent) of the share of global electricity generation, according to the International Energy Agency.

A number of countries are determined to shift the scales dramatically in favor of renewables. The Biden administration has indicated that solar power could cover 40 percent of the nation’s grid by 2035, as TriplePundit has reported (today it stands at 21 percent of all electricity generated in the U.S.).

Similarly, the European Union has set a target to raise the share of renewable energy to 40 percent for final consumption by 2030, up from roughly 20 percent in 2019.

So what have been the major roadblocks to raising that share of renewable energy? For many in both the public and private sector, it’s been the conundrum of long-duration energy storage to address the fickle nature of solar and wind.

No renewables strategy without long-duration energy storage

Everyone seems to be in agreement that long-duration energy storage is a key part of solving the dilemma. In fact, long-duration energy storage is a critical feature of the U.S. Department of Energy’s plans for integrating more wind and solar onto the gird without sacrificing reliability and stability. The Energy Department defines long-duration energy storage as a device or system that can store electricity for at least 10 hours or more.

The challenge is to make long-duration energy storage reliable and cost-effective. If so, it could be a key part of the renewable energy transition. As a recent paper published in Nature Energy showed, long-duration energy storage can reduce the costs of deeply decarbonized electricity systems by 10 percent if the storage technology’s costs are below $20 per kilowatt-hour. The savings could reach as high as 40 percent if long-duration energy storage costs could be reduced to $1 a kilowatt-hour.

Why has that been such a tough dilemma to resolve? It comes down to the essential nature of wind and solar power. Wind speeds vary by the hour, day and season; sunlight is absent all night, and cloudy weather can diminish solar performance by day—in other words, the intermittency of renewable energy sources has long been a problem waiting to be solved. And the sooner the better.

Technology is primed to meet the challenge

A new player on the scene, the Swedish firm Azelio, claims to have a viable solution. Azelio specializes in energy storage with electricity and heat production. The technology enables the energy to be easily dispatched, making renewable energy available around the clock. The energy is stored in recycled aluminum from which it is converted into electricity and heat with a total efficiency of up to 90 percent. The solution is scalable, from 0.1 MW up to 100 MW, according to the company, providing 13 hours or more of consistent, secure power, and with zero carbon emissions.

Azelio is among a number of companies jostling for space in the long-duration energy storage business. Along with Azelio’s thermal energy storage technology, these firms are developing long-duration batteries such as flow batteries, as covered by 3p, gravity-based energy storage, pumped hydropower, various forms of electro-chemistries and mechanical energy storage.

Each of these firms is looking to address the limitation of lithium-ion batteries, a commonly used form of energy storage that only last for a few hours. Linking sets of lithium-ion battery arrays, similar to those used in electric cars, to get more hours of energy has proven to be far too cost-prohibitive, many experts say.

“These technologies were not around some years ago, at least not ones that could handle volume installations for long-duration energy storage. That’s different today,” Azelio CEO Jonas Eklind told 3p. He added that the company has started to industrialize its long duration energy storage by implementing production that “we are able to scale up into the thousands.” Commercial projects or demonstration and verification projects of their solution, called the TES.POD, are up and running in Sweden, Dubai, Morocco and Abu Dhabi.

Balancing the grid to avoid blackouts

An important aspect of the technology is that it addresses imbalance in the grid that occurs due to the intermittency of renewable energy, Eklind adds. “When you put a very high percentage of intermittent production into the grid without enough energy balancing functions, you create chaos, and that chaos is pushed to the end user, in the form of extremely high energy prices or blackouts, like the kind we’ve seen in California.”

As he points out, in the transition from fossil fuel vehicles to electric vehicles that is picking up steam, as 3p has discussed, the need for the grid to handle ever higher percentages of renewable energy will increase.

“So, if you combine this intermittent production with a grid that's not really built for handling that, with the changed behavior of the end users, then you create a perfect storm,” Eklind said.

Azelio’s solution attempts to address that by optimizing the system for daily cycling,  Eklind explained. “That means you can charge it during daytime, when you have a lot of solar energy for six hours. Then you discharge that energy during the 18 hours when you're don’t have a sufficient amount of solar energy, running through that cycle every 24 hours.”

As a modular, industrialized system that’s compact, it’s designed to be used by any kind of business or institution, from a factory, a hospital, office park, agriculture business or similar, according to Eklind.

He notes that this is a new business model that may take some adjustment. “You’re basically replacing OPEX [operating expenditure] with CAPEX [capital expenditure], because when you buy a renewable energy system, you buy a system that can provide energy with zero fuel costs. The cost of the system is higher than the cost of the system for fossil fuel, which you pay for every day. In this case, the fuel isn’t the cost; it’s free—you just need the system to capture the energy and collect it. This different mindset towards how we think about energy is why this approach won’t just explode tomorrow morning, but I believe change is coming.”

In fact, new concepts such as energy-as-a-service, which provide customers with energy services such as lighting in exchange for a recurring fee, or, a subscription for solar energy, are starting to pique interest among businesses and investors. The global market for energy-as-a-service is projected to reach $88.4 billion by 2027, not least because companies see it as a way to take a big slice out of their energy costs as well as meet their own carbon reduction goals.

In a decisive year for climate action, fresh approaches and a renewed commitment to bridge the renewable energy gap can’t come fast enough.

