Largest green hydrogen supply deal in the world signed in California
June 9, 2021Waste-to-H2 company SGH2 Energy will sell 3,850 tons per year to southern Californian refueling stations.
SGH2, a waste-to-H2 company based in Washington DC, has agreed to sell an annual 3,850 tonnes of carbon-negative green hydrogen to refueling stations throughout southern California.
This launches the beginning of a massive ten-year contract between SGH2 and two large operators.
The green hydrogen will supply two of the largest owners and operators of H2 refuelling stations in the state. According to SGH2, the deal is the first and only long-term contract of its nature to have been established in the world. The financial terms of the agreement were not released at the time this article was written.
“The world is moving to green hydrogen, and we aim to accelerate that process,” said Robert Do, CEO of SGH2.
The production of the carbon-negative H2 will involve the use of biogenic waste and biomass. Production will take place at SGH2’s planned production facility north of Los Angeles, in Lancaster.
The green hydrogen is carbon-negative because it will divert greenhouse gas emitting waste from landfills.
The reason the H2 SGH2 will produce is considered to be carbon-negative is that it will be made using waste that would otherwise emit greenhouse gasses as it slowly breaks down in landfills. More specifically, the emissions would consist of methane, which is a greenhouse gas with a potency 84 times higher than CO2 over a 20-year span.
According to SGH2’s calculations, when all is said and done in producing the H2, the carbon intensity will be negative 188 kilograms of CO2 equivalent per megajoule. Comparatively, coal-derived H2 has a carbon intensity of 20 kilograms per megajoule. Standard green hydrogen is considered to be carbon-neutral, so its intensity is zero.
SGH2’s new plasma enhanced gasification plant is slated for a summer 2023 opening. It will be a public-private joint ownership partnership between the company and the city of Lancaster. The cost of 
construction was not disclosed at the time this article was written. That said, its full operation in baseload production capacity will be up to 11,000 kilograms per day, 350 days per year.
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Which British Company is doing something similar in the UK?
To claim that a process is carbon negative it has to remove carbon permanently from the atmosphere. This SGH2 process is good because it uses the energy in biomethane but it is not carbon negative as the biomethane burns to CO2. The production of biomethane from waste organic matter which is used to release energy, returns carbon to the atmosphere that was first captured by plants so it is a circular carbon economy. To be carbon negative the carbon has to be permanently removed, which can be done by high temperature cracking. An example is the Hazer process where a methane cracker is being built in Perth Australia to crack biomethane to hydrogen and high purity carbon that is valuable and can be sold to cover the cost of the energy needed by the cracker.