BRENDA, Ariz. — A clean energy company is seeking federal permission to harness Arizona's sunlight and water to produce carbon-free hydrogen fuel in the state's most stressed rural groundwater basins.
Heliogen is a Southern California-based company that last year Obtained exclusive lease rights More than 3,300 acres of desert east of this small community in western Arizona's La Paz County is being used for solar energy development. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management had offered the land as one of three designated solar zones in the state. The zone is located just north of Interstate 10 and about 100 miles west of Phoenix.
Rather than selling solar power directly to the grid, Heliogen proposes to use its planned solar arrays to recover liquid hydrogen from groundwater. The process is known as “green hydrogen” because it does not burn fossil fuels. The company calls it a “clear path to a carbon-free future,” but La Paz County residents are concerned that their drinking water wells will run dry.
“carbon-free hydrogen “It is an ideal power source for energy-intensive industries that are more difficult to electrify, such as transportation, mining, and chemical manufacturing,” a Heliogen spokesperson told The Arizona Republic in an email.
brenda's place Its location along Interstate 10 and in a zone already vetted and designated for solar development makes it an ideal location to supply hydrogen for use in these markets and the Port of Los Angeles. It is said that it can support heavy equipment and truck transportation. To heliogen.
Heliogen hopes to have all the mirrors pointing toward a central tower that will heat the saline solution, spin a turbine, and provide electricity to electrolyze and extract hydrogen. This is known as 'green hydrogen', as opposed to 'gray hydrogen', which is made from natural gas, and 'white hydrogen', which may be available for mining in some major natural deposits around the world. is known.
Local residents fear that increased water pumping will make their wells inoperable.
The project is a wake-up call for local residents who have seen their water tables drop in recent years due to existing residential and agricultural pumps. They want the Bureau of Land Management to deny approval for hydrogen extraction, which separates hydrogen from water and leaves behind oxygen.
“I don’t understand how water in our state is so limited that it can be a renewable resource,” said Kari, a Bowes resident who is running for county supervisor in the area. Anne Noelter said.
of BLM's Brenda Solar Zone It sits atop the Lane Gras Plain Basin, which state water officials have identified as one of the three aquifers most at risk from lax regulations on overpumping in rural Arizona. It is a groundwater aquifer. The rest are in Wilcox and Gila Bend.
Laneglas Plain It exchanges some water with an adjacent basin that has attracted political attention as a large-scale agricultural pump to supply alfalfa and other livestock feed for export. Monitoring of the condition of wells in the basin shows both an alarming decline in the water table, or “depth to water,” and subsidence due to compaction of the newly dry soil.
Data from wells monitored by the Arizona Department of Water Resources shows that entire areas of the watershed have declined over the past two decades, many by tens of feet. For example, in regularly tested wells closest to a proposed solar hydrogen field, The water became deeper Since 2003, there has been a difference of more than 20 feet, with each year's measurements adding points downward along a relatively straight line on the well depth graph.
Farther east in the watershed, near the most intensive farms, land has sunk nearly 25 centimeters, or 10 inches, since 2010, said Ryan Mitchell, chief hydrologist for the Department of Water Resources.
“That's too much,” Mitchell said. “You're talking about tens of feet, if not 100 feet (of water) loss.”
Heliogen says it expects total water use for both the hydrogen feedstock and associated solar fields to be one-fourtieth of the water that agriculture takes from the basin.
After researching what it takes to produce hydrogen, La Paz County residents found that Heliogen would use 48 million gallons (approximately 150 acre-feet) of groundwater to produce the 20,000 tons of hydrogen it plans to produce annually. He said he expected it. Such quantities could potentially supply up to 500 households if applied only to domestic use.
That's small by large-city standards, but meaningful in a county with only about 16,000 residents. The company declined an interview request but responded to Republic's questions via email, saying residents' calculations were “directionally accurate.”
Mitchell, the state's hydrologist, said the amount of water alone is not excessive.
“It's not as stressful as farming,” he says. “However, return flows from agriculture do exist because some of the water applied to crops percolates back into the aquifer.”
Still, Mitchell said each additional well puts more strain on the troubled basin. Depending on the level of pumping, the aquifer may not drain as quickly, but someone's personal residential well that was originally drilled to pump water to a shallow water table may fail and require deeper drilling. The possibility of becoming The only thing that can reverse the decline in desert groundwater basins is to pump less, he said.
Throughout the past year, Governor Katie Hobbs has Groundwater Policy Council Recommend legislative or administrative changes to better protect the state's groundwater. Essentially, state law since 1980 has divided the state into urban areas with strict groundwater protections and rural areas with no pumping restrictions.
Mr Mitchell said the decline of regional basins like the Lanegras Plains suggested the need for a “third option” that MPs were likely to discuss this year.
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“They flew in under the radar.”
Nance Franklin is one La Paz County resident who has already deepened her well, increasing the reach of her family's well from 300 feet to 450 feet.
“Our (water) pressure was dropping,” she said. “That's why we started looking at what's going on here.”
Franklin is an artist who works from home. She and her husband enjoy dirt bike riding and her ATV riding, which attracts many tourists, and they moved to the Bowes area north of Brenda. She worries that further declines in water availability could hinder the region's development as a haven for desert enthusiasts.
“We are right on the brink of that,” she said. “This is a beautiful country. Just being out in the desert is amazing.”
Franklin met with Republic at a site where Heliogen is drilling test wells on the east side of Brenda, a small roadside cluster of convenience stores, produce stores and RV parks. A large poultry operation to the north across a field of creosote bushes represented one of his major farm investments in the area.
County Planning and Zoning Commission Commissioner John Newman joined Franklin and said he was also concerned about the project's water demands. He opposed the industrial rezoning that Heliogen was asking the county to do, and the county withdrew its application, but he expects it will reapply.
When asked about the zoning request, the company told The Republic it is seeking a local partner.
“Heliogen is working with La Paz County, one of the many important partners on this project, to fulfill all obligations as efficiently as possible,” a spokesperson said in an email. . “The County has a necessary role to play in the development of the Brenda Green Hydrogen Project and we look forward to continuing to work together.”
Franklin, Newman, and Noelter each complained that the Bureau of Land Management appears to have worked with Heliogen to develop the plan without public participation. Franklin said she only found out about it after she and her neighbors noticed the rig and started asking questions.
“They got in unnoticed,” Franklin said.
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Project requires a full environmental review
A spokesperson for the agency said the designation of the solar zone and the granting of lease rights by Heliogen are part of a public policy aimed at fulfilling Congress's obligation to authorize 25 gigawatts of renewable energy on federal lands by 2025. He said it was done as part of the process.
The next step for Heliogen to seek approval for its hydrogen project will be an independent public environmental study, said Lem Hawes, a spokesman for Heliogen's Arizona office.
Hawes said the study has not progressed to the point where it could launch its own website or solicit public comment because the BLM still needs to review the technical report submitted by Heliogen. These include water demand and availability data, desert archaeological resources, and other environmental factors.
“We're just at the beginning,” Hawes said. “There are some obvious concerns that we want to address, but water is a big issue.”
He estimated the public review process would begin this summer and take about a year.
BLM, an agency of the Interior Department, has a long history of energy development, from oil and gas to renewable energy such as solar and wind.
“Energy production is part of our family tree,” Hawes said, and the agency now wants to quickly deploy renewable projects. “I hope this is one of them.”
Brandon Loomis covers environment and climate issues for The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com.please contact him brandon.loomis@arizonarepublic.com.
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