Image credit via Unsplash

As the Great Resignation continues, employers are seeking more ways to help employees feel fulfilled in their careers. According to a study by the National Environmental Education Foundation, almost 90 percent of employees engaged in their company’s sustainability work say it enhances their job satisfaction and overall feelings about the company. 

It can be challenging, however, to know where to begin with getting employees more involved in sustainability initiatives. 

EarthShare is a national organization that helps employers, communities and nonprofits connect to address environmental issues. Representatives from both EarthShare and the sustainability team at Facebook spoke with TriplePundit about three themes they’re seeing as they look to engage employees in sustainability-related initiatives.

1. Creating cross-departmental communication within a company helps build employee engagement in sustainability

“Green teams” are one strategy for creating greater employee engagement around sustainability. As Robin Perkins, EarthShare's vice president of communications and marketing, explained: “Green teams are platforms for employees to bring up issues specific to their workplace and suggest more sustainable alternatives.”

“These teams can form at any kind of company: Starbucks, Wal-Mart, Oliver Wyman, etc.,” Perkins said. Facebook, for example, has Green@ (pronounced “Green At”) chapters. These are location-based, interdepartmental groups composed of employees who are passionate about supporting the company’s environmental efforts but don’t hold sustainability-related roles.

“We look at Green@ members as community builders,” said Kati Kallins, sustainability program manager for Facebook. “The Green@ groups give voice to employees, providing an outlet to share their concerns, present solutions, and drive change internally.”  

Facebook also hosts two companywide sustainability events each year: Earth Week in April and a one-day Sustainability Summit in September.  Last year’s events were both held virtually due to the pandemic. The Earth Week livestream sessions drew more than 7,100 viewers from around the world and featured employees from 23 Facebook offices on three continents. The inaugural Sustainability Summit highlighted programs such as Facebook’s Net Zero 2030 roadmap and water restoration projects.

“It’s important to provide the historical context on these multi-year projects and why Facebook is prioritizing certain sustainability topics over others. The story behind how we’re enabling climate action is sometimes even more interesting than what we’re doing, which employees will see discussed in the media,” Kallins said.

Many of the initiatives discussed at the Sustainability Summit make a large difference in terms of environmental impact, but they are not always top of mind in day-to-day employee life. Kallins gave the example of the company’s data centers, which are the most resource-intensive areas of Facebook’s operations. Not all employees think of data centers when they think about sustainability measures, she said, as they are not as top of mind as something tangible like, say, sustainably farmed options in the workplace dining facilities.

2. As interest in climate and environmental justice grows, it’s important to inform employees

Following the release of EarthShare’s lauded Building Equity for All web series, Facebook invited the organization as a  production partner to develop a panel discussion on climate and environmental justice at this year’s Sustainability Summit. “Historically speaking, many diverse voices have felt disenfranchised in talks about climate change and the environment,” Perkins said.

“Part of our mission is to inspire people and businesses to help build a more just future for everyone,” she continued. “[We] saw the need to expand our community to include more voices, and elevate those voices, so we have been bringing the voices of experts to employees — discussing what the issues are and what is most needed.”

Mary MacDonald, EarthShare’s senior vice president of corporate engagement, recognized We Act for Environmental Justice, The Solutions Project and Groundswell as three organizations home to some of these expert voices. We Act and The Solutions Project collaborated with EarthShare for the Facebook climate justice event, and Groundswell helped with the Building Equity for All series. 

“It’s important to call out the incredible work being done on the ground by the hundreds of grassroots and fence-line community groups across the country that are doing the critical work that is making a difference for their immediate communities and beyond,” MacDonald said. 

And while the business community is still only beginning to understand and address climate justice, it is imperative for employers to inform and engage employees on this important topic. “So many companies have both DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] and climate mitigation programs,” MacDonald said. “It only makes sense to make the connection for employees between these two areas — it helps move both areas forward for those companies that are doing this good work.” 

3. Meet employees where they are

Since the start of the pandemic, flexibility has taken on even more importance in the workplace. Employees are looking for a greater say in their compensation, schedule, benefits, location and more. Likewise, one of the best ways to increase employee participation in sustainability efforts is to acknowledge that not everyone has the same strengths or interests. 

“What we’ve found is that you can’t use a one-size-fits-all approach to engaging employees,” said Kallins of Facebook. “It’s vital to match your programming to the specific passions and skill sets of your people.”

Facebook’s Green@ teams are ideal for employees looking to build community and connections both within and across Facebook office locations. For employees more interested in climate science and activism, Facebook has started its own cohort of The Climate Reality Project Leadership Corps, which includes online climate action training led by Al Gore and a team of scientists and activists. And for tech employees looking to make a difference, Facebook offers Sustainability Hackathons. In these incubator-like events, employees work together to create new climate-related innovations, covering topics like biodiversity and environmental justice. The hackathons generated more than 20 new product ideas in 2020 alone.

For Kallins, these programs are just the beginning for bringing about real change and progress. “We’ll only succeed if everyone sees climate action as part of their job,” she said. 

This article series is sponsored by Meta and produced by the TriplePundit editorial team. 

