okay welcome you are now coming into the move la and spur uh zoom posium for july 23rd on vision 2022 uh the decade of decision um thank you so much for joining us today my name is eli lippmann i will be your uh i'm the technical host for today um so thank you all for joining and uh we're just getting allowing participants to come in before we start the zoom here today um as we're doing that we just want to start by recognizing our partners in the climate and clean air initiative these are all the organizations from across the state of california that are supporting the climate and clean air initiative uh including spur and move california the green lining institute clcb lane coalition for clean air climate resolve healthy air alliance greenbelt alliance brief socal planning and conservation league the climate center and the emphysema foundation you can go to climateandcleanair.org for more and also sign up share your email and and we'll provide you updates also check us out we'll be live tweeting this program at climate clean air on twitter and i just quickly want to recognize and thank our event sponsors who generously contributed uh to help ensure that this event can happen that includes the california fuel cell partnership the los angeles department of water and power a long time reporter and sponsor of move la as well as socalgas and you can also check out our youtube channel youtube.com forward slash move la as well as climateancleanair.org where
we posted all the previous videos uh from our events last one was actually on battery technology uh we that one was sponsored by w uid and edison and ladwp fire ones have been about short-lived climate pollutants and the scourge of diesel um and so we've really this has been a whole series and we encourage you to check out the full length of the series so you can see all the incredible details that we've shared so now that's uh that it said we've got most of our attendees in um i'm now gonna hand it over to moderator for today's program uh my boss the executive director of move la and move california uh zane penny guys thanks eli oh why don't we roll to to all right so um folks um on your screen here you'll see the panels and roughly the order we expect to hear from them um you see if we have quite an illustrious panel and you'll learn more about each of them as they as they get their turn so uh why don't you roll to the next roll them ela so one of the things that move la and our partners have been working on is trying to envision the possibility of a statewide ballot measure that could help us take a giant step to conquer climate change and truly finally clean our air move la you may know has had a successful history as a formulating coalitions and ballot measures in los angeles county we're responsible for having initiated and built the coalition for measure r measure m which were the two big half cent sales tax measures that voters approved for investment in transit and then we spawned the idea of measure h to help lake county address its homelessness crisis so ballot measures is kind of a familiar terrain for us and we think that california should be thinking about a ballot measure because when you've got something really important and you really need to make a strong commitment an investment in it dedicated revenues that are reliable over time and skate at scale over time the only place you can do that is go to the voters we should not be afraid of the voters the voters are our friends they get it now we think um the priority goals for the first decade of any such measure should it happen is to roll back climate change and i really want to point out in that first decade that's driven by the ipcc report the 20 the 2018 report that basically said we had until 2030 to get our act together or no it's not quite curtains but you know trouble ahead it turns out that that 20 30 days also corresponds very close to the 2031 attainment deadline for the south coast air district um air quality planning for ozone um all of these goals need to be um developed and implemented with a strong commitment to advance social equity and justice environmental justice when we do these things when california leads we think the world soon follows we have an outsized impact in the discussion and then the ability of our planet to address some of these issues i mean we started the zero emission vehicle program largely because of smog in southern california and today europe and china both dwarf us in the number of electric vehicles that are on the road there's no question that the initiative came from california but california leaves the world soon follows i wonder if we might um step back just a minute and show up show our audience um a screenshot of all the panelists that we have with us so they can they can truly believe that it's not just me here can we do that all right there's you can see them at the top can we put them all over the screen i don't like this idea of me having a big head all right let's see go to gallery view there we are monday mclean welcome let's look at cliff glaston over there so we're yeah we're disrupting with uh ship zero charging to true zero it's event that we're holding at the cop26 um and i'll tell you all about that scotland yes glasgow yeah cop 26 is happening here in scotland so very excited to be welcome then we have assembly member bill quirk who worked at nasa on climate change before becoming a legislator my guess is that he came to the legislature with climate in mind yes is that jet crack build absolutely i see the water still flows in your neck of the wood yeah but it's salt water then we have uh brian goldstein from energy independence now executive director good morning denny good to see you good to see you bro eric hoffman how are you say your word you'll show up there we go sorry i was uh muted yeah uh doing very well happy friday everyone glad to be here eric is with uwua local 132 the the uh um gas company the union that you tell us who what all the work you do but you manage most of the pipelines uh systems and uh maintenance and stuff of that system am i right yes our uh the members that i represent uh work uh wall-to-wall at socalgas from from uh insulation and maintenance of pipelines uh so you name it every aspect of the company okay and then michelle sim good morning happy to be here director of sustainability for the gas company we're talking about nitrogen hydro sorry hydrogen excuse me get it right and uh i think there's some kind of symbiosis between uh natural gas and hydrogen we'll hear more about that oh dr sunita you're here early how wonderful to see you oh hi thanks danny for inviting me dr everyone you are from the department of energy the united states department of energy and we're going to be very interested to hear what what is the prime of energy thinks about all this see who else do i need to show last thing right let's say a word hey danny uh thank you for inviting uh me to join this august body this uh this morning uh i'm talking to you from uh from west texas my lord so cliff and i knew each other about 35 years ago at the coalition for clean air actually before that when cliff worked in todd hayden's office as his environmental deputy and about 1990 i remember you were one of the co-authors of the big green a statewide ballot measure to really create uh environmental policy in the state of california and had it not been for what kuwait invasion big green would likely have become law have you ever wondered what what the world would be like had that occurred often all right so all right it's good to have you with us cliff nice to see you again let's see if i missed anybody if you've been missed speak up i think