Paul Rodden • Season: 2025 • Episode: 383
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Welcome to The Hydrogen Podcast!
Welcome to The Hydrogen Podcast! Today, Paul Rodden interviews Bill Newsom, President and CEO of Mitsubishi Power Americas, to explore Mitsubishi’s transformative role in the hydrogen economy and its commitment to the energy transition.
Key Topics Discussed:
🔹 Mitsubishi’s Investments: Hydrogen production, storage, and decarbonization strategies
🔹 ACES Delta Project: World-leading hydrogen production and storage initiative in Utah
🔹 Hydrogen Production Innovations: Scaling technologies like alkaline, AEM, pyrolysis, and solid oxide electrolyzers
🔹 Policy and Market Alignment: How global and U.S. policies are shaping hydrogen’s future
🔹 Blending Hydrogen: Retrofitting gas turbines for 20-50% hydrogen utilization
🔹 Global Hydrogen Vision: Export opportunities, ammonia carriers, and long-term storage solutions
Featured Highlights:
1️⃣ Hydrogen Ecosystem Leadership: Mitsubishi’s three-pillar strategy – hydrogen, CO2 capture, and asset decarbonization
2️⃣ Technological Advancements: Cutting-edge projects like the Hydrogen Park in Japan
3️⃣ Cost Curve Solutions: Innovations and policies to drive cost parity with fossil fuels
4️⃣ Infrastructure Challenges: Addressing hydrogen storage and transport complexities
Thank you for listening and I hope you enjoy the podcast. Please feel free to email me at info@thehydrogenpodcast.com with any questions. Also, if you wouldn’t mind subscribing to my podcast using your preferred platform… I would greatly appreciate it.
Respectfully,
Paul Rodden
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Transcript:
Paul Rodden 0:00
Welcome to the hydrogen podcast, where we explore the latest in hydrogen technology investments and infrastructure. Today, we’re honored to have Bill Newsom, President and CEO of Mitsubishi Power Americas, joining us. Bill is at the forefront of Mitsubishi power’s effort in advancing clean energy solutions, and today we’ll dive into the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead for hydrogen is a key energy carrier. Welcome Bill,
Bill Newsom 0:24
Thank you, Paul, appreciate it.
Paul Rodden 0:27
So diving in.
Bill Newsom 0:29
Sure…
Paul Rodden 0:29
Mitsubishi power has made considerable investments in hydrogen and clean energy. Can you give us an overview of where capital is being deployed, both in the Americas and globally, and how does this align with Mitsubishi power’s broader vision?
Bill Newsom 0:43
Well, first of all, I have been with Mitsubishi power 20 years now, and I’ve been in the industry for 30 years, and I’m really proud to be working for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. And Mitsubishi power America’s a company that’s committed to net zero by 2040 and one of the reasons why we’re doing that is so that we can develop solutions and products to enable our our customers and our partners to meet their net zero goals by 2050 or so, right, right? And so as a company, we have had a three pillar strategy, and that three pillar strategy is, one to help develop a hydrogen ecosystem. Two is to be part of developing a CO two ecosystem. And then three, to decarbonize existing assets. And so we are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to develop new technologies and solutions to come down that cost curve and bring low carbon solutions to bear. And in each one of these three pillars, we have real projects that we’ve been executing on. And if I can take a moment and talk about each one of those, the first one over five years ago, pre IRA, we we invested significantly to develop a hydrogen production storage facility utility scale and out in Delta, Utah, called aces delta. And so we’ll talk more about that today. And then the second pillar, which is the carbon capture ecosystem. We are in the tail end of a feed study for a significant project in Decatur, Illinois that I look forward to talking more about. That one as well, and in the third pillar, the decarbonizing of existing infrastructure. We partnered with EPRI and George power, and we went, they have 6m 501, G gas turbines. And we went and brought in truck in hydrogen, and we’re able to very few modifications to the existing plan. We were able to blend 20% hydrogen and bring down the CO two emissions that actually helped combustion and low load we demonstrated across the load range, and so having that blend of hydrogen with very minimal changes to the plant just shows that we can actually lower CO two emissions for existing facilities as well. So those are some of the areas we’re really working hard to demonstrate these new lower cleanup technologies.