Image credit: Rawpixel.com/Adobe Stock

Today, dubbed as “Nature Day” at COP26 in Glasgow, did not score remotely as much press buzz nearly as the previous day’s focus on climate finance, but it did result in measures for which advocates of bolder climate action have long clamored.

The end of coal?

This morning, a coalition of nations and financial institutions have pledged to phase out coal power.

The newly issued transition statement on coal risks generating more criticism over how the ongoing COP26 talks are proceeding and what the climate talks' lasting impact will be. Countries currently reliant on coal to power their grids say they will turn away from unabated coal power generation (that is, any burning of coal at a plant that isn’t mitigated with any technology such as carbon capture) in the 2030s, and for smaller nations, that shift will occur during the 2040s. That's a timeline that will come across as too slow to those who believe climate catastrophe will occur sooner rather than later.

What this pledge does promise, however, is to end any issuance of new permits as well as a stop to the construction of new coal-fired power plants. The door is still open to such power generation plants incorporating carbon capture or a similar technology – an approach critics say is still largely unproven and could even have its own harmful effects. Nevertheless, carbon capture has its share of enthusiastic supporters. At the same time, research is out there that has concluded the technology is overall ineffective, with reasons including the reality that it often requires large amounts of energy. The discussion is far from over; carbon capture could very well become part of this transition away from coal due to the COP26 talks.

Countries signed onto this pledge include several large consumers of coal, such as South Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, Poland and Ukraine. But India, while announcing it will transition to net-zero by 2070, is not on the list: In fact, the country’s government has insisted that it is keen on expanding coal mining in the name of energy security. While China, the world’s top coal miner and consumer, would not commit to any phaseout of coal, its government did join Japan and Korea in a promise to cease any overseas financing of coal project by the end of this year.

The U.K. government says this pledge has over 190 signatories, among them the financial giants HSBC, Lloyd’s Banking and the U.K.’s NatWest – in total, all of the financial companies that have aligned with this commitment hold more than $17 trillion in assets.

The rich nation-poor nation divide

One sticking point that has complicated global climate change talks over the years is the gap in expectations between wealthier nations and lower-income countries (note the World Bank’s classifications of what makes a high income country, low-income country and those in between). Developing countries have long pointed out that wealthier nations like the U.S. and U.K. have long benefited from industrialization; countries siding with emerging economic giants like India and China argue that they simply want to follow a simple path toward creating wealth.

Therein lies the prickly question: Who pays for any meaningful climate action? Who funds the decommissioning of polluting coal plants and new utility-scale clean power projects?

COP26 and coal: Who pays?

One answer at Glasgow is the U.K.’s COP26 Energy Transition Council (ETC), which seeks to assist any country that is dependent on coal but faces financial and logistical challenges in undergoing a clean energy transition. To date, the ETC says it has the backing of 20 countries and 15 organizations that together can help deploy and pay for such as shift. This coalition has pledged assistance with such priorities as planning for utility-scale renewables, the development of micro-grids where needed and the rollout of energy efficient technologies.

So far, the prospects of COP26 having any notable success are slim. U.S. climate envoy John Kerry didn’t help expectations with his befogging assessment he made earlier this week, saying that COP26 had already “achieved success” yet “time is running short.”

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has come out with a far more realistic outlook. Even considering today’s news over coal, the IEA’s executive director, Fatih Birol, said that this week’s climate pledges could result in limiting global warming to 1.8°C mid-century. That’s hardly encouraging when considering the fact that the mantra for years after the Paris Accords was to limit any such change to 1.5°C.

With the UN’s own special advisor on climate action saying the most realistic path is a 2.7°C increase, it’s clear these new coal commitments need much more bite than bark.

Image credit: Dominik Vanyi via Unsplash

While much of the attention surrounding COP26 has focused on moving forward on big proposals like climate finance, other agreements inked at Glasgow show promise for communities who often lack a voice during such high-level climate talks.

For example, this week the Government of Honduras and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) signaled their commitment to promoting climate-smart agriculture through a joint agreement. The mutual commitment to search for additional funding will open doors to much-needed investment in an agricultural sector in Honduras, which has long been vulnerable to the shocks of climate change.

The agreement intends to unlock financing from the Green Climate Fund to bolster an already planned project named “Developing Resilience in Sula Valley,” which is funded by IFAD and currently in the design phase. The Sula Valley, home to cities such as San Pedro Sula (shown below), Choloma and Villanueva, has long been important to the economy of Honduras as it is a hub for both agriculture and industry. But it has also been vulnerable to flooding, notably after the crises that resulted a year ago after two hurricanes devastated the region.

Once fully funded and kicked off, the project will enable small-scale farmers in northwest Honduras to minimize their economic risk and losses in the face of disasters through resilient farming techniques and new technology.

Farmers across Honduras, particularly smallholder farmers, face increasingly intense risks each year due to natural disasters and climate change. In just the past three years, Honduras along with neighbors El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua have been battered by climate-induced natural disasters. Prolonged droughts and heavy rain devastated crop yields and created rampant food insecurity in 2019. The next year, as the collection of Latin American countries known as the Dry Corridor was handling the adverse effects of COVID-19, hurricanes Eta and Iota once again upended the agriculture sector.

