Los Angeles is aiming to become the first city in the nation to use renewable hydrogen to produce electricity, with the goal of ending the use of carbon-based natural gas entirely. The city has a two-step plan to replace 1,900 megawatts of coal-fired generation produced at a Utah power plant owned by the Intermountain Power Agency. The first step: Build a pair of gas-fired units able to produce 840 megawatts using natural gas by 2025. The goal then is to link the units to a $1 billion storage project adjacent to the plant where hydrogen, one of the planet’s most plentiful elements, can increasingly be substituted to replace gas altogether Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems Ltd. won the contract for the turbines last month with the promise the new plant will be able to make a faster transition away from gas to renewable hydrogen, said Paul Browning, the chief executive officer of Mitsubishi’s America’s unit. The deal is being announced on Tuesday.
“California has really ambitious goals to decarbonize their power grid so our customer LADWP doesn’t see any path without hydrogen,” Browning said in telephone interview, referring to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.
Burning 100% hydrogen in the gas-fired turbines will take some work, but he said, “we are going to get there before 2045. We definitely think it’s possible to get there in 10 years or less.”