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Episode #155: 'MachH2 and the Future of Hydrogen with Michigan's Pioneers' with Todd Allen and Greg Keoleian, Co-Directors of MI Hydrogen [an Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast]

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Recently, the fervor behind hydrogen energy in the United States reached fever pitch with the announcement of the hydrogen hubs that had been selected for federal support, meaning the future for this emerging energy source is brighter than ever. To truly understand the current hurdles but also the unmatched future potential of U.S. hydrogen, the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast visited one of these esteemed hubs to hear directly from the experts themselves.

Specifically, Todd Allen is the Chair of the University of Michigan's Nuclear Engineering & Radiological Sciences Department and Greg Keoleian is Director of the Center for Sustainable Systems in the university's School for Environment and Sustainability, and together they are Co-Directors of MI Hydrogen. Listen is as podcast host Jason Price visits the campus and, along with podcast producer Matt Chester, learns more about the Midwest Alliance for Clean Hydrogen (MachH2), one of the seven federally sponsored hydrogen hubs recently selected by the U.S. Department of Energy. Todd and Greg, leading figures in MachH2, provide insights into the challenges and opportunities of integrating hydrogen into the energy landscape and discuss everything from the current state of hydrogen, the impact of federal efforts to the role of participating utilities, distinguishing factors of MachH2, and their confidence in the future of hydrogen and Michigan's position as a key player in the hydrogen revolution.

 

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Thanks to the sponsor of this episode of the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast: West Monroe. 

 

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Todd Allen's Energy Central Profile: https://energycentral.com/member/profile/todd-allen-1/about

MI Hydrogen Fact Sheet: https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/energy/hydrogen-factsheet

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TRANSCRIPT

Jason Price:

Welcome to the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast. This is the show that brings leading minds from the energy industry to discuss the challenges and trends that are transforming and modernizing our energy system.

And new for 2024, our listeners can now submit a recorded question. Just go to Power Perspectives on Energy Central and look for the link labeled SpeakPipe. We may select your question and recorded voice to be on a future episode.

And a quick thank you to West Monroe, our sponsor of today's show.

Now, let's talk energy.

I am Jason Price, Energy Central Podcast host and director with West Monroe, today sitting in the Michigan Memorial Phoenix Project at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. And with me on the line from Orlando, Florida is Energy Central producer and community manager, Matt Chester.

Matt, we've got an exciting program. First, I'm sitting on the campus of this year's college football national champion, so congratulations to the Wolverines.

 

Todd Allen:

Yeah. And also the home of the number one nuclear engineering department in the country.

 

Jason Price:

Thank you for that.

And second, we are discussing the future of hydrogen and the federally sponsored hydrogen hubs with two of the nation's leading minds on the hydrogen economy.

We did have Todd Allen on the show in 2023. So before we bring on our guests, can you give us the skinny, Matt, on that episode, and what is a hydrogen hub?

 

Matt Chester:

Sure, Jason.

And you're right. The regular listeners of this podcast will recognize one of today's guests from a few months back in episode number 139 titled Guiding Utilities of the Future Via Energy Market Analysis. In that conversation we learned some of the collaboration that the University of Michigan was doing with Idaho National Laboratory as it pertains to studying economics, technologies and more to determine how nuclear can evolve as a part of the overall energy sector.

And I'll be sure to link to that episode in this episode's show notes, but today we're pivoting to look at the future of energy from a hydrogen perspective as well, namely via one of the hydrogen hubs selected by the federal government for recent investment.

And as the Department of Energy defines them, hydrogen hubs are networks of clean hydrogen producers, consumers, and connective infrastructure all aimed at fast tracking the large scale production and use of clean hydrogen in that future energy economy.

 

Jason Price:

Well, thanks for that, Matt.

And I have the distinct honor to be in person with Todd Allen on this beautiful and historic campus. And I'm here because this winter, the US Department of Energy made its long anticipated selection of hydrogen hubs across the country. The Midwest Alliance for Clean Hydrogen, referred to as the MachH2, is one of the seven selected hubs that will help coordinate and jumpstart a regional hydrogen economy. The University of Michigan is one of the key participants in the MachH2, and leading this at the university are my two guests.

