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INTERVIEW: Craig Brooker, Project Developer, Mitsubishi Hydrogen Infrastructure

INTERVIEW: Craig Brooker, Project Developer, Mitsubishi Hydrogen Infrastructure

Q: Can you tell us a bit about yourself, your role and your company?

A: I’m Craig Brooker, currently a project developer for MHI Hydrogen Infrastructure. I've been a long-time power industry professional, approaching 20 years, with the last several years having been involved with energy transition businesses, mainly related to the power sector, including renewables and utility-scale energy storage. 

Most recently, I’ve been involved with hydrogen, its use cases and project development, which is my current role at MHI Hydrogen Infrastructure. We are a wholly owned subsidiary of Mitsubishi Power Americas, and ultimately our parent company is MHI, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, located in Tokyo. We look to develop projects that drive decarbonization at scale, both domestically and internationally.

 

Q: What projects are you currently working on? Can you tell us any more about these projects?

A: I am working on large-scale blue hydrogen projects in the US, where we're looking to support low-carbon energy production. Unfortunately, a lot of these projects are in the early stages, so I can’t share too much information, however, I can say they're on the order of $5 billion of investment, and we're looking to be commercial just on the other side of the 2030 timeframe. From an overall platform, we have other projects that are looking at both the hydrogen and ammonia markets both domestic and global in nature.

 

Q: What are the key challenges you are facing in project development?

A: There are always plenty of challenges in project development. The top two, I would say, are probably the off-take market and regulatory clarity and uncertainty. From an off-take perspective, I'd say there is good support on the production side and the IRA – even though that's kind of in limbo and everybody's waiting for clarity on that. But there is some type of momentum on the production side. I'd like to see some more incentive on the demand side to really help drive adoption. 

While some sectors are a bit more motivated to adopt no-to-low carbon hydrogen in their process, I'd say others – where there's much more of a technology change in how they utilize it or perform their business – have a bit more adoption inertia. It is always tough to be the first and I think that's really where some of those demand-side incentives could help.. On the regulatory uncertainty – here in the US specifically – everybody's waiting to see what the IRA tax incentives are going to look like, how you can access them, what they apply to, what type of guardrails and gates, and so on.. But, yes, the off-take market and regulatory are the ones I think of as the top two key challenges.

 

Q: How much of a constraint are workforce shortages likely to be and what can be done to address this?

A: When you're talking about projects of real significant scale, workforce shortages and quality are always a concern and need to be considered. Not only are we competing for a skilled workforce, but other industries are competing for that same skilled workforce. 

I think from our perspective, you really have to work closely with communities where these projects are being constructed, understanding their education and training programs, and additionally understanding your EPC's capabilities, workflow and workforce availability, how robust their work plan is and their access to skilled labor and what type of training programs they have. Is there an ability for the EPC to work together with the local community in terms of education and training to help build that robust network?

 

Q: Mitsubishi Power says it is working with partners to deploy a low-cost hydrogen ecosystem. How is that progressing and what needs to be done next to help further bring down costs?

A: We continue to be involved with the ACES Delta project, on which we're partnered with Chevron out in Delta, Utah, and which is currently under construction and should be commercial in 2025. And I think additionally, when you look at how we're executing our current development projects, we look to partner with companies that share our vision and we have good strategic alignment with in order to make not only that project successful, but the businesses and overall industry, and really pull progress forward. 

On the cost front, I think scale is a big component of that. We look to drive projects that are of meaningful scale, to really drive down the cost of hydrogen. From a broader industry perspective, you do need multiples of those to underpin the build-out of the supply chain and those other broader foundational supports of the industry. And so, having quality projects, and having those project fundamentals built soundly to make that project a success and drive up the commercial probability will help. 

Projects that get announced that are what you could call hype, I think when they ultimately evaporate, that can drive inefficiencies in the market. And every industry is going to have that vaporware, but I would say hydrogen is emerging. So, it can really be of benefit to the industry by having quality projects that can progress and ultimately get through final investment decision,  construction and on through commercial operations.

 

Q: How does Mitsubishi Power’s involvement in the Pacific Northwest and HyVelocity hydrogen hubs, as well as ACES Delta, inform your views on the opportunities and challenges involved in building hydrogen infrastructure in the US?

A: Each region of the country has different ingredients available to solve the unique problems that they're facing. Us being involved with projects across different regions allows us to see a broad spectrum of challenges, with their respective constraints and ultimately, how to find a solution.

