Businesses Race for U.S. Climate Incentives

The event was a contrast to previous clean-energy conferences that were long on talk about technology and the virtues of going green, said Bob Oliver, a partner at Change Energy Services, an Ontario-based consulting firm that is trying to design a system to deliver hydrogen fuel by truck. 

“The message at this conference is: ‘Hold up—the technology is ready. It’s now time for the private sector to start taking risk,’” he said. “The focus is on how do you commercialize.” 

The

Global Clean Energy

GCEI 5.54%

Action Forum, hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy in Pittsburgh last week, included funders, manufacturers and entrepreneurs all hoping to tap a rich trove of tax credits and other incentives from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. The infrastructure bill alone grants the Energy Department more than $62 billion for clean-energy related projects; the IRA contains nearly $370 billion in climate- and energy-related support measures. 

In many cases it is still unclear how that money will be disbursed and how fast it can be awarded. The Energy Department has said it needs to hire hundreds of staffers to help administer the new programs. Details are sketchy for many awards and incentives, such as one that offers bonus tax credits to renewable-energy projects that use domestically manufactured components. 

The kinds of skills needed to oversee large-scale demonstration projects such as the ones the legislation will be funding are different than those needed to monitor research and development, which is what the Energy Department is more used to, said Hoyu Chong, a senior policy analyst at Washington, D.C., think tank Information Technology & Innovation Foundation.

It is “hard to administer and staff up for such a big effort so quickly,” she said.

Among the announcements during the Pittsburgh conference were the launch of an $8 billion U.S. program to fund regional hubs of hydrogen-related production and services and an Energy Department initiative to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the use of heat in industrial processes such as the production of plastics and batteries.

One goal of the conference was to have “an awful lot of public-private discussion on the margins,” Deputy Secretary of Energy

David Turk

said. “A lot of deal making.” 

One company looking for partners and business opportunities at the conference was Illinois-based

CF Industries Holdings Inc.,

one of the world’s biggest producers of ammonia, a key ingredient in many fertilizers. 

Currently, most ammonia is produced from natural gas, in a heat-intensive process that emits a lot of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas blamed for the bulk of global warming. CF Industries is building a plant in Louisiana that will produce hydrogen—a component of ammonia—using a process that doesn’t generate carbon emissions, said Linda Dempsey, CF’s vice president for public affairs. The company is also considering two other ammonia plants that would remove the carbon dioxide then sequester it underground.

Both those efforts could potentially qualify for support from the new legislation.

CF is also looking to start a business of selling ammonia to countries like Japan or industries like shipping, to use as a clean-burning fuel, similar to hydrogen. If ammonia takes off as a hydrogen derivative, we will need more infrastructure, Ms. Dempsey told a roomful of executives and officials at a packed hydrogen roundtable at the Pittsburgh conference. 

Hitachi Energy, a unit of Japanese conglomerate

Hitachi Ltd.

that deals with power generation and transmission lines, was attending the conference to talk about systems that could help renewable-energy sources such as wind or solar—which only generate when the weather is right—feed more effectively into power grids.

Hitachi Energy CEO

Claudio Facchin

said he had attended prior versions of the conference, but this year the increase in private-sector participation and interest was palpable.

“We have now the U.S. giving a very strong signal…committing to this energy transition,” he said.

Write to Phred Dvorak at [email protected]

The event was a contrast to previous clean-energy conferences that were long on talk about technology and the virtues of going green, said Bob Oliver, a partner at Change Energy Services, an Ontario-based consulting firm that is trying to design a system to deliver hydrogen fuel by truck. 

“The message at this conference is: ‘Hold up—the technology is ready. It’s now time for the private sector to start taking risk,’” he said. “The focus is on how do you commercialize.” 

The

Global Clean Energy

GCEI 5.54%

Action Forum, hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy in Pittsburgh last week, included funders, manufacturers and entrepreneurs all hoping to tap a rich trove of tax credits and other incentives from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. The infrastructure bill alone grants the Energy Department more than $62 billion for clean-energy related projects; the IRA contains nearly $370 billion in climate- and energy-related support measures. 

In many cases it is still unclear how that money will be disbursed and how fast it can be awarded. The Energy Department has said it needs to hire hundreds of staffers to help administer the new programs. Details are sketchy for many awards and incentives, such as one that offers bonus tax credits to renewable-energy projects that use domestically manufactured components. 

The kinds of skills needed to oversee large-scale demonstration projects such as the ones the legislation will be funding are different than those needed to monitor research and development, which is what the Energy Department is more used to, said Hoyu Chong, a senior policy analyst at Washington, D.C., think tank Information Technology & Innovation Foundation.

It is “hard to administer and staff up for such a big effort so quickly,” she said.

Among the announcements during the Pittsburgh conference were the launch of an $8 billion U.S. program to fund regional hubs of hydrogen-related production and services and an Energy Department initiative to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the use of heat in industrial processes such as the production of plastics and batteries.

One goal of the conference was to have “an awful lot of public-private discussion on the margins,” Deputy Secretary of Energy

David Turk

said. “A lot of deal making.” 

One company looking for partners and business opportunities at the conference was Illinois-based

CF Industries Holdings Inc.,

one of the world’s biggest producers of ammonia, a key ingredient in many fertilizers. 

Currently, most ammonia is produced from natural gas, in a heat-intensive process that emits a lot of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas blamed for the bulk of global warming. CF Industries is building a plant in Louisiana that will produce hydrogen—a component of ammonia—using a process that doesn’t generate carbon emissions, said Linda Dempsey, CF’s vice president for public affairs. The company is also considering two other ammonia plants that would remove the carbon dioxide then sequester it underground.

Both those efforts could potentially qualify for support from the new legislation.

CF is also looking to start a business of selling ammonia to countries like Japan or industries like shipping, to use as a clean-burning fuel, similar to hydrogen. If ammonia takes off as a hydrogen derivative, we will need more infrastructure, Ms. Dempsey told a roomful of executives and officials at a packed hydrogen roundtable at the Pittsburgh conference. 

Hitachi Energy, a unit of Japanese conglomerate

Hitachi Ltd.

that deals with power generation and transmission lines, was attending the conference to talk about systems that could help renewable-energy sources such as wind or solar—which only generate when the weather is right—feed more effectively into power grids.

Hitachi Energy CEO

Claudio Facchin

said he had attended prior versions of the conference, but this year the increase in private-sector participation and interest was palpable.

“We have now the U.S. giving a very strong signal…committing to this energy transition,” he said.

Write to Phred Dvorak at [email protected]