3 days Ago By By JULIE DRAKE Valley Press Staff Writer
LANCASTER — The City of Lancaster will join the City of Industry to launch First Public Hydrogen Authority, a new public utility to make clean, renewable hydrogen easier to produce and use. The City Council on Dec. 10 approved a joint exercise of power agreement with the City of Industry to form First Public Hydrogen Authority.
The council also authorized City Manager Trolis Niebla or his designee to finalize and execute any related documents. The council voted 4-0, with Mayor R. Rex Parris absent.
Lancaster Choice Energy CEO Jason Caudle recalled that about three years ago, the council directed city staff to transform Lancaster into a hydrogen city. To accomplish that, the city allowed for ease of development and job creation for the production of molecules, he said. Toward that end, last year the city established the East Side Overlay Zone.
An overlay is a tool used to introduce additional land uses, standards and regulations within a specific area. The approximately 5,841-acre area is bounded by 60th Street East to the west, Avenue J to the north, 107th Street East to the east and Avenue L to the south. The goal was to spur on development of hydrogen and hydrogen production and job creation.
“We accomplished that goal,” Caudle said. “There’s about 60,000 tons of hydrogen in some point of permitting or development on the east side of town currently. The challenge was, we said, ‘Great, we’re a hydrogen city now let’s go acquire some hydrogen and do hydrogen stuff.
’ ” However, Caudle added that the scale in which the hydrogen was being developed was not equal to the demand of hydrogen being requested. “That’s not because the demand wasn’t at scale for the size of it, but it was a disaggregated demand,” he said. “So there’s multiple agencies looking for small amounts of hydrogen, not one agency looking for a large amount of hydrogen.
” To fix the problem, the city established the joint powers authority to bridge the gap between producers and consumers. “The forming of this JPA allows us to aggregate demand from other agencies, transit agencies, port authorities, municipal fleets and others to acquire hydrogen together,” he said. Although the founding members of the First Public Hydrogen Authority are the cities of Lancaster and Industry, Caudle said the JPA will include multiple agencies, including transit agencies and port authorities statewide as well as other municipal governments to power their fleets as well as potentially off-grid energy sources.
“Our goal is to set a standard of affordability, accessibility, efficiency and transparency in the hydrogen market,” he said. The council also voted 4-0 to appoint five board members to the board of directors of the First Public Hydrogen Authority including Parris, who will serve as president. The other members are Aura Vasquez, an environmental advocate; Joël Barton, a retired business development director for IBEW Local 11, who will represent industry and labor; Jack Brouwer, a professor at the University of California, Irvine and the director of the National Fuel Cell Research Center; and Tanya Peacock, managing director for Eco Engineers, who works on a lot of sustainability engineering projects.
At Vice Mayor Marvin Crist’s request, Caudle said they could add a system for alternates on the board. The city of Industry City Council at its Dec. 12 meeting appointed Councilmember Newell Ruggles to serve as vice chair to the board.
A seventh board member will be appointed by the whole board. Caudle explained that First Public Hydrogen Authority is already in the marketplace acquiring molecules to deliver to offtakers. “We’re out selecting vendors to provide this molecule,” he said.
“Many of those vendors are in Lancaster. We will aggregate that procurement and then distribute that amongst members.” The members include the Los Angeles and Long Beach port authorities as well as transit agencies that use hydrogen-powered buses.
“There are 1,000 buses on order currently statewide and there is not enough fuel to fuel those buses so we will be providing that for them as well,” he said. He added the “holy grail” is the opportunity to power facilities with off-grid solar, battery and hydrogen developed in Lancaster so that the city “can provide, quick, reliable and affordable energy to new developments including residential and industrial buildings coming forward.” jdrake@avpress.
com.
