(VitalNews.org) – President Biden has recently come out with a policy that would initiate and scale the green hydrogen industry. However, a flaw in his program is causing allies to steer away. Lawmakers who usually would agree with Biden on his environmental policies have pushed back on the green energy tax credit guidance from this recent policy.
Ultimately, Biden’s idea for creating an industry focused on hydrogen energy is beneficial, however, there is a large snag in this plan. This guidance would make the IRA’s huge production credit of $3 per kilogram of hydrogen produced unbelievably difficult to achieve.
Many agree that the U.S. Clean Hydrogen industry is essential, but these flaws in the policy will make it difficult for the industry to effectively get off the ground.
Hydrogen has been discussed as an essential piece for reducing future greenhouse emissions. The technology that has been presented to extract hydrogen is electrolysis, which is a process of splitting the hydrogen out of water using an electric current.
Many people have found an issue with this in itself, saying that the clean hydrogen industry would essentially be pointless if they had to use fossil-fuel sources to perform electrolysis, but it may be the only way to get that industry started.
Tom Carper, a chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, mentioned his thoughts on the ruling and whether or not he could support it. He expressed concerns that the industry would have a difficult time getting off the ground with the requirements Biden is currently setting.
“Treasury’s draft guidance does not fully reflect this intent, potentially jeopardizing the clean hydrogen industry’s ability to get off the ground successfully. Without meaningful changes, I will find it difficult to support the final rule,” he said.
An Ohio Democrat, Sherrod Brown, also spoke out about this guidance possibly putting a delay on his support of the US Clean hydrogen industry. “These new proposed rules will slow down and ultimately undermine our country’s ability to produce the clean hydrogen needed to build the energy economy of the future,” said Brown.
Others were concerned that they would have to get their electrolysis energy source from a green source to qualify for the tax credit at all, which seemed to be difficult for them to accept and agree on.
Many Democrats called on Biden to issue looser guidance rules that would progressively get stricter over the next decade. Revised guidance may be in the works as many lawmakers said that they could not support Biden with the current guidance that he has offered.
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