i've been missed oh chanel channel formerly executive director of climate plan but now the executive director for environmental justice at the california air resources board and uh so good to have you you look wonderful what is that building is that building the car building behind you it is the car building so i think uh chanel what we want to suggest to you is that in the course of this discussion um if you have things observations to make that you think um need to inform this discussion at various points along the way just feel free to speak up and if i see this technology the way it's working now is if if you speak up then folks will see you and don't be afraid to uh challenge i know you're not because i've known you for i don't know six eight years here and uh you've never been afraid of challenge before all right so oh wait danny really quick question i'm i'm happy to do that so is it kind of like people kind of speaking at the end i should share thoughts or just chime in whenever is that kind of the direction i feel a little bit of both i think i might turn to you um earlier in just to say so what do you think about what we've heard um and then at the end as well if you hear something that really sort of that you really feel needs to be commented on yay or nay uh don't be hesitant to speak up you're gonna give you that liberty sounds great all right so let's go back to the slideshow for a bit i could have my list in front of me all right again um we this is sort of framed as if we were all thinking about a ballot measure to raise a boatload of money for emission reduction purposes and our goals were to fight climate change finish clean entertainment especially in southern california in the san joaquin valley and then advance social equity and justice role we had uh one of these symposiums where we brought mary nichols and fran pavley and uh senator kevin de leon senator fran pavley senator nancy skinner um secretary of cali pa former secretary of cali pa terry tamman um the executive past executive director of the strategic growth council randall winston and we basically asked them all what if you were going to do a ballot measure to raise a boatload of money for investment in cleaner climate change what would your priorities be and they were very crystal clear transportation and short-lived climate pollutants so that really informs all of our discussion role just for those a little warmer uh reminder for those of you who uh maybe aren't just familiar with short-lived climate pollutants here's a quick uh warmer carbon dioxide is the is the gas which is the primary focus of climate change uh planning reducing thereby carbon dioxide is one of the premier goals but as you can see um carbon dioxide lasts in the atmosphere much longer than these other gases it's 100 200 years so even reducing carbon dioxide now has limited effect because there's so much more already in the atmosphere and it'll take 100 years or more for it to decay but methane black carbon and hfcs decay much faster but they're also much more powerful over on the right you see the the kind of uh assessment as to their climate forcing power and so methane 72 times as powerful as carbon dioxide but it decays in 12 years so if you start reducing your methane soon then what's in the atmosphere now will be decay with decay soon and that will allow us actually scientists say to roll back climate change as much as 0.6 degrees celsius roll so one of the most important focuses of attention for us whether you're looking at climate change or air pollution has got to be diesel-powered vehicles we've done so much good work on light-duty cars gasoline-powered but trucks trains boats ships and planes all of that whole rafter of goods movement technologies and equipment uh people moving transportation uh heavy duty vehicles those are things that we really need to focus attention on um in air pollution it's not some particulate matter which is um especially important but what few people realize is that diesel particulate matter is covered with toxic carcinogens really unlike any other fuel and then uh bicarbonate and tropospheric ozone are also both part of the diesel equation so diesel stands large as a primary concern move roll california has created an advanced clean truck rule you can see they're going to try to roll out zevs this is really exciting the state of california has a rule on manufacturers for an increasing number of zero emission trucks in all classes even up to the class 78 heavy duty tractor includes the 18 wheelers that take a long haul shipping as their mission this is a mandate for match manufacturers and it's a very big deal maybe not big enough roll well this gives you an idea that what's going to happen um as all those zebs roll out and they're six percent eight percent eleven etc etc over time it grows what's not zev during that time and there's the percentage.zev and relying upon a report from nrdc uh i think uh uh petrillo uh uh did some numbers about the number of vehicles actually implicated and if you look at how many on the right column how many are not zero emission over that time frame you end up seeing that there be about a million trucks not zero emission uh between now and 2030 and only about 300 000 that are zero emission so i think a big challenge for us and maybe this ballot measure is to think about we really want to have three times as many non-zero emission trucks as we get zero mission trucks during that time frame especially when in 2030 we have a deadline okay so that's a kind of a a setup for this discussion we got work to do we got to accelerate uh technologies that are zero emission to market and there are two major contenders battery electric and fuel cell and our task is to deploy them into the marketplace on an accelerated basis roll so the statewide measure we have in mind could raise three billion dollars a year over 30 billion in a decade in fact to be bore about 33 billion in a decade that could be used for incentives to back up the manufacturer mandate to roll out much more rapidly zero emission trucks and other technologies and also then to dramatically reduce short-lived time of pollutants we did some polling recently and the polls now opera show 60 support from voters for taxation to support that mission now we think this is going to get stronger as the pandemic and the economic downturn ebbs and the climate crisis becomes more evident so between now and november 22 or 24 whenever this makes it to the ballot we believe that support will only grow roll well i don't look at this sign let's go over to brian talk to brian hey brian good morning denny so brian it's good to meet you sir you're the executive director of energy independence now and who are you and what do you do well i appreciate the opportunity to participate today um so energy independence now uh for many years was the only environmental nonprofit that just focused on on hydrogen i'm sure that's probably not the case now because we're seeing so much hydrogen activity and have over the last year year and a half but uh we were founded about 20 years ago by uh former cali ph secretary terry tamanen to address transportation issues in california territory had looked far and wide for some zero emission solutions and and uh thought that hydrogen posed a really good zeb option for for california so he launched energy independence now out of environment now back at that time since then we drafted the california hydrogen highway initiative back in the i guess 0.405 time frame for then governor schwarzenegger we co-authored legislation sb 1505 requiring 33.3 renewable content and hydrogen fuel and we'll kind of get to you know renewable fuel