Is hydrogen in Pennsylvania’s energy future?

• Scott LaMar
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Scott LaMar has worked in both radio and television for more than four decades.
  
  Currently, LaMar is the Host and Executive Producer of The Spark program on WITF-FM, 89.5 & 93.3 in Harrisburg, Pa.
  
  Previously, LaMar was WITF TV’s Sr. Public Affairs producer and produced the station’s award-winning weekly public affairs TV program, Smart Talk.
  
  In addition to his on-air duties, LaMar has moderated political candidate debates, including those for candidates running for Pennsylvania governor and the U.S. Senate and was a regular contributor to BBC World News TV before and after the 2020 U.S. Presidential election.
  
  LaMar often emcees or moderates local events and has gone as far as California to emcee a national event.
  
  The American Society of Civil Engineers honored LaMar with their national Excellence in Journalism award in 2020. He has been nominated for five Mid-Atlantic Emmy Awards.
  
  LaMar and The Spark have been recognized throughout the Central Pennsylvania community including ADVOZ Lancaster’s “Dignity in Dialogue Award”, the South-Central Assembly’s “Regional Citizen Award” and was named a “Humanitarian Hero” by The Humane Society of the United States/Pennsylvania.
  
  A native of Coatesville, Pa., LaMar has also worked as a broadcast news anchor, sports play-by-play announcer and manager.

A hydrogen pipeline illustrating the transformation of the energy sector towards to ecology, carbon neutral, secure and independent energy sources to replace natural gas. 3d rendering

Airdate: June 2nd, 2023

 

As the planet warms, we continue to seek ways to produce energy that are climate friendly. Renewables like solar and wind or batteries get most of the attention, but what about hydrogen?

Wait, isn’t hydrogen a greenhouse gas? Indirectly it is, but hydrogen technologies are being explored.

StateImpact Pennsylvania’s Rachel McDevitt reported on hydrogen this week and joined us on The Spark Friday, who said clean hydrogen is what is being promoted as an energy source,”Clean hydrogen is the idea that we can make hydrogen. So it’s hard. So it’s already existing right out there in the atmosphere, but it’s hard to bring that and create a fuel from it. So you usually make it out of something else. So when you can make that without additional greenhouse gas emissions, then it’s clean. If you make hydrogen by splitting water molecules apart, separating that oxygen and hydrogen and you use renewable electricity to do that, that has no emissions and that’s considered green hydrogen. There’s a whole rainbow of colors to describe different ways to make hydrogen. Pink. Hydrogen is when you use nuclear energy to split water and take the hydrogen and separate the oxygen out. So clean, according to the Biden administration and advocates for lowering those emissions would be any process that has net zero emissions.”

How could hydrogen potenially be used,”Hydrogen is viewed as a solution to these areas that are really hard to break away from fossil fuels that are really energy intense, like heavy transportation, heavy industry, steelmaking, flying, aviation. So industries like that, it’s seen there are some companies that are experimenting with using hydrogen for power plants to replacing that as a fuel source there. So any place that’s really hard to decarbonize or remove from fossil fuels, that’s where people are hoping to use hydrogen.”