Without access to credit, insurance or technology to mitigate the impacts of such disasters, many Hondurans are becoming “climate migrants,” fleeing their homeland in search of a more stable environment. Using data from the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, Brookings Institution reported that U.S. border apprehensions of Honduran families rose from 518 to 188,368 between 2012 and 2019.

The Sula Valley project aims to combat climate migration and transform Honduras’s food system through the use of climate-smart practices and technologies. Specifically, the project will invest in infrastructure like water harvesting, irrigation and rural roads as well as promote agricultural practices like early climate alert systems and territorial planning.

Importantly, the project will also increase smallholder farmers’ access to insurance and finance. Farmers without insurance and access to credit face advanced risk, especially as climate change worsens and season-to-season crop yields remain unpredictable.

Despite their importance in the global food industry’s supply chain and their production of an estimated 50 percent of the world’s calories, smallholder farmers are an afterthought when it comes to climate financing. According to a 2017 report from IFAD and Climate Policy Initiative, less than 2 percent of money invested in climate action is channeled to smallholder farmers in developing countries.

“The fact that small farmers barely receive 1.7 percent of global climate funds puts at risk not only their livelihoods, but the food security of entire nations,” said Rossana Polastri, IFAD’s Director for Latin America and the Caribbean and signee of the joint agreement between IFAD and the Government of Honduras. “We’re not only advocating, but also working to change this. Today’s signing is another step in that direction and we are confident that the strategic alliance between Honduras’s Government and IFAD will open the door to a fruitful partnership with GFC on this project.”

IFAD, the UN’s agency for rural development, is no stranger to working in Honduras. In 13 projects across 30-plus years working there, IFAD-supported projects have brought a total investment of more than $300 million in the country. The Sula Valley initiative is another step toward strengthening the rural agricultural sector in Honduras.

As world leaders and environmental champions convene at COP26 to renew and set commitments, it’s agreements like this that give momentum to a more resilient, climate shock-ready world.

Image credit: Esteban Benites via Unsplash; Héctor Emilio Gonzalez via Unsplash

Hydrogen is an abundant and clean burning gas, so it’s little wonder that many energy professionals consider it the key to powering the sustainable, net-zero economy of the future. The very abundance of hydrogen molecules has given rise to an array of options for producing it as an energy source. Charting a course for hydrogen that avoids unintended consequences will be a challenge, but a recent analysis indicates the hydrogen economy is closer than it seems. 

The hydrogen economy is already here

The hydrogen economy is often referred to as a fixture of the future, but the fact is that hydrogen is already ubiquitous. Fertilizer, food processing, refinery operations, toiletries and medicines are among the chief uses for hydrogen today, in addition to its use as a rocket fuel. 

Black & Veatch, a global consulting, engineering and construction company, took a closer look at the present and future uses for hydrogen in a recent white paper titled Hydrogen 2021: The Path to Net Zero Becomes Clearer.

As a tool for deep decarbonization, hydrogen can be deployed to add stability and flexibility to electric grids, thereby enabling the integration of even more renewable power. Hydrogen can also be blended with natural gas to help decarbonize heating and cooling systems, and it can be used in place of fossil energy for hard-to-decarbonize industries such as mining, manufacturing, and steel and cement making.

Hydrogen is already being used in fuel cells for stationary power supply without the noise and emissions of conventional generators, and hydrogen fuel cells are expanding throughout the mobility market to eliminate airborne pollutants from ships, aircraft and locomotives as well as cars and trucks. The element is also set to play a key role in the green chemistry field, partly through its use in producing ammonia. 

In short: Global demand for hydrogen is poised to skyrocket.

Cleaning up the hydrogen supply chain

Of course, none of this makes any sense from a climate action perspective under the current state of affairs; although hydrogen is a clean-burning fuel, the global supply of hydrogen drags a long tail of climate impacts and other issues. The vast majority of hydrogen in circulation today is derived from natural gas through a process called steam-methane reforming. In the U.S., natural gas accounts for 95 percent of domestic hydrogen production. 

Steam-methane reforming produces large amounts of carbon dioxide, but that is not the only issue that needs to be addressed. Natural gas extraction, storage and transportation are linked to local impacts on habitat, air and water resources as well as fugitive greenhouse gas emissions that escape throughout the supply chain, from the drilling site and on to the transportation, storage and distribution infrastructure.

In past years, these supply chain impacts could perhaps be justified by the benefits of hydrogen as a zero-emission fuel. More recently, though, sophisticated consumers and policymakers have begun to recognize the urgency of addressing habitat and biodiversity conservation hand in glove with decarbonization. Community justice and cultural concerns have also gained attention as manufacturers and other stakeholders adjust their supply chains to the demands of environmentally and socially conscious consumers as well as policymakers.

Black & Veatch addresses those concerns by emphasizing the use of “green” hydrogen produced by electrolysis using renewable energy resources, a process in which an electrical current creates hydrogen gas from water in an electrochemical cell. That process doesn’t make much sense if fossil fuels provide the electricity, but the advent of low-cost wind and solar power has been an absolute game changer.

In addition to the climate advantage of deploying renewable energy, electrolysis systems powered by renewables can be scaled up or down more easily to meet local conditions. That means hydrogen production can be decentralized, which would help relieve pressure to build contentious new gas pipelines. Instead, a nationwide, distributed network of electrolysis facilities could utilize roads and railways for distribution as well as existing pipelines.