here in a few minutes uh but the interesting thing about that about sp 1505 was that was 2006 so that was nine years before a consumer could walk into a car dealership in california and drive a fuel cell vehicle off the lot so i guess my point in saying that is we've been very committed to making sure that hydrogen in california and beyond is is renewable or zero carbon or however we wanted to find it we needed to be as clean as possible and that's been a large part of our focus over the years so like batteries i mean we hear about battery technology as a zero emission option um and so now you're telling us that hydrogen fuel cells are also a zero emission option um but you know there are some questions one has to ask up front in discussion about hydrogen is driving a fuel cell truck around like driving a hydrogen bomb around um i hope not no absolutely not it's uh incredibly safe technology i've been driving you know only fuel cell electric vehicles around for the last six years uh since they were launched here in california uh full-time they're produced by you know automakers that are known as some of the the safest automakers in the world um this isn't a science experiment you know this is uh mature technology and in fact the technology has been around uh for a very long time um and it's been safely operated and and reliable for a very long time i think you know the majority of the reason that that people are maybe just now hearing about hydrogen and transport is that uh the stations are just now becoming available so that in california was part of the hydrogen highway initiative that was later funded through ab-8 funding where the state committed to building the first 100 stations the state commitment in california right now is up to 200 stations with a short-term goal short term being over the next five to eight years of a thousand stations uh here in california so it's really the stations that have enabled the market and not necessarily uh technology technological breakthroughs right so i wanna i mean batteries have started getting a real foothold in light duty vehicles um there are maybe maybe before we go on people you might want to describe a little bit more about how a fuel cell operates sure so fuel cell electric vehicles just like battery electric vehicles it's the vehicle is an electric drivetrain right the difference is that uh fuel cells create that electricity in real time uh using hydrogen on board and the benefits to doing so are uh fast refueling it's about five minutes to refuel um a fuel cell vehicle the latest generations are at around a 400 mile range uh which uh you know the early fuel cell vehicles at least the production vehicles all started over a 300 mile range so one of the other benefits here is is longer ranges you're not kind of consumed with the additional weight that batteries add to the vehicle that then in turn you know at some point diminish the range so between that uh fast refueling and the capacity to build larger and larger vehicles uh again because you don't have the the battery weight requirements uh with hydrogen all of those benefits make hydrogen a very attractive transportation fuel here in california i'm confused a little bit i'm confused um compared to battery powered fuel cell is lighter has longer range and and is quicker to fuel than a battery-powered vehicle is to charge why are batteries winning the race in light-duty vehicles well i think that goes back sorry go ahead the fuel cell just seems like it's got some big advantages there it does have some big advantages you know i think there are a couple of reasons why there are more battery electric vehicles on the roads right now one of them goes back to infrastructure and accessibility right um as i mentioned we're you know we're just now up to the point where we have about 50 hydrogen fueling stations in california you know on our way to a thousand over the next seven or eight years but to put that in perspective we probably have ten thousand uh you know twelve thousand uh gas stations in california so we need the stations to to help enable the technology uh you know also there's a an early adopter component to that right and you know kind of just to put it bluntly the folks that could afford to be early adopters on electric vehicles uh typically had access to uh electricity for charging um you know whether that's in a garage or or workplace charging the folks that were able to you know kind of jump into this market early on uh tended to have access to charging whereas that's not really the case throughout california in fact about 50 percent of people in california live in multi-family housing so um many of them don't have you know access to a an outlet much less a garage or a place to consistently park their vehicles so i think that you know hydrogen poses a another great uh alternative there in in california for that very reason but denny at the end of the day i think you know my thesis and the one thing i hope that people can uh really hold on to when it comes to hydrogen and transport transportation from this conversation is that we have exactly two tools in the zero emission vehicle toolbox right we've got batteries and we've got fuel cells i think it would be foolish and short-sighted of us to to just try to pick one and as much as americans you know we're really prone to try to pick a winner here um you know people often kind of bring up the vhs versus betamax type conversation and say hey batteries have already you know won this invisible race why are we even messing around with fuel cells but the simple answer is to accomplish what we want to accomplish uh here certainly in transportation and and i'll go on to uh to argue the same for energy storage industrial decarbonization and disaster resilience here we have to use every tool at our disposal and so i i think instead of looking at this as a as a competition you know we need to kind of take a deeper look at at um you know what circumstances enable fuel cells or enable the hydrogen market and what circumstances are more conducive to batteries don't fuel cells have a particularly uh big set of advantage things like trucking and long-haul type of a long-haul type of activities absolutely moving activities absolutely so you know as i mentioned as vehicle sizes and cargo capacity grow larger and larger in order to you know fill the demand for excuse me range and refueling or recharging uh the battery component becomes uh more and more challenging right so just as a straightforward example i'm no expert in in trucking uh per se but my understanding is that you know when you look at a class 8 truck a truck that has a 80 000 pound uh overall weight limit perhaps uh cliff can chime in on this if uh if i start to butcher these numbers uh in order to get that two to three hundred mile range that i think would really be kind of the opening range in the minimum range uh using batteries you'd need a about eight thousand pounds of batteries at least and i've heard numbers that that go a lot higher than that so you know you're looking at uh in the context of batteries cannibalizing about 10 of the overall weight capacity of of the truck uh and then there's a charging component which um you know when we think of one or two trucks charging at a time that seems uh manageable right this is something we can set up some chargers and this is manageable but when you look at the ports here in la and consider that we have 18 000 heavy duty trucks at the twin ports here and imagine trying to pull you know a quarter of those or half of those offline at one point and you know what would it take to to charge 9 000 trucks at one time so with hydrogen you know for trucking