The US Department of Energy’s Title XVII Innovative Energy Loan Guarantee Program has given Monolith conditional approval for a $1.04 billion loan, which will allow the company to expand its commercial facilities in Hallam, Nebraska.
The Olive Creek plant will be expanded by a factor of ten, increasing annual output from 5,000 tonnes of turquoise hydrogen derived from natural gas with low greenhouse gas emissions to nearly 50,000 tonnes.
The Nebraska-based company, which was founded in 2012, claims that its methane pyrolysis method produces 0.45 kilograms of CO2 equivalent per kilogram of H2, though it plans to eventually replace fossil gas with biomethane, making the process carbon-negative. The Monolith loan would be the first from the DOE’s Loan Programs Office (LPO) since the Vogtle nuclear plant in Georgia received a loan in 2016.