Paul Rodden 3:26
That’s great. Are there any regions that are leading the charge when it comes to hydrogen investment you could you find especially promising? What can your company learn from these efforts?
Bill Newsom 3:38
Let me take a moment and take it to Takasago Japan, that is where we have our MHI DNA is that we always design test and verify at our own facilities. And sometimes it’s challenging, because our process is that we demonstrate for a full year before we take a product commercial the NHI way and and that’s why our reliability of our products and solutions are so high. So we have built a one on one combined cycle power plant, spent billions of dollars there to demonstrate our latest gas turbine. And on top of that, we have the world’s first hydrogen part. We spent over $50 billion building this facility, and in this facility, we’re doing three things. One, we’re testing and verifying and developing four new hydrogen production technologies we’re demonstrating above ground, storage and then utilization in two different avenues. One, we’ve got an rod center there, and then we’ll run hydrogen through single can combustors and make sure we can get the manage the fluctuations in combustion vibration on one can and then on our fully commercial one on one combined cycle Jac combined cycle power plant we’re utilizing 2030 we’re now, in the next few months, going to demonstrate 50% Plan on that one, on that commercial power plant. So in summary, we are really looking, I can’t promise you, we’re going to bring four different hydrogen production technologies to market, but we’re going to go spend time and effort to see which one works best. And there might be a different answer in different parts of the world, globally, right? High pressure, alkaline, AEM pyrolysis and sodc Solid oxide. So all, all of those were testing and demonstrating now.
Paul Rodden 5:34
that’s fantastic. Yeah, hydrogen production has come a long way, and the push for green and blue hydrogen is strong. How does Mitsubishi power differentiate its hydrogen production technologies in this evolving market?
Bill Newsom 5:46
One ofthe things that we we look at is we don’t really differentiate between a color right hydrogen, whether it’s it’s blue or green or pink or magenta, all of them are reducing CO two emissions, and we want to support all of them right now we, as I said before, the ACES Delta project, we are currently in commissioning of 40 high pressure alkaline electrolyzers out in aces delta two and a half hour drive outside of Salt Lake City, where Intermountain power has Renewable project. They’re shutting down an 840 megawatt coal facility and repowering with two one on one JC gas turbines, and then across the fence. Five years ago, we started this development partnership with Magnum, and we have developed, and we all have we’re commissioning now two salt caverns that are the height of the Empire State Building. Each one of them stores about 150 gigawatt hours of energy. And so we’re going to take water, curtail the wind, electrons, split that water into hydrogen. Options, store the hydrogen in the in the salt cavern, and then utilize it day one, it goes commercial in 2025 and we’ll be blending that renewable hydrogen with natural gas and then sending those renewably fueled electrons through a high voltage DC line down to the LA basin. So we’re able to help decarbonize the western United States. So that’s at scale project where we’re shutting down a coal facility repowering and we’re able to demonstrate new scaled technologies, de risking those technologies, and this was pre IRA, so making those economics work is really important. And, you know, I think on the blue side we have significant carbon capture technology for carbon capture on the tailpipe of gas turbines and pre combustion. Carbon Capture is also very important. And figuring out the cost. We have an abundance of natural gas right in the United States, you know, arguably 150 years. So if we can figure out how to take curtail renewables, make green electron, make long term storage and utilize those when it’s needed for lower carbon electricity, we can take natural gas, we can carve out some of those co to make blue hydrogen and utilize that. And where it makes sense, on the tailpipe, where we can store CO two, if we can use natural gas and then capture that CO two and store it geographically. Where the geology makes sense is where some of these answers are better, more cost effective, absolutely.