you have that 20 um that 20 minute refueling time you can you know ranges are now creeping up uh you know four to six hundred miles and we also don't have to uh to pull the trucks out of service uh for quite as long as as you would for charging now frank i think there are plenty of applications where batteries are are great a great fit in the trucking space but i think you know we'll really see hydrogen start to um you know start to take a lot of market share in that space very soon so thank you brian we'll try to come back to you a little bit more i want to move on to michelle sim joe where are you there you are i love this if you start speaking up then you will suddenly show up big and bright on my screen i'm glad it's bright and not dim yes well see you're down at the grassroots there all right so phil you're the director of sustainability at southern california gas company right so if i'm a member of my audience um i'm thinking why is the gas company interested in hydrogen isn't that competition that's an interesting perspective denny um well as a director of sustainability here at socalgas my focus is really building out our sustainability strategy and our commitment to net zero earlier this year we published what we call aspire 2045 and in that lays out kind of our four priority pillars of strategy um pathway and our commitment to net zero in our operations and the energy that we deliver by 2045.
and as a part of that if you take a closer look at it what you'll notice is when we say we have a net zero goal to 2045 that includes all three scopes of ghg emissions so that's scopes one and two that we ourselves produce as an organization and scope 3 which is not in direct control of socalgas and really a result of the fact that we are an infrastructure company that carries energy to our customers so all the energy that is that passes through our system that goes to our customer has an inherent carbon intensity associated with it so as part of our net zero goal uh we are looking to get that to a net zero um carbon intensity which means that we need to work with partners and we need to work with our customers to really transition what we traditionally carry as a traditional natural gas that is fossil to a lower and zero carbon intensity fuels like renewable natural gas and hydrogen so we do not see that as a competition but more of as a solution towards our um overall business goals and strategies so you're envisioning that at some point in the future your pipelines will carry hydrogen maybe renewable natural gas some share of that of that pipeline are you do they segregate their way in which the hydrogen is kept separate from the natural gas or is it all just blended well i think that's a great question too and i think that's the very work that we're we're really doing right now and looking at the analysis and modeling to look at what does it look like because the way our gas system looks like today is going to intrinsically look very different 30 years from today what that looks like is the very work we're doing as i mentioned um i i can't i don't have a crystal ball in front of me to tell you exactly what that would be like but if i were to have my druthers um i really compared it to like a highway system a freeway system where you have lanes that are carpool lanes you have dedicated fast track lanes you have the general population that flows on regular um traffic lanes and in that you have different types of vehicles flowing through it much the same i do envision the gas system at some point carrying blended lower carbon fuels other segments of our systems potentially carrying pure hydrogen and other segments of our system potentially carrying carbon to help with carbon management um towards our overall climate goals so you know if if i had my wish that's kind of the freeway system i see underground with the gas grid um but what that looks like is uncertain at this point and that's the very work that we're doing with partners all right so the gas grid i i like that uh characterization so i mean if you look at the grid the electric grid i mean it used to be it's it's sort of become a little bit more broadly accepted i guess or supported among environmentalists because the state of california adopted legislation and regulations to create a requirement that the grid uh become increasingly renewable power now it's not 100 renewable power by any means i think there's about now 30 plus percent that is natural gas power there's still we've still got coal power operating on our grid now we're becoming increasingly renewable but we don't have to be a hundred percent renewable until 2045. i mean is this as ever that thanks to my my good friend senator kevin de leon and sb 100 a pitch for kevin i always got to support the leaders here um but um is it possible to envision a similar thing they call it an rps on the on the uh on the uh grit is it possible to envision a similar arrangement whereby the gas pipelines become increasingly dedicated to renewable gas and hydrogen and less fossil gas of any sort absolutely um i think that's what we have been working on um at least uh very heavily at the state for the past several years um and really advocating for that um you know i think it's really important to point out that you know the gas system and the gas grid is really looking for ways to help the decarbonization effort so people have often said well gas is a competition to renewables and i disagree gas is not competing with renewables it's trying to really from a cost perspective as well enable a higher penetration of renewables onto the electric grid into homes into buildings and really enabling that economy-wide sectors including our industrial facilities including our transportation sectors that are harder to decarbonize have a source of renewable energy and fuels that can help them get to that decarbonized state so it's really so like the grid so like the grid the pipeline is kind of neutral as to what it carries and if the need is to go increasingly decarbonized fuel renewable fuel you're capable of doing that i think that is the very work that we are doing um because first and foremost is always safety and we want to make sure that we can do this safely we can do this reliably without compromising uh the reliable energy delivery uh that the state of california and our region depends on for the natural gas grid um and i think you know you'll see more and more of that in terms of what we are asking for with the commission and the state in terms of allowing us to do projects and demonstrations to really prove out uh the safety um aspect of this and how we can do that in a reliable way as we transition to lower and zero carbon fuels right so now i have heard that if you put too much hydrogen in the pipeline there starts to be um a brittleness developing parts of the pipeline are there strategies to remedy that can you for example roll out sleeves into the part and that's a real that's that's a real technology rolling out slaves into the pipeline can you do that and ensure that the pipeline is going to be able to handle increasing portions of hydrogen well i'll put a disclaimer before i i state my answer denny is that i'm not an engineer but we do have a whole lot of engineers within our organization that is working and examining that and has been looking at it for quite some time um what i'll say is that um the gas system just like any other um you know mechanical or um you know engineered system out there is quite complex in that when you think about um little widgets on even just a toy right you have different parts that go into making um you know my my son loves to play with legos um so he's building you