Keeping natural gas in play, or not

The green hydrogen field is accelerating beyond expectations, leading Black & Veatch to conclude in its analysis that green hydrogen is a powerful tool in creating an achievable pathway to net zero across numerous “hard to abate” industries.

Realistically, though, it will take years for green hydrogen to push the steam-methane reforming of natural gas to the background. Black & Veatch raises the point that policymakers could support the continued use of natural gas in combination with carbon capture systems, often referred to as “blue” hydrogen production, as a cost-effective means of enabling the supply of hydrogen to keep pace with demand over the near term. 

"Some are not convinced that blue hydrogen is a sustainable solution, but the fact is that natural gas will be available well into the foreseeable future for hydrogen production and other uses,” Jonathan Cristiani, an advanced power fuels engineer for Black & Veatch, told TriplePundit. “The carbon capture technology for reducing those emissions is available now, at a scale large enough to make a significant difference."

More recently, new waste carbon reuse systems and carbon upcycling technologies are beginning to strengthen the economic case for carbon capture to be used in combination with hydrogen production.

However, if carbon capture technologies are source-agnostic, they could also be applied to other, more sustainable sources for natural gas (or methane). After all, hydrogen can be found practically anywhere. The challenge is to focus on resources that are sustainable and cost-effective.

One good example is gas recovery from municipal landfills. Early evidence indicates that landfill gas could provide an economical source for hydrogen production. The focus on hydrogen as a means of extracting value from waste gives rise to other possibilities as well. For example, hydrogen can be extracted directly from agricultural waste and other biomass, or from municipal wastewater, through biological processes that deploy microorganisms to do the heavy lifting.

In addition, researchers are developing systems that extract hydrogen from non-recyclable plastic waste, with carbon nanotubes as a high-value byproduct. Food waste is another area of global concern that could benefit from integration with the hydrogen supply chain.

Next steps for electrolysis

All of this activity indicates that traditional natural gas sources may exit the hydrogen production stage more quickly than anticipated.

Electrolysis with renewable energy is the chief alternative route. The next step is to scale up while minimizing land use issues related to the construction of new wind farms or solar arrays. Water resource issues could also become an obstacle in some regions.

A movement is already afoot to ascend those hurdles: The wind industry is beginning to experiment with combining wind farms and offshore electrolysis systems, which use seawater instead of fresh water to produce green hydrogen  to increase the output from wind farms.

If and when the technological obstacles to seawater-sourced hydrogen are surmounted, the result will be a practically limitless supply with little if any impact on land.

That may seem rather pie-in-the-sky, but it wasn’t too long ago that battery-powered cars were confined to the aisles of toy stores and look where we are now.

This article series is sponsored by Black & Veatch and produced by the TriplePundit editorial team.

Image courtesy of Black & Veatch

Any business leader who thinks they don’t have the time, energy or manpower to pursue community action should talk to Dottie Fitzgerald, the president and dealer principal of Fitzgerald Subaru of Gaithersburg, Maryland. Her automotive retail group has been putting on a pet adoption event once a month on a Saturday (the busiest day of the sales week) since 2014, right in the showroom. 

Yes, it’s taken a lot of committed effort, but her business has seen a net gain, Fitzgerald told TriplePundit. First of all, she’s happy her auto group can contribute to a cause she cares about — that’s how this all started — but she’s also seen her business thrive as it serves its community in meaningful ways. She says when customers see their store donating resources to a cause they care about, they feel better about their purchases and about the niche the business occupies in the community. And as far as the auto group’s employees go, well, Fitzgerald says it’s all hands-on deck at these pet adoption events. Teams are engaged and ready to help when a need arises. 

When asked whether other businesses would benefit from giving to their communities, even if it seems they just don’t have the bandwidth, Fitzgerald gave a resounding “yes” — and she has a story to prove it. When the retailer’s shelter partner, the Humane Rescue Alliance, asked Fitzgerald to help them find another retailer to support adoptions, she made calls on their behalf. In speaking to one retailer, noticing the leadership’s absorption with work, she said: “Look, I know how busy it is, so let me tell you about what it’s like to do an adoption event.” That team has since put on at least three pet adoption events, receiving great turnout and feedback. 

Beginning with the seed of an idea and persisting 

Fitzgerald Subaru didn’t begin its philanthropic activities with pet adoption. In addition to other pursuits, the retailer has long participated in the Subaru Share the Love Event, through which retailers donate to a charity of their customers’ choosing. One year, customers across the brand’s retail network overwhelmingly chose The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), which inspired Fitzgerald to align her passion for protecting animals with her work. Her team contacted the ASPCA for advice on how to go about setting up an adoption event a few years later. Since then, there hasn’t been much to hold the events back, besides pandemic restrictions. The Fitzgerald auto group extends into three states, and monthly events rotate across the locations. 

As you might expect, Fitzgerald’s team also goes above and beyond during Subaru Loves Pets month, the automaker’s pet adoption campaign held annually in October. Having prepared all year, Fitzgerald Subaru is ready to jump into action when the time comes. To celebrate the automaker’s dedication to supporting “Underdogs,” pets with special needs, the team created T-shirts listing senior dogs, blind dogs, deaf dogs, tripod dogs, and shelter dogs as examples of special needs pooches in need of loving homes. Fitzgerald sees every shelter dog as an Underdog, ready for love. 

