Announced on Wednesday (June 8), the project hopes to build upon modular hydrogen production technology innovations to create a renewable electricity-powered system to use biogas from landfills, wastewater treatment plants, or dairy farms as feedstocks.

SoCalGas hopes the system will facilitate renewable hydrogen to be produced at $1.39, and by requiring lower operating temperatures without needing combustion, reducing emissions by up to 95%.

The demonstration system, expected to begin testing in 2023, is due to be designed to produce five kilogrammes of low-carbon or carbon-negative hydrogen per day.

Neil Navin, Vice-President of Clean Energy Innovations at SoCalGas, said, “We are thankful for the California Energy Commission’s continued efforts to support technology and innovation to scale-up hydrogen production.

“This project will help us get that much closer to Net Zero by developing a method to create affordable, renewable hydrogen at scale to bring down prices and provide an important tool to help us reduce carbon emissions.”

H2 View understands SoCalGas expects to use the project to develop a bench-scale demonstration that is modular and scalable, allow flexible means of producing renewable hydrogen.

Jonah Steinbuck, Deputy Director of Research and Development at the California Energy Commission, commented, “We continue to advance low-carbon hydrogen production for targeted, hard-to-electrify end use applications that support a clean energy economy.

“Technologies such as those being explored by SoCalGas are an important step towards decarbonising hydrogen.”