know a ninja i don't know ship with legos with that you have various components and parts that go to that um and if he's missing a part he'll just go over it and find another part that kind of fits there what we do on our grid system to keep it safe and reliable is make sure that the materials that we're using whether it's valves and pipes and fittings are definitely one safe view engineered to specifications and with that we are assessing in terms of the constituents and components that flow through our system because we have more than just methane today that flows in our systems there's trace components of different um you know different elements that flow through there and one of the work that um our our engineers do is to maintain uh the safety of our system and how it impacts the materials that are embedded within our system so speaking of our system and um a large part of the pipeline and the gas that it covers comes to homes like mine where i cook and i warm my uh my apartment using natural gas um in the future if there is a 50 hydrogen or even 100 hydrogen am i going to have to give up my appliances are they able to be adapted to hydrogen well i think if we see globally all the activities that are happening in europe and asia who have been very strong partners of ours i think you see both scenarios happening where in some cases they do replace all equipment out and there are hydrogen appliances that are being made more and more today and there are other applications where they're able to retain that and change out the burners or certain materials and components out of the appliance and be able to retrofit it to accommodate the percent blend that they have in that low carbon fuel that has hydrogen so i think we're seeing both and i think we're going to continue to examine how to do that safely for our customers cool so now i think i want to go to uh sunita dr sunita satyapal speak up dr satyapal so that we can see you on screen yes i'm here let's see there so eli help me get dr satyapal on screen i i think you've got to keep skip speaking there you are i'm here and i can also share my screen jenny i know you said it might be helpful to share some slides if you have some let me let me just say um a question here that i want i hope you think about as you do it's really easy and understand for all of us exactly why the gas company might be interested in hydrogen gas i think i mean they've got a pipeline they want to fill with whatever tell us at some point how why it is the us department of energy is interested in fuel cells i mean we're sort of accustomed to thinking of the us is interested in the big things right and this fuel cells and stuff seem like they're down to sort of day-to-day life for us cars shipping uh trucking etc so we want to understand why the u.s department of energy thinks this is a big enough deal to create a whole department of of uh hydrogen and fuel cell technologies office sure i know i'm happy to to take that question and i'll share my screen for a second because i think for those who have not heard of the h2 at scale vision i think that will help um so you can see my screen here all right we got it up now i think you need there you go okay so if you can see the the picture here um very often people call hydrogen the swift army knife of energy so i'll walk you through this on the left here you see the primary energy sources so we have renewables nuclear fossil these are conventional primary energy sources and today in orange here this big orange circle that is the electricity grid as we know it today and we have the natural gas infrastructure as michelle mentioned know vast over three million miles of pipeline and that's all we know today and the key is that you can produce hydrogen from diverse domestic resources so virtually any resource you can take water split water you can use again with ccs you can use fossil waste uh almost enter any resource and produce hydrogen it has the highest energy as most people know it's the the most abundant elements in the universe three quarters of the known universe is hydrogen but on earth it's mostly you know not available in free form and so it's a carrier but again you can make it from many sources once you make it so for instance with intermittent solar or wind you can use that those clean electrons produce hydrogen store it you can either put it back on the grid with turbines or fuel cells microgrids or and i think this is really the key fear the importance of what's called sector coupling in other countries so you can use it for transportation which is this bubble on the top um you know vehicles trucks marines those hard to decarbonize sectors you can react it with co2 to produce liquid fuel synthetic fuels for instance aviation uh today most of the hydrogen's used for oil refining and fertilizer production but again you can use hydrogen to make clean steel steel manufacturing alone accounts for almost eight percent of total greenhouse gas emissions globally so again there are many you've been injected into the pipeline decarbonized so hopefully this gives you an idea of you know why there's so much interest in hydrogen and i want to emphasize that you know hydrogen is just one part of a really broad portfolio that contributes to the president's priorities and it's not either or you know we're going to need batteries um hydrogen and fuel cells all clean energy technologies and so really high priorities from the administration perspective are completely carbon free grid by 2035 and net zero by 2050 obviously california has been a lead all these years but i do want to emphasize another from the administration perspective very high priority and that's what we call the ej 40 initiative so 40 of our benefits in disadvantaged communities i think it's really critical to have this in mind you know as we think about the clean energy future and also to give you some perspective to your listeners on some perspective today in the us we produce about 10 million metric tons of hydrogen per year and that's almost a seventh of the global supply of hydrogen and we're looking at scenarios again if you look at all these different applications or to even five times more hydrogen clean hydrogen that could be produced and also to give you an idea we produce 10 million more again it takes energy to produce that hydrogen we could double today's solar or wind deployments and again there's lots of numbers out there 140 billion in revenue 700 000 jobs this is in the us alone the global economy is two and a half trillion just for hydrogen uh projections 30 million jobs and then huge potential for greenhouse gas reduction so we're we're doing our own analysis here 10 to 20 sometimes 25 of total emissions um possible using hydrogen so i want to emphasize again um from the administration perspective you may have seen the climate summit announcements where the president asked our secretary what can we do to really accelerate progress critical technologies and again it's not one single technology you need a portfolio and so for those who have not heard um we launched the hydrogen energy earth shot so the concept of the earth shot or moon shot is really an all hands on deck approach on achieving you know what's needed to really unlock the potential for these technologies so hydrogen shocks is one one one which is one dollar for one kilogram of clean hydrogen in one decade and so i just wanted to to emphasize again the importance of hydrogen we uh had a request for information from stakeholders we got hundreds and hundreds of pages of feedback and we're looking very strategically again california has been a leader so a big congratulations to all of you but we're looking