Joel Weber
Member
In addition, the state requires more than 30% of transportation hydrogen to come from renewable sources. This includes capturing methane from farm waste and waste water treatment (ie. human waste) and even landfill bio-gas. Even though the hydrogen production still releases CO2 into the atmosphere, the GWP of the CO2 is much less than just releasing the biological methane into the atmosphere.
I am not a believer in hydrogen for transportation, especially passenger automobiles. I would much rather the State spend money to encourage scaling up facilities to synthesize drop in liquid fuels from bio-methane. It is even possible to use surplus renewable energy to synthesize those fuels from water and atmospheric CO2. The LCFS (Low Carbon Fuel Standard) is starting to encourage this kind of thing, but the cost per gallon is still too high.
Virgin Atlantic has partnered with LanzaTech to make waste carbon monoxide from steel plants into jet fuel, and I think a variant of that technology taking the waste gases from the sewage treatment which is near the Los Angeles airport and turning it into jet fuel would be worthwhile...