So first, let me introduce our returning podcast, who's sitting by my side, Professor Todd Allen.

Todd is the Department Chair at the University of Michigan's Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences and the founding director of the Fastest Path to Zero Initiative.

Professor Allen, thank you for hosting us today.

 

Todd Allen:

Yeah, really glad to join you again.

 

Jason Price:

And Todd and I are joined virtually by one of Todd's colleagues in the University of Michigan's hydrogen team, Professor Greg Keoleian.

Greg is the co-director of MI Hydrogen, and that's MI as in M-I for Michigan, the university's cross-campus center to create hydrogen solutions that accelerate the clean and just energy transitions. And he also has served as Michigan's Peter M. Weigie Professor of Sustainable Systems since 2001.

Professor Keoleian, welcome to Power Perspectives Podcast.

 

Greg Keoleian:

Glad to be joining the program today.

 

Jason Price:

Let's get started, gentlemen.

So government funding aside, both of you have been studying H2 for a long time.

Greg, I'll start with you. First, please describe where are we today with hydrogen and what is needed to get from where we are today to a future where hydrogen is an integrated part of our energy system? And second, do you feel the federal effort with the H2 hubs is going to get us there?

 

Greg Keoleian:

Sure.

So I'll give you a quick overview of hydrogen today. It's primarily used as a feedstock for petroleum refining, the chemical industry. There are some fuel applications in buildings. They're used in forklifts, fuel cell buses.

About 10 million metric tons a year are produced in the United States. And that's currently done by steam methane reforming of natural gas, which generates a lot of carbon dioxide emissions, which is therefore problematic; like seven to 10 kilograms CO2 per kilogram of hydrogen. But hydrogen could play a really important role in decarbonizing economic sectors in our transportation, industrial sectors, where particularly electrification is problematic.

But in order to decarbonize, we need to shift from steam methane reforming to using clean electricity, renewables, nuclear to split water via electrolysis to make hydrogen. And then we need to expand our production of clean electricity.

And then there are various end use applications, such as medium and heavy duty transportation, there's applications in aviation, shipping, and various industries where electrification is problematic, particularly with providing process heat; chemical industry, glassmaking, cement, steel production.

And we're now at the point we're making progress in terms of technology readiness for these applications. And this is where the federal investment is critical to help with demonstration and deployment to then guide the scale up of the technologies that are effective, and also provide support for infrastructure in terms of moving the hydrogen from production to end-use applications.

 

Jason Price:

Thank you for that, Greg.

Todd, I want to ask you a question about what Matt had shared in the introduction. You had spoken on the previous episode about the work around the study of future energy systems and the role that H2 could serve as we decarbonize the economy.

The hypothetical has now become the reality with MachH2. Can you give us an overview of what the pitch was for MachH2 and what it means to the work you all are doing officially to have DOE backing?

 

Todd Allen:

Sure. Yeah, thanks.

So everyone understands, Congress appropriated $8 billion to try to kickstart the hydrogen economy. So as Greg mentioned, that's production, transport and use. And they set aside $7 billion to create these hydrogen hubs.

And the idea behind the hubs, it's definitely focused at industry; deployable technology, not a research project. They were meant to be regional and it was meant to sort of get beyond the chicken and egg problem. You can imagine if you want to use hydrogen as an end-use, you need somebody to produce it. If you want to be a producer, you want to make sure you've got people that are the end-users. And the idea was put a lot of federal funding behind that to get things moving. Right?

So they put out $7 billion. These are going to be regional hubs. They had to include production, transportation and end use. One of them had to have a nuclear component, one of them had to have a carbon capture and utilization and sequestration component, the others weren't restricted.

And so around the country, many consortia came together, different project ideas, and they whittled it down from probably just short of a hundred in the beginning to the seven finalists. And they're all regional.

And so MachH2 hub has industries that are primarily focused in Illinois, Indiana and Michigan. And they've got a nuclear component, Constellation Energy, which runs the biggest nuclear fleet in the US, and BP, who would do carbon capture utilization; and then a lot of focus on the end-use on transportation, some on industry, but also transporting.

So you can see that the idea is that the DOE funding provides that little extra impetus to help industry start producing hydrogen, and you want to do it regionally. And this is just one of the seven teams around the country that formed to do that.