at you know where are the resources and um production the environmental justice question water and so forth and we plan a summit uh august 31st so you can google there's a website now and again there will be for other earth shots as well so hope to see many of you there and then finally there's a lot of information available as i was listening to your questions um i thought i would share again how much co2 can we actually reduce so for instance the gray here shows diesel these are different types of trucks and then depending on how you make the hydrogen if you have renewables clean hydrogen you can see this green here and that's the entire pathway so again to your question why are we so interested in hydrogen and fuel cells see a lot of potential for co2 and then also for criteria as you rightly mentioned that's an issue that shows you diesel knocks from buses and again how we can reduce air pollution basically using hydrogen and fuel cells and then we have a lot of cost analysis i won't go through all of this but again just wanted to give a few um highlights and some of the information that's available through through does so you can um you go to our website so when i was thinking about national interest in things like hydrogen i was thinking about i mean one of the important roles for fuel cells i think will likely be in heavy duty vehicles um i mean at least for the information i've had thus far it seems like fuel cells are particularly um advantageous in that role because of reduced weights because every is charging time because of the longer ranges etc than battery technologies although battery may still do very very well there so but one of the big challenges for both battery and for fuel cell is the lack of infrastructure on a national basis i mean long-haul heavy-duty trucks on the south coast is about one out of eight trucks half the emissions from trucks come from the long-haul sector now that turns out to be a huge portion of our total emissions in the south coast we cannot get to clean air if we don't solve the problem of long-haul trucks and how are we going to do that without an infrastructure and so your battery or fuel cell or rng you need to be able to find a place to charge your fuel out when you're outside of california we can do it in california but california can't do it in oklahoma we can't do it i mean you know these trucks travel all over the country and they don't necessarily have predictable routes how can the federal government be a big player in creating those kinds of charging and fuel and uh hydrogen fuel infrastructure yes yes so that's definitely in the plan so if your interest is really the the trucks i should mention we launched a new consortium called the million mile fuel cell truck consortium and it specifically targets class eight long-haul trucks and as mentioned in the chat there are already companies out there uh the example hyundai has uh 1600 trucks that they have planned in switzerland we're collaborating globally as well there are a number of partnerships we're involved with so this is the the consortium that we launched and it's not um so there are a number of issues like durability uh of course there's cost and so we're addressing all of those challenges and then we also have a lot of activities on the infrastructure piece so for instance looking at the stations looking at the fueling rates we're funding for instance technologies like compressors dispensers so all of those those aspects that will be needed for a low-cost infrastructure and then again the part of the division with hydrogen shot and to answer one of the questions that that piece is just the production piece of hydrogen and so obviously um if we can get that down first that will help stimulate the end use and depending on the end use applications you'll have different you know means of delivery and dispensing and so of course there'll be different costs associated with that but again partly what we're doing now is looking very strategically how can we co-locate large-scale production and drive down the infrastructure again a cluster type of pro of approach so we're looking at where do we expect to see those large volumes of heavy-duty trucks say a steel manufacturing plant ammonia production so again we can very strategically look at where will the infrastructure most effectively play out so again brian brian oh sure sure and i was just going to say that the american jobs plan is also very high priority it mentions specifically 15 hydrogen demonstrations and so we're hoping you know that passes an infrastructure package also talks about hydrogen hubs and so we are you know coordinating uh really looking strategically and that was part of the division here in the hydrogen shock summit that we have planned to look you know regionally again california has done a great job but where else can can we envision you know that very strategic um roll out of hydrogen sure well i kind of just wanted to lob a softball up for sunita that um ties in directly to a couple of her comments there and i'll preface this with saying you know i've been in this space you know maybe 15 16 17 years and one of the most impactful stats i've heard throughout that entire time was during a doe presentation at nrel where the speaker was talking about industrial decarbonization and the potential to decarbonize the refining process through using renewable or zero carbon hydrogen and so you need to you know please correct me if i'm butchering these stats but essentially they cited the potential to reduce the ghg emissions from the refining process by about 25 with another potential 20 reduction um for using renewable hydrogen for industrial heating there so i may be off on those numbers or i may have misheard them but what i wanted to point out and then ask sunita to comment on is the potential really to have this huge impact in the transportation space using renewable hydrogen while we're weaning off of of gas and diesel and then you know essentially the opportunity to to start producing hydrogen at scale um in the same capacity so essentially as we're kind of leaning off of gas and diesel we're producing more and more renewable hydrogen so sunita i was hoping you could comment on that and you know i'm not sure if those stats were exactly right but you know how do you view this opportunity to start folding renewable hydrogen or zero carbon hydrogen into industrial processes like uh refining and then what's the impact that you think that will have on the transportation sector sure and in terms of the stats um i don't know which the specific ones you were mentioning but the emissions reduction potential is much higher than that so again than the 25 so for instance right now if you look at the refining market it uses hydrogen from steam methane reforming so for those the audience that are not familiar that's how most of the hydrogens produce most of the hydrogen is actually used for that and for fertilizer production so those are two examples where you can you know easily decarbonize those sectors so while we wait for the infrastructure and trucks and so forth to your point and so but in terms of the emissions reduction potential again on average um if you look at the amount of hydrogen that's produced today just from conventional hydrogen production again there's a range of numbers here but it's about 10 kilograms of co2 per kilogram of hydrogen and what we're looking at with green hydrogen or you know clean hydrogen is uh less than one kilogram of co2 per kilogram of hydrogen so it's 90 you know reduction um and so again just to get those numbers right so that you're absolutely right that you know if we start looking at um using