Southern California Gas Co. (SoCalGas) has announced a partnership with GTI Energy to research the use of hydrogen and hydrogen blending for decarbonizing hard-to-decarbonize commercial and industrial processes.
The project will focus on heavy equipment, blended with natural gas up to 100% hydrogen, with a focus on industries such as steelmaking, glass, cement, aerospace, and agriculture. The study will emphasize costs, safety, and emissions reductions when introducing hydrogen to commercial and industrial uses. SoCalGas has funded the project with $752,000, in addition to a $1.77 million grant approved by the California Energy Commission.
The research project will survey large commercial and industrial users to understand which equipment has the highest potential for decarbonization with hydrogen blends. After identifying those uses, the project team will test commercial and industrial equipment fuel blending up to 100% hydrogen. The project brings together experts in hydrogen applications across different sectors, including Utilization Technology Development, NFP, the Electric Power Research Institute, the University of California, Irvine, and the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute.
Neil Navin, chief clean fuels officer at SoCalGas, stated that finding ways to decarbonize heavy industries whose functions are difficult or impossible to electrify is one of California’s biggest challenges in achieving net zero. He believes that the partnership with GTI Energy will help identify the most promising avenues to decarbonize and take important steps toward reaching net zero through clean fuels.
Hydrogen is expected to play a critical part in SoCalGas’ and California’s energy future, especially in decarbonizing hard-to-electrify sectors such as heavy-duty transportation, power generation, and heavy industries. To that end, SoCalGas is also developing the Angeles Link, a proposed, dedicated clean renewable hydrogen pipeline system that could deliver clean, reliable, renewable energy to the Los Angeles region. The California Public Utilities Commission has approved SoCalGas’ request to track costs for advancing the first phase of the project, which could be the nation’s largest dedicated clean renewable hydrogen pipeline system and support significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions from heavy-duty trucks, power generation, industrial processes, and other hard-to-electrify sectors of the Southern California economy.
The project is an integral part of SoCalGas’ ongoing efforts to help accelerate California’s energy transition. Angeles Link, the H2 Innovation Experience, and more than a dozen hydrogen demonstration projects that SoCalGas is currently pioneering are all part of the company’s efforts.
The study’s results are expected to provide important outcomes to the industry for hydrogen implementation across multiple end-use sectors, including safety, equity, and environmental impacts. The partnership between SoCalGas and GTI Energy is a significant step forward in California’s journey towards achieving net-zero aspirations, helping to reduce carbon emissions in challenging sectors of the economy while creating a more sustainable future.
