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‘Clean products standard’: A key to 100% clean energy? Source: By Carlos Anchondo, E&E News reporter • Posted: Thursday, December 10, 2020
A new report is proposing new clean standards to control emissions from heavy industries like cement, steel and glass. The interior of a steel factory is pictured. Schmimi1848/Wikipedia
A newly proposed framework is aiming to address one of the country’s largest sources of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions: the U.S. industrial sector.
In a report released yesterday, the research firm Rhodium Group detailed a national “clean products standard” to curb emissions from the manufacturing of products such as aluminum, cement, glass and steel. The standard, which would be implemented through a federal agency like EPA, would set up a maximum amount of emissions per unit of material produced, with manufacturers able to “employ any technological or process-based solutions” to adhere to
Overview
Hydrogen has over the last century enjoyed repeated bouts of interest as a fuel source. Though these have repeatedly fallen flat, hydrogen-based production has recently enjoyed a renaissance, due to a trifecta of improving political, economic, and technological conditions. Importantly, hydrogen presents an answer to a major problem in the energy transition debate: decarbonizing fuel sources while maintaining energy security and reliability. While electrification has a first-mover advantage in certain areas (e.g., light-duty vehicles), hydrogen is seen as particularly viable in “hard-to-decarbonize” sectors such as heavy-duty transportation, which requires fuel supply for substantial distance and payloads.
These trends are still nascent. There has long been a small hydrogen market, primarily for industrial applications;