New California hydrogen fuel plant will use wood waste

Mote, the facility’s developer, says that the $100 million location would divert CO2 emissions.

Mote, a climate tech company has announced its intentions to build a $100 million hydrogen fuel facility that will use wood waste.

The plant will be constructed outside Bakersfield, California and will help to divert greenhouse gas emissions.

As of the time of the writing of this article, there had yet to be a construction contract awarded for building the hydrogen fuel facility. Mote has stated that it expects the plant to produce about 7 million kilograms of carbon negative H2. This process will, according to the company, remove 150,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere each year. The firm has equated this to taking over 32,000 cars off the road each year.

Earlier this month, Mote announced its intentions to begin producing H2 in 2024. For the plant’s development, it is collaborating with Fluor Corp, an engineer, and SunGas Renewables Inc., a gasification systems maker.

Mote developed the waste-to-fuel process that will be used by the new hydrogen fuel plant.

That waste-to-fuel process will collect waste that would otherwise be either left to decomposed or burnt. The waste will come from the forestry industry or from farms or other sources. It will employ commercially available equipment for producing the H2.

Beyond clean energy production, gasification and treatment will also extract the rest of the wood waste’s carbon dioxide in liquid form. The liquid carbon would be added to construction concrete mixtures for permanent storage.

Mote is currently in discussions with CarbonCure Technologies. That firm works with concrete producers to inject recycled CO2 into batches of construction concrete. Mote will work with the company for the use of its equipment for carbon storage in concrete.

“As the world’s first carbon removal project converting biomass to hydrogen, we are addressing the ever-growing demand for renewable hydrogen with a carbon-negative approach,” said mote CEO and co-founder Mac Kennedy.

The scalability and efficiency of Mote’s process makes it possible to offer hydrogen fuel at a reduced price and smaller carbon intensity than other clean H2 projects, according to its own estimates.