I'd say the unique aspect about being in the hubs is that a good majority, if not the entire hydrogen value chain, is participating to some extent. And so, working through that solution approach with all parties involved – from R&D institutions to suppliers to producers and off-takers – really provides valuable insights and strategies for how to address and navigate through the challenges of developing a project. You take what is working or some of the challenges in one region or another, and you can flow those through other projects that you're working on. Because those will be good indicators of what the market's struggling through, and that will help inform you on other projects, on how to progress those forward or how to commercially or technically solve. 

I'd say with regard to the ACES Delta project, that was the springboard for the broader development platform of MHI Hydrogen Infrastructure. It enabled us to become a market leader. When that project started in 2019 nobody was talking about hydrogen at scale. And so, we carried that progress forward in our commercial strategies, our development strategies and relationships in order to further the platform.

 

Q: How have you found the response from the engineering, procurement and construction industry to your project development plans? And what would you want to see from this industry to help support the roll-out of these projects further?

A: There's definitely interest in hydrogen projects and ammonia projects, especially large ones with a lot of craft hours involved. There's a lot of support on the pre-FEED and FEED efforts and we've seen companies open to collaborating on a variety of contracting methods for execution. 

A lot can happen between the pre-FEED stage and construction, so I think the feedback loop from EPCs to developers and vice versa is important, especially in the dynamic hydrogen market. It's incumbent on us developers to – again – not produce vaporware but produce sound projects and tangible projects that the market can sink their teeth into, especially EPCs.

 

Q: You mentioned earlier that regulatory uncertainty was like one of the major challenges. How do you navigate such regulatory uncertainty and what would you want from the incoming administration in the US in order to help the clean hydrogen industry?

A: You always want options and the ability for a project to pivot as much as possible. Part of that is site selection and market potential, but also being aware of the regulatory environment, as you mentioned, and how that impacts your projects from a fundamental perspective and risk profile.

As a part of that, having a sound government relations and communication strategy and underpinning that with quality relationships is really key to navigating that uncertainty. Awareness and information is key, and you have to be able to get the right information in a timely manner to determine if you're going to pivot,stay the course, wait it out move on a variety of different strategic decisions. From a go forward perspective, definitely we'd like to see clarity on the IRA in a positive finality, that would be the first item. 

Second, as I mentioned, would be demand-side support mechanisms to help overcome that adoption inertia that we see in the markets. And I think third, a positive regulatory environment to help progress permitting of these projects. Hydrogen and hydrogen derivatives are sometimes a new language, depending on what region you're in, and that can prove to be challenging. So, having a regulatory environment that can help us progress through that in a responsible and timely fashion is only a positive for us.

 

Q: Where globally have you seen the greatest success in the build-out of hydrogen and ammonia projects? And what lessons do you think can be applied in the US?

A: The hydrogen and ammonia market is definitely emerging – I will say ammonia has been around a long time, but not some of the feedstock that goes into that in terms of production and even storage. I’d say the EU, through its clear policy incentives and regulatory support – when you look at things like the Renewable Energy Directive and the REPowerEU and others – it provides a framework, expectations, timelines and targets. 

I would also mention that the Middle East has been seeing success through billions of dollars of investment and progressing large-scale projects. When looking at the resource mix and availability there, I think that region has high potential for hydrogen and hydrogen derivatives. Between those leading regions, I think a few things could be translated to the US. The one we have already touched on is supportive and clear policy, I think that is key. And then I think another one too is that there's a broad geography and broad resource availability in the US. 

I think embracing those resources – not only from a wind and solar but also a geothermal and geology perspective – can help progress our industry forward. It's leveraging the positives that we have in the projects that we do.

 

Q: What is your outlook for the future and what do you want from the industry as you look ahead?

A: I'm certainly optimistic about hydrogen and its derivatives, ammonia and others. But I'd say the progress has been slow, I think for a variety of reasons, some of which we've discussed. But I'll also say the industry has had its fair share of empty projects. The more of those projects get announced and subsequently evaporate and go nowhere, the more that slows the broader industry. I think it's incumbent upon us to ensure that we are diligent in the projects we develop.

I would say maybe even a longer-term view and a general market opinion is, when it comes to hydrogen, I see a market where, instead of talking about green or blue hydrogen and ammonia and it becomes more of an index on a no-to-low-carbon scale. I think that creates a clear dialog framework, enables flexibility on how the end product is made or mixed, but also moves the production to a more technology-agnostic discussion. So, having that technology-agnostic hydrogen ammonia be categorized by no-to-low carbon – a CI score, carbon index score, carbon footprint score, whatever you want to call it – I could see us moving in that direction. But I think probably a bit more progress needs to be made, and industry needs to have a better foothold, and larger installed capacity.

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