 

Jason Price:

I'd like to ask about the recently published IRS guidance related to the hydrogen production tax credit from the Inflation Reduction Act, the IRA, also known as 45V. The guidance was stricter than some wanted, perhaps disallowing hydrogen production from existing nuclear plants from claiming the credit.

How will MachH2 and its project be impacted by the guidance, and how is MachH2 working with DOE on moving the hub forward in coordination with these rules?

Todd, why don't we start with you? And then Greg can chime in.

 

Todd Allen:

Yeah. So just so the listeners understand, the idea with 45V is you're going to get production tax credits, and the amount of tax credit you could get depends on how clean your hydrogen production is. So if you've got down to 5% of the emissions of current hydrogen production technology, you get the maximum, and it would scale back depending on how far you were from 5%, 50%.

So that was the motivation.

The tax guidance that's come out, sort of the final draft, they're in a comment period before they make the rules final, the motivation I think was they didn't want a situation where you could divert current clean energy production that you were using for electricity over to hydrogen and then backfill the electricity using fossil fuels. Right? They wanted to set up a situation where you're moving forward in clean.

And then they set aside some rules to do that.

One was regionality. You needed to be working within your region. Produce the hydrogen near where you're going to use it.

They wanted temporal matching, meaning you're producing and using the hydrogen in close time proximity.

Now in the early days, the idea is this could be matched annually, but eventually you have to get to hourly matching.

So that was the second rule.

And the third they called additionality. And there's three components to that.

One, if you build new electrolyzers, they had to be built within three years of when you built the power production. Right? So they're trying to incentivize new production.

The second is you can use operating. So let's say I've got a current nuclear plant and I get permission from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to increase the allowed output by 5%, I can use that 5% to hydrogen because it's considered new.

And then the third would be curtailment. And this is where it's a very useful concept for nuclear, which is sometimes nuclear plants are in markets where during certain parts of the day they're not as economic in the electricity markets as, say, solar and wind. They would like to be able to divert their energy output to make hydrogen.

So one of the proposed tax rules does allow curtailed electricity. You have to prove that it's curtailed electricity, but in every case they're trying to incentivize new. Right?

So you understand the motivation is to not allow you to just divert clean energy. Right? The question is, is it enough?

So right now, I can't give a specific answer as to how this is going to affect the hubs. But every company, not just the ones in MachH2, are looking at this set of tax rules and saying, "Is that a big enough incentive to get me to produce?" And if the goal is to produce so that the end users have some confidence and then the producers say, "It's not enough. We can't do that," then the whole thing doesn't get started and you lose the incentive I think the DOE set up.

So I think we're in this final period where the companies and the hubs will get this info back to the administration and we'll see where it ends up.

But you can see the challenge, right? You want hydrogen, you want to kickstart that, you want it to be clean, you don't want more fossil fuels making it, and are your incentives set up to do that?

 

Jason Price:

Greg, anything to add?

 

Greg Keoleian:

Yeah, I think Todd really covered it well.

When we look at the clean energy transition, clearly we need to shift off of the fossil fuels to renewable nuclear. And if we have abundant clean electricity, we can really lower carbon emissions. We don't have infinite clean electricity, and the concern was that we would be diverting some of this clean electricity from displacing fossil fuels onto the grid to hydrogen.

And that's understandable and you want to try to limit that, but at the same time, the current processes for making hydrogen are really inexpensive. The steam methane reforming is a dollar to $2 a kilogram. From renewables, it's like seven and a half dollars a kilogram. So we need to bring down the cost.

To bring down the cost in terms of production, we need to demonstrate, deploy through economy of scale, improve and reduce costs and make things more efficient.

So it's not going to be perfect in terms of addressing the ideal criteria, but in order to overcome the inertia of the current system to one that's more lower carbon and efficient, we need to make these kinds of investments.

 

Jason Price:

Yeah, makes complete sense.

So again, sticking with both of you, both your opinions on this, we have a utility audience. That's what Energy Central is about. That's our mission. So what role will the participating utilities have in MachH2? Where in the utility will this fall under, and what are they committing to participate given their slow and conservative approach to something that is not completely in their control?

Again, maybe Greg, you want to start first and follow with Todd?