clean hydrogen this is what other countries are doing one of the largest in the world is is looking at uh electrolyzer producing green hydrogen um for the refining market and a steel again we have two projects that we're funding at doe uh one of them that in fact is jack brower i see the note in the chat which is looking at you know electrolyzers producing clean hydrogen again for instance your point the way you make steel is most of the world uses coal for the iron production and then steel so that's another example so i'm not sure if i'm getting to your question brian but i think you know your whole point of starting with some of those existing markets like refining and fertilizer and then ramping up scale so that we can drive the cost of infrastructure down and have the availability of clean nitrogen so that we can get that infrastructure in the stations and so forth for some of these other markets like trucks like clean transportation which is our big uh priority here because of the large share of emissions that come from uh clean trucks we're certainly interested in the industrial applications but if we don't get it into the transportation world we're not going to get the emission reductions that we need to get so i'm going to uh um shift a little bit here i want to give chanel hey chanel anything you want to chime in here yet and uh any uh we are there an environmental justice issues that you've seen so far that have really uh needed to be commented on in the course of this discussion yet are we doing sure and um and i'm gonna let you know that i have a two-year-old and an eight-year-old so if you hear them screaming in the background that is just there you go right just love me more um so i've been also i've been monitoring the chat and i think it's um it's been really informative and interesting to see kind of like the way that we're um how much i think uh technology and how technical the conversation has become and so i think i would say a couple of things um i think it was it was really great um to see that point in there about the environmental justice 40 um that piece in there and that presentation and about focusing the benefits and making sure that 40 percent of the benefits are directly benefiting environmental justice community think please i think that's hugely important and i think that i think one of the things that i would point out is that just structurally many of these communities particularly environmental justice communities have borne the burdens for so long when we're talking about fossil fuels and we're talking about um you know ghg emissions and also criteria pollutants which i was also really grateful to hear that that got flagged as well so i think it's really important for us to be thinking about whatever technology we're moving towards and whatever we're doing there does need to be a clear analysis of how is it going to be benefiting communities that have also been burdened and have been burdened for so so many years so one of the things that i will say is that for carb um generally speaking we are supportive of many zero emission technologies right um we don't have like a certain preference over one over the other and yet i think there is like i think a point where we are talking to environmental justice communities and cbo's and cbo's is just community based organizations for those that may not know and here is kind of what i heard and what has been flagged for me um there's actually a deep concern from a lot of environmental justice communities around i think the focus on hydrogen um and just the proliferation of the different pathways and this is directly from like leadership council for justice and accountability um and part of what their concern is that now there's like there's green hydrogen green electrolyte hydrogen renewable hydrogen so there's a number of different terms that i've actually heard being thrown around here as well and part of what the concern is is that it's like well wait a second what are we talking about when we talk about these different terms what do they mean um particularly when we're talking about the fueling piece right so what do they mean and i think more importantly are we opening the door for polluting pathways to just get more funding ahead of actually assessing whether or not these technologies are working particularly for those communities that have been burdened um and i mean i'm i'm not saying either or so i should probably re-emphasize the point because the chat has been the chat has been really interesting to monitor i think what the emphasis here is on are we making sure and we're really prioritizing this community that have been burdened are we really doing that deep assessment and saying well hey wait a second is this technology going to provide not just like i think like financial benefits right but actually improve the emissions approve knox criteria pollutants in your communities um and are we making sure that as we're doing this we're thinking about the social impacts the health impacts um and thinking about those pieces as well and so i think that that's the piece that i think i'm still getting a little lost on because i again i would point out that like i've literally heard us use a number of different terms when we're talking about hydrogen and i almost feel like at this point i'm like somebody please send me like a fact sheet that lays out the difference between you know like is there a difference between green hydrogen and renewable hydrogen and this is on the fueling side i understand that piece um that would be really helpful to know the ratio between like how much natural gas versus hydrogen we're putting in a pipeline for example again like these are all questions that i don't feel like i've actually heard answered and i'm thinking about it coming in like again from that environmental justice lens and like i said i should be clear i'm thinking as a government official of what we've heard from communities that's a big concern um the other point that i would just note and i would flag is that a number of communities have also said what we really want to focus on is is electrification and de-carbing yes again i've listened to the conversation i've seen the chat i hear about the weight i hear about the infrastructure i hear about all of those things um but my question is is how are we balancing what we're clearly hearing from communities around that rapid um electrification with this conversation around hydrogen and how are we doing i think um and i hate to use the term education because education can be condescending depending on how you're using it but how are we actually making sure that we're prioritizing that input from those communities when we're having these conversations so those are the things that i would probably flag that i've heard and i would want to respond to in this conversation we'll get back to you again danny let me remember yes i think i can answer some of those questions okay go for it all right so different types of hydrogen ultimately what we have to have is what's called green hydrogen hydrogen which is um made by electrolysis so you have a solar farm um and you do electrolysis meaning you convert the water into hydrogen and oxygen you let the oxygen go off and you have the hydrogen which can be used in a fuel cell for heating a building or a fuel cell for running a car but that's green hydrogen and ultimately in my mind that's the only acceptable hydrogen and there are no pollutants associated with that which is i know something the ej community is extremely concerned about there are other types of hydrogen gray hydrogen is the type of hydrogen that's made at oil refineries where they take