Paul Rodden 8:30
What are some of the most exciting advancements in hydrogen production you’ve seen in the past year or two? How is Mitsubishi power adopting or innovating around these advancements?
Bill Newsom 8:40
One of the things we’re working quickly on is, is hydrogen utilization in a gas turbine and in the production of hydro. So pairing those together very important. So advancements we’re looking at, as I mentioned, out in hydrogen Park, with four different hydrogen production technologies, and then the utilization. It’s a challenge to utilize hydrogen in a gas turbine. The Flame speed is so much faster than methane, so making sure that we can test and verify that and manage the flashback and get all the way to 100% Yeah, that’s going to take time and effort. So we’re continually working on that at hydrogen Park and T point. And I’m excited about we’re going to demonstrate 50% blend, and so we’re able to do that with a combustor that this gas turbine ships ready to go with 30% and we’re going to have to change combustors when we go above 50% blend. One of the things I’m excited about is the hydrogen production technologies. You know, hydrogen production electrolyzed been around for 60 years, right? But they’ve been bespoke and they’ve been small, so bringing those to scale is going to be important, as we’re doing out at aces Delta, and we’ve been operating the same electrolyzer for almost a year now that. Hydrogen Park. So we’re demonstrating that before the installed out at aces Delta. But when we look at the cost of hydrogen, green hydrogen, specifically, we’ve got to come down that cost curve. So we’re estimating over the next decade, we need to bring down the cost of electrolyzers by 80% right? So those are some of the areas we’re looking at in terms of improving manufacturing, scaling up and reducing the cost of electrolyzers as well.
Paul Rodden 10:25
I’m really looking forward to hearing more about the hydrogen part too, new advances that you have going on over there.
Bill Newsom 10:31
So I could take you I’d love to see it. Yes, see it firsthand.
Paul Rodden 10:34
Absolutely. Can you share Mitsubishi powers strategy regarding electrolyzers? Are there plans for scaling up production, or possibly even leading innovation in electrolyzer technology? You kind of touch about on this a little bit
Bill Newsom 10:46
Sure. And yes, we are using, we’ve invested in hydrogen pros technologies for the 40 electrolyzers we’ve already installed out at aces Delta, and we’re it’s been operation and hydrogen Park. So we are continually looking at, how do we improve that technology, and how do we make it more efficient and bring it to utility scale? Because when we first put it in operation in hydrogen Park, we did have some challenges, and we had some bumps in the room, but our design team got all over it, worked through it, and we ran it through all the paces, up and down, and we saw some of the challenges, and we fixed all those challenges. So all those fixes we brought in, and we have, haven’t worked with hydrogen Pro, and we’ve modified that, and those all got installed out at aces delta. So I’m looking forward to the commissioning of those electrolyzers here right now and into beginning in 2025 be great to even have you go out to aces delta and see those 40 electrolyzed observation out there look to see that. Yes, yes.
Paul Rodden 11:50
So given the race to achieve cost parity with with fossil fuels, what role does Mitsubishi power see itself playing in making hydro production economically competitive?
Bill Newsom 12:00
Great question. And I think if we step back for a minute and look at history, if we look at our electric grid, over the last 20 years, we’ve reduced the CO two emissions in our electric grid by almost 50% and how do we do that? We did it by shutting down coal, replacing with natural gas, and adding renewables. And technology was the enabler there. We were able to use shale fracking, fracking technologies, to bring down the cost of natural gas. And so that fuel switch was economical, and it solved the math problem of clean plus lower cost electricity, and so that’s where I think we are today with hydrogen you’re hearing a lot about with data centers using extending lives of coal plants and utilities and developers building hundreds of gigawatts of natural gas plants. It doesn’t necessarily feel clean today, but the thing that’s great about this is we are going to install this generation. We’ve got these hyperscalers demanding, and going to hold us accountable to have a path to clean so yes, we’re putting in gas today because they need electrons to grow economic grow this AI platform, and that’s going to be the forcing function and the and the driver to to get us to clean and and so we’ve got to crack the math problem, right of clean plus secure plus affordable, right? And so we’re focused on that every day. What can we do to de risk technologies bring them to scale and come down that cost curve? But we have to be pragmatic. It’s not going to be overnight. We’re going to flip a switch and be able to have zero CO two emission in the United States and be able to serve data centers and and also power your house and our businesses, right, right.