Last year, over 20,000 pets found homes during the Subaru Loves Pets event, including thousands of Underdogs. More than 600 participating Subaru retailers nationwide donate $100* to a local partner shelter for every dog or cat adopted during Subaru Loves Pets. Over the years, Subaru and its retailers have donated more than $30 million to support the adoption, rescue, transport and health of more than 250,000 animals. 

Why not be a good neighbor to yourself?

The effects of active corporate social responsibility (CSR) are multifold, touching the entire business, as well as the community, Fitzgerald says. She recommends that businesses give to a cause their teams are passionate about, as it’s through genuine passion that Fitzgerald Subaru has been able to forge a connection with its community. 

She only began to recognize the community’s shared interest in animals by reading the retailer’s waiting area bulletin board, where staff regularly posts items of interest about pets, such as food recalls, training and general information. She says customers started to write in their service surveys that they appreciate the board because, “It tells me that you all care about animals like I do, so we continue to do business with you.”

Harvard Business Review contributor Mark Bonchek has this to say about engaging customers through meaningful CSR: “Customers are no longer just consumers; they’re co-creators. They aren’t just passive members of an audience; they are active members of a community. They want to be a part of something; to belong; to influence; to engage. It’s not enough that they feel good about your purpose. They want it to be their purpose too.” 

But the business benefits aren’t why Fitzgerald and her team continue to put on pet adoption events. The goal is always to get as many pets adopted as possible — and, of course, to transform lives. She recalls one memorable moment from just this year during the retailer’s local Subaru Share the Love Event donation check presentation, where one of the retailer’s early adopters from years ago spoke about his dog, Dylan. Fitzgerald recalls, “He's a pit bull mix, and he's obviously had somebody who must have clopped him in the face at some point, but a sweet, sweet, sweet dog. And his father said the adoption actually saved his life.”

Fitzgerald Subaru isn’t located in a small town where everyone knows each other. It’s right in the action of the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, but Fitzgerald lives only six miles roundtrip from the store. “I am my own neighbor,” she says, and with that mindset, there’s no wonder she sees little division between business and community. 

*Disclaimer: Subaru Retailers donated $100 for every dog or cat adoption from partner shelters from October 1, 2021 through October 31, 2021, up to $3,100 in total.

This article series is sponsored by Subaru and produced by the TriplePundit editorial team. 

Image credits: New Africa/Adobe Stock and Subaru

Today, climate finance is the focal point of discussions in Glasgow. The premise of today’s theme at COP26 is fairly simple. As the logic goes, poorer countries need funds to pay for projects that can ween them off of carbon-intensive fuels; richer countries, as they’ve been emitting more than a few lion’s share of carbon in the footprint, should foot the bill.

Part of this conversation involves curbing the finance of fossil fuel projects worldwide, including those in developing nations. While the longstanding argument behind such investments is that they can lift poorer countries out of “energy poverty,” critics say those promises are more than often not met.

It’s been a rocky journey for climate finance so far

It all sounds relatively simple – until one gets into the climate finance weeds, as in the pesky details surrounding who exactly, and when and how, these funds will be paid in the first place. Back in 2009, wealthy nations were part of a brokered agreement in which they promised to pay $100 billion annually to poorer nations through 2020 in order to finance climate-related projects. Last month, the governments of Canada and Germany admitted that the world’s richest economies did not hold up their part of the bargain: a shortfall smaller and poorer nations had been saying all along.

“We are not asking for handouts, we are asking for compensation for damages, as a result of the profligacy of these developed countries,” Molwyn Joseph, minister of the environment for Antigua and Barbuda, told Financial Times yesterday. “Those that emit this carbon, that is causing climate events, should pay.”

The countries behind that promise say they will pay off their climate finance IOUs, but the funds won’t come entirely through until 2023 – thereby adding an air of tension wafting above Glasgow. The ongoing tussle over climate finance could “make or break” the COP26 talks, add FT’s reporters Leslie Hook and Joanna S. Kao.

The global financial sector says it’s ready for a transformation

While governments’ ministers and cabinet secretaries are trying to hammer out an agreement in between issuing public statements, the global financial sector says it will step up its efforts.

Earlier today, a coalition of insurers, banks and investors backed by $130 trillion in assets say it will place tackling climate change at the center of its members’ work. Meanwhile, at least 20 countries announced that they will stop any financing of fossil fuel projects beyond their shores by the end of next year.

Dubbed the United Nations Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, as of press time this group includes about 450 financial companies spread across 45 nations. As the New York Times describes the coalition’s pledge, it could result in “a transformation of the global financial system and would help businesses, financial firms and entire industries undergo fundamental restructuring for a carbon-neutral future,” wrote the Times’ Liz Alderman and Eshe Nelson.

“The architecture of the global financial system has been transformed to deliver net zero,” said Mark Carney, a former governor of the Bank of England and currently a U.K. and U.N. climate envoy. “We now have the essential plumbing in place to move climate change from the fringes to the forefront of finance so that every financial decision takes climate change into account.”

