(The Center Square) – After more than a year of meetings, the Louisiana Clean Hydrogen Task Force is urging state leaders to mobilize quickly around a growing “clean hydrogen” industry where Louisiana is already one of the biggest players.
On Friday, following a month of public comment, the task force voted to adopt its report and submitted it to Gov. Jeff Landry and the House and Senate Natural Resources committees, as required under 2024 legislation that created the task force. Lawmakers had asked it to study current hydrogen production, transportation, storage and use, and to recommend how Louisiana should respond to emerging “clean hydrogen” markets.
The task force’s top recommendation is to create a Clean Hydrogen Coordinating Committee, likely under the recently created Natural Resources Commission, with dedicated staff to knit together policy, permitting, workforce and economic development. The committee would succeed the task force after it expires.
Funding for more staff at the Department of Conservation & Energy and the Department of Environmental Quality is also suggested. This would allow regulators to process carbon capture and hydrogen projects faster while still handling environmental monitoring and enforcement, the report said.
A standing committee is needed to manage “a wide variety of needs across the state’s public/private landscape,” including environmental protection, regulatory streamlining, workforce training and taxpayer dollars to leverage private investment, the report said.
The task force also calls for the state to stay closely engaged with Louisiana’s congressional delegation to defend key federal incentives – especially tax credits for clean hydrogen and carbon sequestration – it describes as “crucial” to making projects financially viable.
“Louisiana is very well positioned, especially alongside Texas, to be sort of a prime mover in clean hydrogen,” said Matt Reonas, a policy planner with the state’s Office of Conservation and Energy. “The current hydrogen economy complements the state’s kind of conventional energy resources, especially natural gas.”
Louisiana already consumes about 2.5 million metric tons of hydrogen a year – roughly a third of total U.S. industrial use – largely for oil refining, ammonia fertilizer and methanol production along the Mississippi River corridor.
That makes the state “one of the nation’s top producers and consumers of hydrogen,” according to the report. Existing plants, pipelines and ports give Louisiana a head start over other regions trying to attract new investment, the report said.
At the same time, nearly all of that hydrogen is “grey” – produced from natural gas without capturing carbon pollution. The task force frames “blue hydrogen,” made from natural gas but paired with carbon capture and underground storage, as Louisiana’s primary near-term opportunity. Renewable “green hydrogen” and nuclear-powered “pink hydrogen” are longer-term options, the report said.
The report strongly endorses carbon capture and sequestration, a controversial technology that has met resistance in a number of Louisiana communities.
“The emerging hydrogen economy in Louisiana complements the state’s conventional energy mainstays especially with the demand for natural gas utilized in the production of grey hydrogen and blue hydrogen,” the report said. “For the latter, it is imperative that Carbon Capture and Sequestration plans move forward at scale.”
Evolving federal regulations have led to the cancelation of some hydrogen projects in the U.S., but Louisiana has bucked that trend, according to Lindsay Cooper Phillips, senior Gulf Coast regional policy manager with the Clean Air Task Force. She pointed to Hyundai’s planned $6 billion hydrogen-integrated steel mill in Ascension Parish as an example of a major commitment.
Hyundai officials told the task force in June the project faces significant challenges, including the high cost of hydrogen production and uncertainty around federal tax incentives.
President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law in July, made some changes to tax credits that clean energy companies have relied on.
The bill ends the 45V clean hydrogen production tax credit starting in 2026, stripping away a key federal subsidy underpinning Louisiana’s growing hydrogen and ammonia sector.
Companies including CF Industries, Air Products and Plug Power warned that losing the credit could raise costs and jeopardize near-term hydrogen projects.
The legislation kept some incentives, including an investment tax credit and the 45Q carbon capture credit.
