Fossil fuel firms 'spent $41m this year lobbying the US government on hydrogen': report

The US government is seriously at risk of “aiding and abetting fossil fuel” interests in the name of low-carbon hydrogen, think tank the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has warned, after an investigation by a lobbying watchdog revealed that oil & gas giants spent more than $41m lobbying the US government on H₂ matters this year alone.

The report from OpenSecrets, a non-profit that tracks money in the US, found that lobbying on hydrogen has risen dramatically since Joe Biden took office in 2021, with the number of organisations disclosing H₂-related lobbying activity as of 30 September this year topping 200 compared to just 24 at the end of 2020.

Of the 200-plus organisations petitioning federal officials, 32 were international oil and gas firms, many of whom were pushing to ensure access for blue hydrogen (made with fossil gas and carbon capture and storage) to subsidies, OpenSecrets reported.

ExxonMobil and Phillips 66, which are partners in a Texas hydrogen cluster that was awarded $1.2bn in federal funding to develop blue hydrogen production capability alongside renewable H₂, spent $4.4m and $3.4m respectively.

Ironically, research house WoodMac revealed earlier this week that international oil giants are responsible for just 8% of global investment in low-carbon hydrogen to date, with Chevron and ExxonMobil bringing up the rear among the biggest energy companies.

OpenSecrets also found that powerful, 600-strong oil and gas lobbying group the American Petroleum Institute has aggressively lobbied the federal government for fully funded research and development programmes for low-carbon hydrogen, as well as a “technology-neutral approach” to US decarbonisation.

Developers are currently vying for a vast array of federal subsidies proposed by the Biden administration as part of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which incentivises hydrogen made with less than 4kg of CO₂-equivalent per kg of H₂, and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), which lays out billions of dollars in subsidies for US hydrogen supply-and-demand “hubs”.

But the final regulations determining which projects will be eligible for the maximum production tax credit of $3/kg are still being hashed out by officials, while developers behind potential hubs programmes spent most of the year waiting for the Department of Energy to make a decision on which projects to allocate funding to.

The final decision in October saw four of the final seven winners of the $7bn hydrogen hub programmes including blue hydrogen projects — an outcome that was slammed by critics as “outrageous” and “reckless”.

“There are so many ways that hydrogen can go that it just perpetuates the status quo,” Julie McNamara, the deputy policy director for climate and energy at the UCS, told OpenSecrets. “That is an extremely lucrative place for the fossil fuel industry to be. If we have weak standards, it can mean more use of natural gas for longer with more profit along the way.”

Critics have warned that subsidising blue H₂ keeps fossil gas flowing for longer and dramatically increases climate-warning methane emissions, in the name of decarbonisation.

A peer-reviewed study from August 2021 found that producing blue hydrogen would result in 20% higher greenhouse gas emissions than simply burning the same amount of fossil gas.

Hydrogen Insight has contacted the Department of Energy for comment.