Climate finance and the uncomfortable question about fossil fuel projects

It all sounds ambitious, but there are more pieces to this climate finance panel. Earlier today, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink noted that the pressure to decarbonize the economy is largely falling on public companies – with the result that more carbon-heavy assets are moving to portfolios run by private companies, which aren’t subjected to the same level of public disclosures. While some evidence suggest private equity investments in fossil energy are dwarfed by those in renewables, Fink did sound this warning in Glasgow, according to FT: “We are seeing more hydrocarbons moving away from public entities to private entities. If we’re serious about this . . . we have to ask all of society to move forward or we’re lying to ourselves, we will not get to a net-zero.”

The U.K. government says its already moving quickly to address the concerns laid out by leaders such as Fink. Rishi Sunak, the Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced his plans to ensure his country is the world’s first net-zero financial services center. Details of how that center would work are still under wraps, but according to Sunak said the results would be that companies based within the country would be required to disclose a “clear, deliverable plan” as part of the U.K.’s goal to secure a net-zero economy by mid-century.

The challenge COP26 organizers face can be summed up in two words that leave many climate action activists jaded: net-zero and pledge. As for the word pledge, the reasons behind any cynicism lie in part with that aforementioned 2009 climate action promise. And when discussing the concept of net-zero, while the commitments appear impressive, the devil lurks in those details. Critics of the net-zero bandwagon point to shortcomings such as the reliance on unproven technologies along with the lack of disclosure in how these net-zero journeys will actually work.

But, if the delegates at COP26 can come up with solid plans to ensure climate finance can actually work – as in strategies that include: investments in renewables; ending subsidies for fossil fuels; bold climate finance plans for countries that need them the most; and assurance from companies worldwide that environmental justice principles are aligned with business decisions. If such commitments come forward in Glasgow during the next several days, then we can discuss COP26 as an event that had far more “make” than “break.”

Image credit: Jeremy Bezanger via Unsplash

U.S. workers have been quitting their jobs in record numbers, a history-making phenomenon dubbed the “Great Resignation.” The trend has been described as an overall plus for workers, who are seen as exercising the freedom to explore new opportunities. However, the term “resignation” itself implies a degree of choice that is simply not an option for many workers. Employers who claim to support equity and diversity need to keep pressing for broader government policies that open up opportunities for all workers, not just for some.

The Great Resignation: New opportunities for me, not thee

Glowing success stories abound in commentary about the Great Resignation, yet they tend to leave out key details that make all the difference in a worker’s ability to pursue new opportunities.

For example, CNN recently described a hospitality worker in Alaska who quit her unsatisfying job, moved to Texas with her boyfriend, attended a coding boot camp, and started interning as a software engineer.

That transition sounds easy enough, at least for workers who appear to be young and in good health, and who have the financial resources to stop working, move thousands of miles away, attend a training course in a new field, and begin an internship without the guarantee of a new job at the end of the effort.

It also helps to have the educational background and social capital needed to successfully navigate training and land an internship in a new field. Those assets are easy to take for granted, but they are far from universal.

Having a life partner to bear half the load is another key advantage, as is the apparent absence of children and other dependent family members from the picture drawn by CNN.

All in all, the CNN profile raises more questions than it answers. Given the abundance of opportunities available for young, healthy adults with resources and without family responsibilities, it is all too obvious why many workers can and do choose to leave for greener pastures. The harder question is what to do about those who do not have a choice.

Whatever happened to the working mother?

In fact, all this sudden talk of freedom and opportunity is quite a turnaround from just a few months ago, when more attention was still being paid to the impact of the pandemic on working mothers.

Reporter Don Lee of The Los Angeles Times took on the topic in depth last August. He notes that many working mothers were forced to quit and stay home when schools and daycare closed at the outset of the pandemic. Now that schools and daycare are reopening many of them are returning to work, but they are paying the consequence for their absence.

“The pandemic has exacted a heavy toll on millions of moms in terms of job security, pay equity and long-term career opportunities — losses many will likely never recover,” Lee writes.

“In significant numbers, they endured pay cuts, reduced hours, diminished retirement benefits and lost promotions,” he adds.

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The opportunity to work from home has been cited as a key factor contributing to the Great Resignation, but the experience of women during the pandemic demonstrates that working from home is not an equal opportunity.

Lee cites Misty Heggeness, a U.S. Census Bureau economist, who explains that teleworking mothers often struggle to keep up with their colleagues due to the demands of family multitasking while working from home. They are also cut off from spontaneous career opportunities that arise for employees who are meeting and bonding with supervisors in person.

“[Heggeness] and other experts fear the pandemic’s long-term effects will deprive the economy of needed productive workers and set back decades of advances that women had made professionally and in corporate America, including narrowing the pay gap with men,” Lee writes.

Slow up — if you can

All of this should raise red flags for employers who profess to support women’s equality in the workplace. Supporting parental leave is a start, but a complex web of career advancement issues also needs to be addressed.

An equally thorny problem arises in the context of the gig economy. Long before the pandemic struck, economists were raising concerns about gig worker exploitation, including long hours and unpredictable on-demand schedules that obstruct career development goals, disrupt family life, and interfere with health and sleep patterns.

These workers, too, are at risk of falling behind as others move forward in the Great Resignation.

