Tacoma Green Hydrogen

Green Hydrogen JIP

Regional collaboration to make Tacoma, WA the production and distribution nerve center for scaling up the use of clean hydrogen for port and maritime applications. Alternative fuels and energy are needed to reduce emissions from transportation and port operations. Hydrogen shows great promise, if it can be generated at scale in our region from renewable energy, as well as stored and transported in a safe manner. Tacoma Power has excess clean hydropower generation that can be utilized to make Green Hydrogen. They also need to provide energy for cold-ironing services to berthed vessels, which have large variances in power demand and timing.

Project Scope
  • Build and scale a Maritime hydrogen ecosystem through a project that demonstrates the concept of a port-based hydrogen (H2) solution utilizing Formic Acid for lower cost, safer storage and movement. 
  • This demonstration system will create a liquid H2 carrier (LHC) directly from green renewable electricity, water and recycled CO2. This unique technology is provided by partners: OCO Inc., whose electrolyzer technology creates Formic Acid LHC and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, that provides reformer technology to release the H2 from formic acid when needed. 
  • Tacoma Power will provide the green electricity, primarily from hydroelectricity (97% carbon free) and will also be the H2 end user to generate energy on demand for cold-ironing services to berthed vessels. 
  • DNV to provide techno-economic modeling so demo can be used for scaling-out H2 in other maritime applications such as trucks, trains, vessels and cargo handling.
Benefits

This approach provides a large-scale local production and use for H2 in maritime ports  that can be stored as a liquid carrier in the form of Formic Acid, overcoming some of the key storage and movement challenges. This demonstration has the potential to show ports, utilities, and numerous maritime end-users what can be achieved when H2 is used at scale.

Project Partners