One of the largest casualties of Republicans’ megabill may be the build-out of a U.S. “green” hydrogen industry, with implications for how factories, vehicles and power plants operate in the decades ahead.
The sweeping domestic policy bill that passed the House last week would phase out a tax credit for green hydrogen and gut incentives for renewable projects that would produce the fuel. If those provisions survive the Senate, nearly all announced U.S. green hydrogen projects would lose their federal financing, setting the stage for lucrative incentives to mainly benefit hydrogen projects tied to fossil fuels, analysts say.
“We won’t see a lot happen on green hydrogen” if the language becomes law, said Hector Arreola, a hydrogen analyst at Wood Mackenzie. Research firm BloombergNEF similarly called the bill a “death knell” for green hydrogen.
It’s a sharp turn for a fuel that was a Biden administration priority, viewed as a way to slash emissions from heavy industries like steel that have been challenging to decarbonize.