 

Greg Keoleian:

Yeah.

So in terms of driving the whole hydrogen economy to do it clean, we need to shift from the steam methane reforming production of hydrogen to using clean electricity and electrolysis.

So utilities need to scale up in terms of this transition, their production in terms of nuclear and renewables, and then it's a matter of doing this economically.

So it's really understanding the services and electricity, so you could feed your electricity supply into the grid, you could use it to produce hydrogen. And you also need to also manage your loads on the grid, your other loads on the grid.

So I think there's a lot of learning that's going to take place with this demonstration and deployment.

The other is we need to store hydrogen. Utilities have a lot of knowledge and experience. Many are involved in electricity and natural gas. We store natural gas today. We need to learn how to store hydrogen. In Michigan, for example, there's opportunities to store hydrogen in salt mines.

So there's a lot with regard to the production. And then utilities need to really look at, what is the end use? What are the takers of the hydrogen and where are the opportunities there?

And the industries are looking at, what is the cost relative to the current supply of fuels? A lot of these industries are using natural gas today, but again, we got to shift from natural gas to low-carbon fuels, like carriers like hydrogen. But economics really is a key factor in business decisions.

But this transition has to happen. We're in a climate emergency. We need to make the shift. So the earlier we develop and demonstrate, the better we're going to be in terms of addressing the climate crisis.

 

Jason Price:

Greg, staying with you for a moment. As we mentioned, there are seven of these $1 billion hydrogen investments across the country. Share with us what distinguishes MachH2 from the others, and why do you feel yours is best served to fulfill the goal set?

 

Greg Keoleian:

Yeah.

So as Todd mentioned, this competition required feedstock diversity, so production from fossil fuels, renewables, nuclear, and use diversity. So applications in various sectors.

I think one of the things that's unique about this hub that's exciting is we have nuclear power as a source for electricity, for electrolysis. There's also the production using fossil fuels with carbon sequestration, carbon capture and storage. And there is some renewable as well.

And then I think what's really relevant to our region is a lot of the end use application is emphasizing transportation.

So programs, for example, projects in Michigan that'll be launched include an initiative of the Michigan Infrastructure Office, Truck Stop of the Future. So we need to shift in terms of transportation from diesel, heavy duty trucks, medium duty to carriers such as hydrogen.

So that's a big part of this program in terms of the state of Michigan with the hub.

There'll be more fuel cell buses deployed In Michigan. They have a bus now, they're adding a couple more, but many buses coming online with this hub.

And then American Center for Mobility will be producing hydrogen for fueling trucks. So close to 30% of our greenhouse gas emissions in the country are from transportation. And as you know, Michigan's a leader in transportation.

Now light duty vehicles, it makes more sense to use electricity. And I could talk more about that later if we want. But where loads are heavy, hydrogen can play a role. When loads are heavy, electrification is difficult because of the battery size, the range limitations, and the time for charging trucks is problematic. Much faster to do it with hydrogen.

 

Jason Price:

Great.

I do want to ask you both about the skeptics for those who push back on hydrogen, worrying about the aspects like cost, safety and how clean it really can be. So we'd love to hear what your key messages are to answer that or address that. And why are you confident in the future of hydrogen, even with the challenges and perhaps risks that lay ahead?

I think this is a good one to hear from both of you. Perhaps Todd, we'll start with you.

 

Todd Allen:

Yeah.

So I think laying out the challenges the way you did are important. Right? I mean, hydrogen has to be cost-effective if people are going to use hydrogen. Greg mentioned I think already that steam methane reforming is really cheap, but it also is carbonated.

So I think part of the motivation behind something like the hubs and tax credits is to look at how we drove the cost of renewables down. We had a sort of very thoughtful approach to the combined R&D and incentives to commercialization, and then you have commercial users drove the prices down, and now we're in a position where we can deploy a lot of renewables.

I wouldn't have believed it 25 years ago, right? Renewables were niche. But they're real, right? It's utility-scale stuff.

And so it is a challenge to drive the cost down. It has to happen. But I think that's the point of the current government programs.

I think safety is a question of getting people used to the fact that we're using hydrogen. We use a lot of hydrogen already. You can go around the country, there's many industries that use hydrogen. I don't think most people know that.

