According to Michael Ducker, senior VP of Hydrogen Infrastructure with Mitsubishi Power America, one of the world’s largest reserves of natural gas is underfoot in the U.S.
Mitsubishi Power: Climate change solutions for generations ahead
Michael Ducker, senior VP of Hydrogen Infrastructure with Mitsubishi Power America.
"Unless we can find a way to cost-effectively decarbonize this resource, it is a tremendous lost opportunity," Ducker said.
Discussing clean hydrogen’s place in the future market at the Hydrogen North America 2023 Conference held in Houston, Ducker said the energy industry is seeking to "solve a problem more than a century in the making, but within one generation."
The importance of stepping up to the decarbonization challenge is not up for debate for Ducker.
"For myself, the answer to that question is quite simple and easy," Ducker said, pointing to a slide image of his three children. "For me, it’s personal."
Recently, Ducker and his six-year-old son were watching the television show Planet Earth in which Sir David Attenborough discusses climate change and the impact on the world.
"My son posed the question to me: ‘Dad, what’s climate change?’ Try to explain climate change to a six-year-old. It’s a little bit challenging," Ducker admitted.
Rather than changing the subject to a less serious theme, Ducker chose "to better discuss with him what we are doing in this world to try to deliver clean energy, and what his daddy is doing in his work," he said. "I realized in that moment how important it was for me to see the impact, specifically, our work is having on future generations."
Ducker noted how the industry needs to, and is capable of massive energy transition, and cited advances that Mitsubishi Power is making toward that goal.
In 2019 the company put together the Advanced Clean Energy Storage (ACES) Delta Project, a JV with Magnum Development, to develop the world’s first and largest clean, integrated hydrogen hub. The project, Ducker said, serves as a model for the world’s first market application of seasonal energy storage.
"We closed in June of 2022 on the world’s first and largest integrated clean hydrogen production and storage hub. With 100 metric tons per day of electrically produced hydrogen, and 11,000 metric tons of hydrogen storage, we will be the world’s largest single-storage site for any type of hydrogen — clean or not," he said. "We had the largest renewable hydrogen project under construction as of the close of 2022. We also closed on the Department of Energy’s first loan in over a decade for $504 million."
Drilling for the project was completed in summer of 2023 for both caverns "ahead of schedule and nearly a mile beneath the earth," Ducker said.
"We are constructing caverns the size of the Empire State Building with little more to show for it than a 50-foot wellhead above ground. Our hydrogen-capable gas permits arrived in July 2023 at our partner’s site, and our construction continues at our aboveground facilities," he added proudly.
The ACES Delta Project, Ducker explained, is pragmatically "a first" in the industry — a "flagship example," he said. "We need first-movers. Act when we’ve got incomplete answers. Act when others criticize."
"Back in 2019 when discussing this investment, I was told we were throwing away our money. I was told this was a science experiment. I was told this was the hydrogen economy failure, all over again. This was literally just a little more than a few years ago," Ducker concluded. "Yet, here I stand today, and we have delivered. This is what it is going to take if we are going to solve a problem a century in the making and doing it in a single lifetime."
