• Exclusive Content
  • Events
  • Endeavor Business Media Energy
    1. Energy Storage

    SoCalGas using state grant to develop hydrogen production system

    June 10, 2022
    It will use biogas for production, reducing production costs to $1.39 per kilogram
    Photo by Anthony Aneese Totah Jr, Dreamstime.
    Dreamstime M 5843193 62a37e341caff

    The Southern California Gas Co. (SoCalGas) received a grant of $750,000 from the California Energy Commission to develop a novel hydrogen production system, which uses biogas. The resultant system will deliver affordable, scalable, renewable hydrogen.

    The low-cost clean hydrogen will be produced using renewable electricity that uses renewable gas, like biogas from landfills or dairy farms as feedstock. The resultant system will produce hydrogen at a lower temperature, without the need for combustion, thus avoiding nitrogen oxide emissions. In this project, SoCalGas will develop a bench-scale demonstration which is modular and scalable. It will be capable of producing 5kg of hydrogen per day.

    The project aims to reduce the cost of producing renewable hydrogen to $1.39 per kilogram while also reducing emissions by as much as 95%. The system will produce low-carbon or carbon-negative hydrogen and capture the CO2 co-product for use in CO2-based fuels, microalgae fuels, concrete building materials and feedstock.

    The firm will begin testing the system in 2023. 

    About the Author

    EnergyTech Staff

    Rod Walton is senior editor for EnergyTech.com. He has spent 14 years covering the energy industry as a newspaper and trade journalist.

    Walton formerly was energy writer and business editor at the Tulsa World. Later, he spent six years covering the electricity power sector for Pennwell and Clarion Events. He joined Endeavor and EnergyTech in November 2021.

    He can be reached at [email protected]. 

    EnergyTech is focused on the mission critical and large-scale energy users and their sustainability and resiliency goals. These include the commercial and industrial sectors, as well as the military, universities, data centers and microgrids.

    Many large-scale energy users such as Fortune 500 companies, and mission-critical users such as military bases, universities, healthcare facilities, public safety and data centers, shifting their energy priorities to reach net-zero carbon goals within the coming decades. These include plans for renewable energy power purchase agreements, but also on-site resiliency projects such as microgrids, combined heat and power, rooftop solar, energy storage, digitalization and building efficiency upgrades.