In some ways, to me, it feels very much like the nuclear power issue, where the people close to the industry are very comfortable with it, but people that aren't sort of have the TV image of what this is. And so I think it's exporting that safety culture; making sure as the hubs build out that our workforce training programs pass along the knowledge of the way you work with this technology.

So I think like many industrial things, success and good performance leads to getting past the safety issues.

 

Jason Price:

Greg, anything to add?

 

Greg Keoleian:

Yeah, I think Todd covered it well.

I would just say one challenge with hydrogen compared to something like natural gas ... I mean, both are colorless, but natural gas, you could add mercaptans that make natural gas stink like sulfur, so if there's a leak, you could smell it. With hydrogen, that's going to be a challenge in terms of managing leaks.

But as Todd indicated, there's a lot of tremendous amount of experience in the chemical industry today in terms of moving hydrogen around and working with hydrogen safely.

I think there's exploration of, do we use hydrogen and blend it and put it into natural gas lines so we could run our appliances in homes? There, I think we really need to think through, does that make sense in a long-term perspective? Because we have to get off the natural gas and there are limits of how much natural hydrogen could blend with natural gas. If you go up to 20%, you're only displacing 6% in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.

So the other is perception of hydrogen from the Hindenburg that blew up, I think that turned people off for a long time with regard to fuel cell vehicles. There were concerns about those early on. But we have the capability to do this safely, and it's just ... As Todd indicated, there's a cost issue. And again, we got to drive those costs down through demonstration and expanding deployment and scaling up.

 

Jason Price:

Yeah.

Well, let's talk for a moment about the impact on local economy. And since we're in Michigan, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the impact that hydrogen will play on the state economy here.

So do you think this is the start of perhaps Michigan becoming known as a key hydrogen ground, like it long has been at the heart of the auto industry? And what are some of the concrete impacts you're expecting, and will this sustain well into the future?

Greg, I believe this is probably more in your domain.

 

Greg Keoleian:

Yeah. We've done a lot of research on transportation over the last few decades and the state is really a leader in transportation. And we were with the internal combustion engine vehicle for a hundred years, but the industry here has been doing pioneering work on fuel cell vehicles, electrification, with light duty vehicles. They're really looking at fuel cells. But then battery costs have come down. We've improved the efficiency of batteries.

So the industry is really focusing on electrification for light duty vehicles. And it makes a lot of sense from an efficiency point of view too.

With hydrogen, again, there's opportunities with medium and heavy duty vehicles where electrification is problematic.

And maybe I should just share quickly ... If we take electricity, we charge a battery, we power the wheel, and it takes about one and a half units of electricity to drive one unit to the wheel. If we do that on a light duty vehicle with hydrogen, we take about four and a half units of renewable electricity to split water. We lose 30% in the electrolyzer, then we got to move the hydrogen. And then we put in a fuel cell to get the electricity back because we lose another half of it. So 4.5 in one unit to the wheel.

For light duty, it doesn't make a lot of sense, but heavy duty, where loads are great, battery size is an issue, range is an issue, hydrogen is really the opportunity.

And the industry here is really focused on developing these vehicles, developing components. Michigan is a leading manufacturing state. A lot of industries grew up just related to mass production; not just automobiles, but just the techniques really went into furniture, went into appliances and things like that where we're leaders. Same opportunity here with regard to hydrogen. The hydrogen economy equipment is needed, like electrolyzers. And we have major investment coming into the state gigafactory to make electrolyzers.

GM is doing a lot of work on fuel cell production. And not just in terms of ground transportation, looking at aviation, rail. We have various industries that are dealing with storage, dealing with dispensing, the transport of hydrogen.

So there's really a lot of opportunities in terms of the supply of equipment, of infrastructure that's needed to support transportation in hydrogen. And we have our Michigan Economic Development Corporation, our State of Michigan Infrastructure Office, City of Detroit; they're all working on supporting programs to demonstrate and deploy hydrogen in the state.

So when you have industry money coming in, you have government support, there's really an opportunity to become leaders. And I do see us playing a leading role in the hydrogen economy, particularly focused around transportation.

 

Jason Price:

Yeah, that's exciting. It sounds like a tremendous opportunity.