Paul Rodden 14:02
Switch it up a little bit. Sure, sure. Hydrogen storage and transportation are key challenges for scaling hydrogen How is Mitsubishi power addressing the issues around hydrogen storage, particularly the infrastructure that’s needed?
Bill Newsom 14:14
Yeah, hydrogen storage. I mean, one of the great things out in haste is delta, yeah, you know, the geology around the United States, and we’ve studied it quite a bit, where there’s salt domes, and we’re blessed with really great geology out in Delta Utah, where we have this enormous salt dome that could house up to 100 of these salt caverns, each one storing 150 gigawatt hours of energy that’s enough to power the entire western United States, right? So think about that for a minute, that massive salt dome. And if we were able to tap into that, and we could power the entire western United States, right? And as we’ve studied it, the salt caverns are really the most economical long term stories for hydrogen. We’ve been doing that for a long. Time the United States with energy liquids, right, too. So liquid natural gas. So that is a a cost effective way for to store hydrogen. And the Golf has some other salt caverns. So we’re looking our salt salt domes. And we do think that, you know, there’s other forms above ground. Storage is expensive, right? Dedicated. You can do pipe packing, and if you’re able to build a long pipe when you don’t have the right geology, underground is an option as well. So these different forms of storage we have been studying and looking at the overall economics for projects to go forward.
Paul Rodden 15:37
Excellent.
Paul Rodden 15:38
We’ve seen developments like hydrogen pipelines and ammonia based carriers. Which storage and transport methods do you believe have the greatest potential for scale, and how is Mitsubishi power positioning itself with respect to these technologies?
Bill Newsom 15:50
Well, we’re working on our hydrogen development team is working on projects to utilize both and looking at Regions where we have ability to put hydrogen pipes as well as, you know, MHI is investing in, you know, we have a ship building part of our division, and is looking at ammonia carriers and, oh, by the way, we’re developing an ammonia burning gas turbine as well. So we’ve got, in Nagasaki, we’ve got also a demonstration facility where we’ve got carbon capture and ammonia turbine that we’re demonstrating there. So I do think that a big opportunity in the United States to help decarbonize other parts of the world is to take renewables, make green hydrogen, convert that to green ammonia, and then ship that overseas in countries like Japan that do not have the resources to decarbonize themselves and their governments looking at contract for differences and being able to help support paying for that additional cost to create the green ammonia, ship it over and then utilize it with our ammonia turbine over there. So those are some things we’re working on.
Paul Rodden 17:02
That’s great. Yeah, the cost of hydrogen remains a barrier to adoption, correct? What steps is Mitsubishi power taking to reduce these costs, and what role does policy play in making hydrogen more viable economic?
