The Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub, also known as ARCH2, has officially opened its new Program Office in Morgantown
Political leaders such as U.S. Senators Joe Manchin and Shelley Moore Capito were on hand Wednesday afternoon for the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the office at the West Virginia University Innovation Corporation’s facility.
ARCH2 is an initiative to help build a safe and clean hydrogen ecosystem in Appalachia, and will help enhance the region’s clean hydrogen production, storage and delivery.
Battelle President and CEO Lou Von Thayer says this is an exciting step.
“It’s just so exciting,” Von Thayer said Wednesday. “We’ve been working on this for so long and partnered with so many of the people that are here and to have us actually be able to celebrate this right now, it’s exciting.”
In last fall’s announcement that named West Virginia as one of seven states to receive of hub project funding from the federal government, United States Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm described 10 production sites across the state to extract hydrogen from natural gas that would be connected through a series of pipelines. Production nodes are expected to be located in Belle in Kanawha County, Follansbee in Brooke County, Washington in Wood County, Point Pleasant in Mason County and Fairmont in Marion County. The ARCH2 hub will be headquartered in Morgantown.
The project has received an initial award of $30 million from the federal government this summer. It’s eligible for up to $925 million in federal support.
WVU President Dr. Gordon Gee was also on hand for the ribbon-cutting ceremony Wednesday, and he says the ARCH2 will make West Virginia a hub for energy.
“It will turn West Virginia into a center of energy,” Gee said. “Not only coal, but coal, oil, gas, hydrogen, and that’s the future really.’
Manchin, on the other hand, says Appalachia has always been a hub for energy.
“This whole region, this is a hub,” Manchin said. “This has always been an energy hub, so we’re able to do our job.”
Manchin also says this new hydrogen hub will produce a large growth of jobs in the area.
“If you think everything ends up like we’ve anticipated, you could be talking close to 20,000 jobs that basically are going to be created because of the hub and the workings of the hub by not only the production of hydrogen but the consumption of hydrogen and the jobs in the factories that’s going to be using hydrogen that’s going to be creating more opportunity,” Manchin said.
Capito says she’s happy the region is leading the charge in this advancement.
“Technology is moving along, so I’m excited that we are not just at the beginning of the pack, that we are leading the way,” Capito said.
Capito says the ARCH2 will give the region endless opportunities to put the energy to good use.
“You could do power generation, you could do construction, you could do critical infrastructure development, so that’s jobs,” Capito said. “That’s using the great graduates of WVU and the labor community to increase our economic benefits from using hydrogen in all the different ways it can be used.”