Well, it's also been a tremendous learning opportunity to be here today to talk to both of you about this massive undertaking that you're leading. Really fascinating discussion.

And Todd, you may remember from our lightning round from the previous episode that you were on, but Greg, to catch you up to speed on what we do next on the podcast is we're going to throw a few questions and your responses should be kept to one word or phrase. It gives us an opportunity to learn a little bit more about you, the person, rather than the professional.

So are you both ready, gentlemen?

 

Todd Allen:

Ready.

 

Jason Price:

Thumbs up. Okay.

Todd, we'll start with you, and then, Greg, you can follow.

So let's dive in.

So Michigan's Governor Whitmer has asked you to pitch a new slogan for the state. What would it be?

 

Todd Allen:

All right, so our current license plate slogan is 'water winter wonderland.' I'm going with, "Water winter wonderland, and we're keeping it that way. Thank you."

 

Jason Price:

I like it.

Greg.

 

Greg Keoleian:

I'm going to focus a little around hydrogen. I'm going to say "Michigan drives innovation in hydrogen-based climate solutions."

 

Jason Price:

Okay.

For first-time visitors to the Michigan campus, what would you recommend this person visit?

 

Todd Allen:

Clearly the country's number one ranked nuclear engineering department. But if that's not your thing, I'd say the behind the scenes Michigan Stadium tour. I've heard that's pretty fascinating.

 

Jason Price:

Greg?

 

Greg Keoleian:

We're a leading school for environment sustainability, and you could come visit us to see our work on energy systems analysis.

And I'm going to add one more. You know, we got a pretty cold winter right now. I'd recommend going to the University of Michigan Botanical Gardens, Matthaei Botanical Gardens, and check out the conservatory, the greenhouses, and warm yourself up.

 

Jason Price:

Do you have any hidden talents?

 

Todd Allen:

I'm going with running slowly,

 

Jason Price:

Okay.

Greg?

 

Greg Keoleian:

Growing large quantities of garlic in my front yard garden.

 

Jason Price:

Is there someone in your field, someone who may have influenced you or the field, who may not have received his or her due recognition? Now's the chance. Who would you like to honor and why?

 

Todd Allen:

All right, so I'm going to stretch your question a little bit. I'm going to go with The Pips. Remember Gladys Knight and The Pips of the seventies singing band?

 

Jason Price:

Sure.

 

Todd Allen:

Gladys Knight, she's famous, great singer, but she had these group of people behind her, right? They didn't get the fame and fortune, but The Pips are clearly important for the success of an organization. Shout out to The Pips.

 

Jason Price:

Okay.

Greg.

 

Greg Keoleian:

I'm going to focus on my academic training and I'm going to call out Professor Bob Cadillac that taught me mathematical modeling of chemical processes, which is really the foundation of my career.

And I'll just point out one example of things he taught us to do. So he would come into the room with odd sort of projects like sticking an ice cube in a cup of hot water. And he'd tell us, "How many times would the ice cube flip before it would melt?", and we'd have to model that.

So shout out to him for teaching me how to model complex systems.

 

Jason Price:

Okay.

In 10 years.

 

Greg Keoleian:

And it takes about five flips, by the way.

 

Jason Price:

Five flips. Okay. I'll make note of that.

In 10 years, the hydrogen hub matures and evolves and is part of the fabric of the economy as planned. So for each of you, what comes next?

 

Todd Allen:

I'd say 10 years, probably retired and cheering all the students I helped become world leaders.

 

Greg Keoleian:

For me, I'm riding a fuel cell bus to campus to attend a conference at Hill Auditorium, and I'm taking a hydrogen-powered train to vacation in northern Michigan.

 

Jason Price:

Fantastic.

And lastly, something a little unconventional, but we're going to ask it anyways, and we're giving you the opportunity to challenge a future podcast guest; what's one question, energy-focused or otherwise, you'd like to post to a peer in the lightning round of a future episode?

 

Todd Allen:

All right, I'm staying thematic, and my question is, who are your Pips?

 

Jason Price:

Greg.

 

Greg Keoleian:

I'm kind of boring, but mine is, what do you do personally to reduce your energy and carbon footprint?

 

Jason Price:

Fantastic. Nicely done.