Bill Newsom 17:16
I think I’ve talked a lot about what we’re doing in hydrogen Park and demonstrating technologies and looking to come down that cost curve so we can reduce hydrogen production. Cost policy is very important. And you know, one of the things that that makes it challenging for additionality is that if, if we have to build a dedicated renewable resource, then it does make the cost of hydrogen very challenging, right? If we’re able to use curtailed renewables, where we are building significant we’re building almost 36 gigawatts a year of new renewables will go on the ground, PV, solar, wind, and so being in certain areas, when those renewables aren’t needed, they’re curtailed. If we can take and utilize those convert it to long term storage, that is one of the most significant ways to reduce the cost of hydrogen. And so policy that supports that is something we have been working with DC to try to convince them of the right policy. And so I think getting the policy rights important, and so we’ll see what some of the what comes out in the next administration. But I firmly believe that production tax credits, and I heard a couple speakers earlier today mention, and I’m going to paraphrase from them, that we’re in this long game. And I agree with that. When you look I mentioned before, about 20 years we’ve reduced our carbon footprint. At that same time, we had production and tax credits for renewables, and they were very expensive, right? So over 20 years we’ve come down that cost curve, and that’s where we’re at now with hydrogen. We need to 20 years come down that cost curve, right? And those those production tax credits have lasted over many different ministrations, and I feel that’s going to be the same way with hydrogen and carbon capture. As we go forward, there’ll be this decarbonization journey is not going away, right? And that’s why what’s changed significantly in the last 12 to 18 months has really been the demand growth by these hyper scalers, and I think that’s a good thing. Yeah. Even though it might not feel clean today, it’s a good thing because they are going to demand clean right pragmatically over time, because we, if we force them to pay for clean today, it’s not there. It’s not going to be economical. They won’t pay for it. Yeah, so they’re going to give us time to get the cost right and bring these technologies to bear.
Paul Rodden 19:44
I couldn’t agree more.
Paul Rodden 19:46
So how do you see hydrogen working alongside renewables to provide economic and environmental benefits? And where does Mitsubishi power fit into this integrated vision?
Bill Newsom 19:57
First of all, where we fit is. As I mentioned before, we have a three pillar strategy. We are fully committed to making this hydrogen ecosystem, and that is needed with renewables being a key part of that driving the green hydrogen production. We need to have PV, solar and wind to be the source for converting those curtain ripples into long term storage, and we have a hydrogen development team. We have a PV solar development team. So we’re focusing on developing those projects that make sense to go forward. And before I said, we’re developing four different technologies for hydrogen production. So we see that the alignment of renewables with base load generation and peaking firming generation is really important to do.
Paul Rodden 20:50
One of the things that you had said that kind of piqued my interest was how, you know, treating this like a like a transition, right? And with the turbines that you have now and starting to blend hydrogen, you’re giving that initial use case for hydrogen, whether you know, green, blue, it doesn’t really matter. It’s the molecule itself. So you you’re really at that front door of that hydrogen transition, right and that you’re really alongside with renewables as they’re generating that hydrogen, being able to utilize it right then and there. Correct those turbines.
Bill Newsom 21:22
You’re exactly right. And I think that’s one of the you touched on it perfectly. It’s a gas turbine. Yeah. It really doesn’t care what the gas is, as long as we can control that combustion, that explosion in the combustor, and manage that appropriately, and it has lower emissions, that’s what we’re focused on every day.
Paul Rodden 21:39
Fantastic.
Bill Newsom 21:40
Yeah.
Paul Rodden 21:41
Thank you, Bill so much for sharing your insights and expertise with us. Today, we’ve covered a lot of ground investments in the landscape around those investments and latest technological advancements shaping hydrogens future. As we look ahead, it’s clear that Mitsubishi power is playing a crucial role in driving the hydrogen economy forward. Before we wrap up, do you have any final thoughts or messages that you’d like to share with our listeners about the future of hydrogen?
Bill Newsom 22:06
Sure. I am extremely proud of my team, because we have been working very hard to develop this technology and solutions for the path to clean and we’ve got significant utility scale projects for hydrogen, green hydrogen, we’re going to bring to commercial operation next year. And I think that’s that’s really, as you said, leading the charge there. I’m looking at, how can we continue to bring solve the math problem of bringing reliable, secure and clean energy to the marketplace, we’re going to continue to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in technologies to be part of that solution come down that cost curve so we can deliver on those three key goals. Yeah, so thank you absolutely appreciate it.
Paul Rodden 22:59
Thank you again for being with us, Bill and to our listeners, be sure to stay connected with Mitsubishi power for updates on their exciting work in the hydrogen sector. Don’t forget to subscribe to the hydrogen podcast more conversations with industry leaders as we continue to explore the role of hydrogen and its role in the energy transition. Stay tuned for upcoming episodes.