Erika Rodriguez, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Maine at Farmington, stresses the importance of polices that enable workers to control their time, work at a reasonable pace, and get more healthful rest in their daily lives. In the absence of supportive government or corporate policies, she advocates for workers to collaborate on a “slow-up” strategy and set their own boundaries.

However, Rodriguez also notes that setting boundaries is a potentially risky strategy that could lead to loss of promotion opportunities or even termination. In addition, the slow-up strategy is not available to all workers in all fields. The state of affairs in the food delivery app sector within the gig economy underscores that point.

In New York City, for example, app-based delivery gig workers have been protesting a mounting list of grievances including “wage theft, no access to bathrooms, arbitrary deactivations, rampant e-bike theft, and violent assault and murder while they're working,” as described in Vice last spring, over and above the expense of buying, maintaining and repairing their own delivery bikes, while enduring the relentless grind of keeping pace with incentives and penalties meted out by the apps.

In this context, the slow-up strategy is pure fantasy. The idea of quitting work, moving across the country, and taking a training course leading to an office job is equally far-fetched, if not more so.

What about the great equalization?

Despite opportunity gaps like these, success stories about the Great Resignation can be useful. They can help raise awareness among employers about the importance of raising wages, adding benefits, creating new pathways for promotion, and implementing workplace programs that support diversity and inclusion.

On the big picture, though, it’s important to keep in mind that the Great Resignation was not coined as an all-purpose term referring to equal opportunities for career mobility. It is credited to the Texas A&M professor Anthony Klotz, who has spent years studying the reasons why employees choose to resign. His particular area of focus is on “the different ways that employees resign and the causes and effects of different resignation styles.”

In a corporate context, those choices made during the Great Resignation can certainly lead to new opportunities and motivate a change in corporate culture. However, many other members of the working public will remain walled off from this world.

Corporate leaders who seek to open new doors need to reach beyond their own operations, and lobby for voting rights, reproductive rights, and other areas of foundational public policy that impact the agency of workers both in and out of working hours.

Image credit: Norma Mortenson via Pexels

COP26 is singing a different tune. We are hearing less talk about curbing emissions and convoluted clean technology solutions and more about addressing the rights of people who have shouldered the burden of a warming planet the most.

For years, the annual COP climate talks left Indigenous peoples on the sidelines, even though their communities were among those most affected by climate change impacts such as deforestation and human rights abuses. COP26 appears so far to show some signs of a turning point. Now, Indigenous communities appear to be on a path toward winning back a tad of what they have lost over the past centuries, based on several announcements made during this opening week of COP26 in Glasgow. As of press time, more than $19 billion in commitments to stop deforestation by 2030 have tallied up, some of which are directly targeted for Indigenous peoples.

A new financial commitment to Indigenous communities and forests

The gestures include $1.7 billion that wealthy nations so far have committed to Indigenous communities as an acknowledgement of the roles they have played in protecting vulnerable lands, including forests, worldwide. The pledge is an affirmation of what Indigenous rights activists have been saying for years: As they have been living on these lands for centuries and even millennia, their communities are the ones who know best about ensuring they are around for future generations.

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When you think of how forests are integral to many companies’ supply chains — and in turn how much of this land has been lost — that $1.7 billion could be seen as the start of back rent payments that are owed to these communities worldwide.

A note of caution: The 2014 Declaration of Forests was supposed to achieve similar goals, but if you had long forgotten about that effort, it is in a large part due to the fact that over the past seven years deforestation has accelerated, not slowed.

Could COP26 actually bring results?

But, in the event that COP26 turns out to be successful in the long term, one organization could score some credit.

The LEAF Coalition (Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest finance), announced yesterday that it has secured at least $1 billion for countries and regional governments that are committed to protecting their subtropical and tropical forests. Currently the list of countries participating includes Costa Rica, Ecuador, Ghana, Nepal and Vietnam.

So far, almost 20 companies have inked an agreement to be a part of this coalition. Back in April, that total was nine, which included Amazon. Corporate participants must commit to large voluntary cuts to their own emissions that align with the 2015 Paris Accords and science-based targets. Any contributions they make to LEAF are an addition to, not a replacement for, their internal emission reduction commitments.

A note of caution

The list of companies working with the coalition includes Airbnb, Bayer, Delta Air Lines, Inditex, GSK, PwC, Salesforce, SAP and Unilever. LEAF is not without its critics. At least observer has suggested this is simply a rebranding of the REDD program, a framework opponents say can threaten Indigenous communities instead of protecting them. Over the years other commentators have pointed out that such programs are simply carbon credits rebranded, with the results of even more land rights violations and even links to the murder of Indigenous people.

If LEAF ends up becoming all talk and no (or negative) action, activists are ready to respond.

One of them is Tuntiak Katan, a Shuar from Ecuador who also works with the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities. “Don’t make political promises that you’re not going to keep,” he told the COP26 assembly. Don’t make finance announcements or announcements on the climate if you’re not going to work with Indigenous communities. Please don’t murder us. Don’t kill us.”

Bottom line: Doing what is right and just for Indigenous communities requires doing exactly that — funding and deploying projects that can bring positive results for these communities. “The call for a ‘just transition; means more than merely phasing out fossil fuels; it also means phasing out the injustices and inequalities that have defined the past,” Joe McCarthy wrote for Global Citizen last week.

Image credit: Leon Kaye