For decision makers in the world of energy, what message about hydrogen energy and its deployment do you hope they take away from today's show?

Greg, let's start with you.

 

Greg Keoleian:

So we're in a climate emergency. We need to accelerate clean energy transitions. So we really need to pursue these hydrogen solutions. And I'd emphasize focusing on technologies where there's a high degree of efficiency. The economics are going to sort themselves out. We should really look at thermodynamics and pick those technologies that have a promise to do things efficiently in the future.

 

Jason Price:

Thank you.

Todd?

 

Todd Allen:

Yeah, I think mine's a similar theme. Hydrogen will be an important energy carrier in a net zero world, and we should incentivize its use and be very thoughtful about where it provides the best value.

 

Greg Keoleian:

I also enjoyed being part of the program today. And I'll just call out to the audience that we have a number of resources on hydrogen on our MI Hydrogen website. One in particular is a fact sheet. It's a two pager that has dozens of statistics about hydrogen; the hydrogen economy, how it's produced, distributed, end use applications, strategy and policy. So you might want to check that out if you want a quick summary of some of the key stats that we talked about today and ones that we didn't. Thanks.

 

Jason Price:

Absolutely. And we'll also make sure it's in the show notes. So thank you.

This has been a wonderful conversation and I thank you both for joining us today. And I'm eager to see the types of comments and questions our Energy Central community will share in response. So we'll look out for that and hope you hop back on to respond to them in the dialogue section of the website.

Until then though, we just want to thank you for sharing your insight with us on today's episode of the podcast.

 

Todd Allen:

Yep. Always glad to join the conversation with you, Jason.

 

Greg Keoleian:

Thanks a lot. I really enjoyed it.

 

Jason Price:

Our pleasure.

And you can always reach our guests through the Energy Central platform where they welcome your questions and comments.

And again, for our listeners, if you ever want to ask a question, you go to the SpeakPipe link on the show notes, where you can leave a message and hear your voice on a future episode. Until then, thank you.

And I also want to thank our sponsors of today's podcast. Thanks to West Monroe.

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Once again, I'm your host, Jason Price. Plug in and stay fully charged in the discussion by hopping into the community at energycentral.com. And we'll see you next time at the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast.

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About Energy Central Podcasts

The ‘Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast’ features conversations with thought leaders in the utility sector. At least twice monthly, we connect with an Energy Central Power Industry Network community member to discuss compelling topics that impact professionals who work in the power industry. Some podcasts may be a continuation of thought-provoking posts or discussions started in the community or with an industry leader that is interested in sharing their expertise and doing a deeper dive into hot topics or issues relevant to the industry.

The ‘Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast’ is the premiere podcast series from Energy Central, a Power Industry Network of Communities built specifically for professionals in the electric power industry and a place where professionals can share, learn, and connect in a collaborative environment. Supported by leading industry organizations, our mission is to help global power industry professionals work better. Since 1995, we’ve been a trusted news and information source for professionals working in the power industry, and today our managed communities are a place for lively discussions, debates, and analysis to take place. If you’re not yet a member, visit www.EnergyCentral.com to register for free and join over 200,000 of your peers working in the power industry.

The Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast is hosted by Jason Price, Community Ambassador of Energy Central. Jason is a Business Development Executive at West Monroe, working in the East Coast Energy and Utilities Group. Jason is joined in the podcast booth by the producer of the podcast, Matt Chester, who is also the Community Manager of Energy Central and energy analyst/independent consultant in energy policy, markets, and technology.  

If you want to be a guest on a future episode of the Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast, let us know! We’ll be pulling guests from our community members who submit engaging content that gets our community talking, and perhaps that next guest will be you! Likewise, if you see an article submitted by a fellow Energy Central community member that you’d like to see broken down in more detail in a conversation, feel free to send us a note to nominate them.  For more information, contact us at [email protected]. Podcast interviews are free for Expert Members and professionals who work for a utility.  We have package offers available for solution providers and vendors. 

Happy listening, and stay tuned for our next episode! Like what you hear, have a suggestion for future episodes, or a question for our guest? Leave a note in the comments below.

All new episodes of the Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast will be posted to the relevant Energy Central community group, but you can also subscribe to the podcast at all the major podcast outlets, including: