Three US states ringing the Gulf of Mexico — Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas — have joined forces with other partners in a five-year effort to demonstrate how offshore oil and gas platforms can be repurposed for green hydrogen and aquaculture, too. The team has just won a competitive $20 million grant to set the wheels in motion. Texas Is Ready For Its Green Hydrogen Moment Although all three states sport ruby red political credentials, the green hydrogen angle is no surprise. During the renewables-friendly Biden administration, industrial stakeholders in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi began formulating projects for green hydrogen and its cousin, green ammonia. Much of that went onto the shelf after US President Donald Trump took office again last year, but some activity has continued to stir in Texas (here’s a good example). The persistence of green hydrogen in Texas is also no surprise, considering the role of Texas in the US energy transition. Despite one foot firmly and politically clamped onto the fossil fuel past, Texas has locked down the #1 state for installed wind capacity since the early 2000’s, and it is running a tight three-way race for solar leader with California and Florida. With copious renewable energy assets in hand, a loosey-goosey environment for energy innovation, and a sprawling network of existing gas infrastructure, Texas has also been attracting stakeholders in the green hydrogen field, meaning hydrogen pushed from water instead of extracted from natural gas or coal. The pushing is done by electrolysis systems, ideally powered by wind, solar, or other renewables. The Offshore Wind Angle The idea of cementing green hydrogen into the Texas energy profile did not just pop up out of nowhere. Academic and industrial stakeholders have been eyeballing the state’s network of applicable resources for years. As for the idea of repurposing offshore oil and gas platforms for green hydrogen, that’s…interesting! Stakeholders elsewhere around the world already begun exploring how to co-locate offshore wind turbines and electrolysis systems. In the US, a 2020 study indicates that wind speeds in the Gulf of Mexico are less than optimal for general purposes, but the same study suggests that the Gulf can make up the difference by hosting more wind turbines than other coastal regions. “…when considering all US states and considering only sites with average wind speeds of greater than 7 meters per second (m/s) (15.7 miles per hour [mph]) and water depths less than 1,000 m (3,280 ft), three of the top four states with the highest offshore wind resource capacity are within the GOM (Louisiana, Texas, and Florida),” the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management summarized. During the Biden administration, the study supported former Louisiana Governor Jon Bel Edwards in his quest to establish a home-grown offshore wind industry. Texas and Mississippi failed to pick up on the opportunity, but an interesting development occurred in 2024, when the firm Hecate Energy expressed an interest in developing two federal wind areas off the Texas coast. No such project is listed on the company’s website as of this writing, though. $20 Million For Offshore Green Hydrogen & Aquaculture Hecate may be among the wind stakeholders shaking the mothballs out of their plans if the new Gulf demonstration project pans out. The $20 million in funding was awarded by the Gulf Research Program at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to the “Repurposing Petroleum Infrastructure for Sustainable Energy, Food, and Critical Minerals” program at the non-profit Gulf Offshore Research Institute. Partners in the project include Harte Research Institute at Texas A&M University-Corpus Cristi, University of Michigan, the environmental services firm Blue Latitudes, University of Southern Mississippi, Louisiana State University, University of Houston, the talent recruiter FerVid Group, Blue Silo Aquaculture, and the organization Gulf Trust. They are tasked with researching and demonstrating “the repurposing of idle offshore oil and gas infrastructure to conserve marine habitat and enable a transition to green hydrogen, open ocean aquaculture, continuous data acquisition, and critical mineral harvesting,” the National Academies explains. Plenty Of Oil & Gas Infrastructure To Go Around Putting aside the delicate issue of mining the ocean for critical minerals for the time being, the University of Houston aims to take full advantage of the opportunity to build on its existing energy transition programs. The school already has an oil and gas repurposing program in place called ROICE, for Repurposing Offshore Infrastructure for Continued Energy. The program launched as a “thought experiment” in 2022 under a $1.3 million, five-year mission to develop an economic, workforce, and technology plan for thousands of inactive wells, pipelines, and platforms in the Gulf. The newly funded Gulf Research Program builds a shovels-in-the-grounds element into the existing program, and UH emphasize that next steps are already lined up. “Work will begin with platform permitting, stakeholder engagement and structural assessments, with GORI (the Gulf Offshore Research Institute) aiming to have five operational platforms producing measurable environmental and economic returns by 2030,” UH explains. Kent Satterlee, executive director of GORI, also chipped in his two cents in a press release. “We are transforming the backbone of oil and gas production into a more sustainable and prosperous Gulf Coast,” Saterlee added. “By integrating renewable energy, aquaculture, mineral recovery and ocean monitoring, we strengthen marine habitats, support thriving ecosystems, boost coastal economies and advance sustainable energy production,” he elaborated. Next Steps For Green Hydrogen With the notable exception of China, just a few months ago the global green hydrogen industry was floundering in the tar pit of failed expectations, facing ruinous competition from low-cost conventional hydrogen for industrial use and the uphill task of pushing battery-electric vehicles aside in the transportation sector. Here in the US, the sharp U-turn in federal energy policy under US President Trump added more fuel to the dumpster fire. What a difference a day makes. On February 28, US President Donald Trump launched his ill-advised war against Iran, single-handedly throwing global fuel markets into chaos, leading to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz shipping lane, and making the case for locally produced renewable energy stronger than ever before. Trump’s war has been closing gap between the cost of green hydrogen and conventional hydrogen, and defense suppliers, for one, are not sitting on the opportunity. Keep an eye on the leading German firm Rheinmetall, for example. The company is laying plans to build “hundreds” of green hydrogen facilities across Europe, aimed at producing drop-in, liquid electrofuels for defense forces. Photo: A new multi-state research and demonstration program aims to repurpose offshore oil and gas infrastructure for green hydrogen, among other uses (cropped, courtesy of University of Houston).
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