Texas is proud to be the energy capital of the world, producing nearly half of American crude oil and more wind and solar than any other state. Today, Texas is poised to dominate yet another new renewable energy source: hydrogen. This new energy frontier has the potential for billions of dollars in economic and environmental benefits for our state.
As we all learned in chemistry class, hydrogen is the simplest and most abundant element in the universe, making up 90% of all atoms. When used for energy, hydrogen (H2) becomes H2O—with zero carbon emissions. Hydrogen is also unique among renewable energy sources because, unlike wind and solar, it can more easily be stored and shipped.
Texas has significant advantages over other states in developing hydrogen energy. About 95% of the hydrogen energy in the world is captured from natural gas byproducts. Texas produces nearly a third of America’s natural gas—meaning hydrogen allows us to make our natural gas go even further. Hydrogen can also be captured from renewables and nuclear energy, both of which Texas has in abundance. Not to mention Texas has an unrivalled skilled energy workforce and most of America’s hydrogen pipeline infrastructure.
Texas’s Gulf Coast already produces one-third of America’s hydrogen energy thanks to 48 facilities and more than 1,000 miles of pipelines. This production is set to grow rapidly, with new facilities coming online near Corpus Christi in 2026 and in Wilbarger County in 2027. Exxon Mobil plans to build the world’s largest low-carbon hydrogen facility in the world beside its existing natural gas facility in Baytown, outside of Houston. This new facility is expected to come online in 2027 or 2028.
Unlike most existing hydrogen plants, the Baytown hydrogen facility will capture and store the carbon dioxide emissions while making hydrogen energy from natural gas byproduct. The Baytown facility could produce 1 billion cubic feet per day of hydrogen, which is six times the production of today’s hydrogen plants. It will also be one of the largest carbon capture facilities in the world—capturing 10 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. These new facilities, scheduled to open within the next few years, could be a major boon to our state and a template to be replicated elsewhere in Texas and all around the world.
But the energy industry still has a lot of work to do to make hydrogen cost competitive. The Energy Department has set the goal of growing hydrogen power fivefold by 2050, which would require lowering production costs by 80%. This will require hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of additional research and development, storage, new plants, and pipeline infrastructure.
This is a tall order. But ultimately it is an opportunity for Texas, because of our longstanding energy advantages over every other state. Most of hydrogen’s potential is still untapped, such as for removing carbon emissions from manufacturing (especially in hard-to-decarbonize industries like steel and cement), power generation, and even our transportation system. The consulting firm McKinsey estimates that hydrogen energy could create 180,000 direct and indirect jobs and bring $100 billion to Texas by midcentury when hydrogen is projected to be the source of one tenth of the world’s energy and over 6% of the state’s GDP.
Texas should seize this opportunity and continue to build the facilities and pipelines that will set us up to dominate this growing market. When the state legislature returns to session, it should consider ways to spur a consistent, long-term demand signal for hydrogen energy.
The reason for Texas’s energy dominance goes beyond our natural resources—it’s part of who we are. As Princeton Professor Jesse Jenkins said in the Atlantic recently, Texas is the number one state for renewable energy because “Texas has an all-of-the-above, all-sources-of-energy-are-good mentality…designed to build stuff and to extract energy and to make money, which isn’t exactly the primary footing that California is on…In Texas, the culture and regulatory footing of the state is, we build and develop energy resources, whatever it is.”
If we build on this Texas tradition and embrace new technologies like hydrogen, then we can keep Texas energy dominant for generations to come.