um very hot steam and natural gas and put the two of them together and they get hydrogen and co2 and the co2 goes off into the atmosphere so you gain a little bit by using hydrogen of that type but not enough there's also i think it's called blue hydrogen where you actually capture the co2 but in the end we really are talking about green hydrogen which shouldn't be of an issue to the ej community the next oh i suppose i should have introduced myself i'm bill quirk i'm an assembly member in the state legislature here in california i have a phd in astrophysics i did i became a climate scientist in the 70s and developed nasa's first climate model um in the 80s 90s and i became our country's expert on foreign nuclear weapons programs that helped negotiate the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty there's more but that's probably enough so have a rather unique background as a legislator anyway getting back to hydrogen so green hydrogen is ultimately the only hydrogen we can use so i just don't remember if i could go ahead let's accept the proposition that we're striving for green hydrogen right we're trying to really figure out what the best path forward is to get there right um and it seems to me that uh that a key part of that has to do with the end uses and a key part of it also the means of conveyance right so for example uh hydrogen conveyed in a truck hydrogen conveying in a pipeline or two options but the end use um is a crucial determinant because the conveyance has got to get to the end use some people say that hydrogen is particularly useful for things like long-haul heavy-duty trucks and things like marine vessels um because of its operating characteristics it's it's it's uh it doesn't have the charging time battery trucks would have it's got a longer range it's not as heavy and so you don't have to give up cargo to use it what do you think the priorities should be if public policy were to be driving this if for example a ballot measure were to be providing a boatload of money how would you allocate resources to achieve the best outcomes both battery and hydrogen so right now i don't know however in this year's budget i got uh 10 million dollars in for research at the university of california institute for transportation studies they're going to look at the balance between hydrogen for transportation and electric for transportation and i can't tell you how that's going to come out but i'd hate to have a ballot measure that decided that i think we need to remain nimble and the thing about ballot measures is they are very brittle so if you were to have a ballot measure for say money to reduce greenhouse gases i wouldn't put in the ballot measure whether it's hydrogen or electric the other thing is are you planning to do a ballot measure on a bond which means the money comes out of the general fund which really is robbing peter to pay paul or are you planning on a new tax uh it would be a new taxes that we have new money i don't know how you do that tax but um that that automatically you can get 60 when you haven't told people how to pay but i don't know that you can get 60 when you tell them it's one cent on the gas tax or whatever and we're already taxing the high income people in california hell of a lot not saying it's not something you shouldn't do but you need to really think about how you're going to do it well if if climate were truly an emergency then we ought to be willing to take steps necessary to meet an emergency right you don't have to sell me on that it's an emergency and we ought to be doing something however the question you know i'm a politician as well as a scientist and i can tell you right now getting people to vote yes is not going to be easy if it involves raising additional money so we will be happy to share with you our polling that shows we're getting about 60 yes for these purposes and that's in the context of cova and a downturn in the economy but have you told them how you're raising the money yes we have okay how do you raise the money well i'm going to share that with you and uh we'll make we'll make your own public announcements of some strategic movement all right but believe me there are there are tools to do that that can raise over three billion a year and pull now over sixty percent and that uh i think will only get better as we have frankly uh away from the pandemic and the downturn and are dealing more frequently with the droughts and wildfires and stuff over the years um that people's support for this will grow right you mentioned 2030 is a date beyond which we would be in big trouble i think we're in big trouble now yes well that makes uh that suggests that um emergencies require emergency measures fine with me you'll get my vote but just saying as a politician we'll see okay so i want to shift the cliff and come back to you work in a minute uh cliff glaston where are you all right cliff so um what do you want danny i think listen cliff don't act like we've known each other for 35 years just because we have anyway i want to introduce cliff the rest of you as uh really one of uh a leading environmentalist for more than 30 years in california he wrote co-wrote the big green back in 1990 was one of the leaders in the efforts to create the karl moyer program which provides most of the funding for investing in alternatives to diesel trucks he's been a long time proponent of advancing clean as possible including fuel cell technologies for heavy duty vehicles he probably knows more about that industry and what it's doing and able to do than anybody else i know which is why i've invited you to come so cliff we had we're having some talk about fuel cells and its role and how it compares to batteries and mobile sources let's talk trucks specifically okay if you were to look out and have the crystal ball about which of these applications battery or fuel cell might be best fit for things like trucking in the basin the south coast basin or long-haul trucking how might you rate their their abilities and their capacity for success uh damn then that's a that's uh that's kind of a loaded question i mean uh from the standpoint of a uh uh an end user uh and and uh you know to uh to introduce perhaps to those of you in the audience who are not familiar with uh gna and our work we we primarily work with fleece and and with the manufacturers of advanced transportation technology to pair uh that advanced transportation technology with end users and from this from the standpoint of the end user and that is um a variety of different factors that come into play to um as they evaluate what makes sense to get the job done and it's not just getting the job done it's getting the job done cost effectively and that is one of the biggest challenges that we face as we are trying to transition to zero emission and near zero emission technologies okay so that's not necessarily an answer to your question i think that you could probably dedicate an entire two-hour session to evaluating and discussing what the challenges are and and how these various technologies work or don't work for various types of applications but from our standpoint we need to have it work both operationally and economically for our clients so if you were to have to say you know speaking generally speaking about the battery and fuel cell discussion for long haul trucking for example and i know that's really different for trucking that is short haul and and stays within the county or something where where charging times and stuff are less are less consequential for long-haul trucking um how would you assess the strengths and weaknesses of each technology um you know all other things being equal and
2021-07-27