Angelina Galiteva Updates on ARCHES & Hydrogen’s Promise in California
VX News interviews Angelina Galiteva, CEO of California’s Alliance for Renewable Clean Hydrogen Energy Systems (ARCHES), about accelerating decarbonization and advancing California’s sustainable hydrogen ecosystem. She highlights the importance of clear, consistent, and transparent policies to drive down hydrogen costs and attract long-term investments, emphasizing that, as with solar and wind, California can reduce the price of hydrogen through scale and security.
“It’s clear that for heavy industries—steel, cement, aviation, shipping, agriculture, and heavy-duty transportation—we need a molecule.”
Give readers a quick update on how much of California’s energy needs are met by renewable energy.
We're still at 100% on many days. So, it depends on when you're looking while the grid is serving load. During the day, when we have a lot of sunshine and it's a relatively cool day, we're over-generating.
We're meeting our needs with 100% renewable energy and generating even more. But at night and on days when there isn’t overproduction, and it's hot, we need to tap into other resources. Growing the storage fleet and ensuring we have a greater variety of clean resources—other than just solar, which is fantastic—is key.
We need more wind energy, offshore wind energy, and more contracts with states with abundant clean energy–like New Mexico and Wyoming–which are strong wind producers. Geothermal is also very important, as is hydropower from the Pacific Northwest. These resources help fortify the more intermittent renewables with additional renewables that generate energy when the sun isn’t shining, or the wind isn’t blowing.
How does California ensure reliability, affordability, and decarbonization with renewables?
Of course, we need resources that allow us to decarbonize not just to provide electricity, which is important. We know we can do it. We've achieved 100%, and we need to make it 24/7, 365 days a year, every hour of every day. I believe we can get there.
Overgeneration and an abundance of clean electricity allow us to decarbonize other sectors of the economy—transportation, heavy industry, aviation, and shipping. But we’re not going to be able to do that only with kilowatt hours. It’s clear that for heavy industries—steel, cement, aviation, shipping, agriculture, and heavy-duty transportation—we need a molecule. By taking that clean electricity, capturing it, and utilizing electrolyzers to make a clean molecule that can then supplement the clean kilowatt hour is a game changer. That’s why hydrogen is so important, and that’s why ARCHES has such an opportunity to take us to that next level—optimizing kilowatt hours and molecules to decarbonize our economy.
This provides economic, environmental, and technological leadership and allows us to export that knowledge to the rest of the world. Renewables and clean molecules are resilient, reliable, and locally grown. They can hedge against inflation and provide the environmental and economic benefits everybody needs.
Elaborate on the promise of driving down the cost of green hydrogen.
I believe it’s a promise that can be kept. California has proven that we can bend the curve on price. We've done it with solar, wind power, and batteries. We need scale. We need security. We need the TLC principle—transparency, longevity, and consistency— in our policies as well. When you have transparent pricing, a consistent regulatory framework that allows for long-term planning, and private financing, costs come down. Utilizing a very low-cost resource such as renewable electricity—which we know is the lowest-cost energy on the grid—capturing sunshine and wind, using it efficiently in electrolyzers, and then leveraging that very valuable fuel to decarbonize areas that we couldn’t electrify directly is our most valuable path forward.
If you take the environmental benefits just from the 37 DOE hydrogen hub projects, the impact of ARCHES alone translates to an annual $2.95 billion in health savings for California—year after year.". The hub pays for itself. Looking at it holistically, we can bend the curve and reduce the price of hydrogen. But let’s also count the added benefits of improved environmental quality and reduced healthcare costs for our population, ultimately leading to a better quality of life.
Let’s move on to ARCHES, which, as you said, is one of the seven hubs awarded by the Biden DOE. Given that elections have consequences, update our readers on the present status of ARCHES Phase One?
Phase One of ARCHES is still moving forward. We’re continuing to operate and build out the planning for the project and remain committed to further strengthening America’s energy independence and security to establish an innovative and reliable hydrogen economy. We're confident that Phase Two and Phase Three—moving into actual scale-up and construction—are going to continue.
In any case, ARCHES will ensure that our projects are built out and that we can construct an ecosystem that enables a sustainable hydrogen marketplace. We are building partnerships with regional entities, such as the Pacific Northwest hub, which has already expressed tremendous interest in working with ARCHES to build out the Pacific Northwest corridor for transportation—up to Washington, Oregon, and even Canada. We're working together to ensure we have adequate fueling and energy supplies for hydrogen.
We’re also collaborating with other hubs—not just on transportation but also on shipping, aviation, and agricultural production. It’s been quite exciting. Moving forward, I think a comprehensive approach involving all the hubs together will be extremely valuable for the hydrogen ecosystem–nationally and regionally–particularly in coordination with the Pacific Northwest hub and neighboring states.
Additionally, we’re working with Tribes that have demonstrated strong support for hydrogen and proposed building out a ‘Hydrogen Trail’ interconnecting all the Western tribes to establish hydrogen production and fueling infrastructure. It is another exciting initiative.
We are all confident in hydrogen’s importance. It’s a reliable and resilient resource, homegrown, and creates local jobs. It provides economic and technological leadership while also serving as a valuable commodity that can be exported nationally and internationally. As we build out international shipping corridors, we need to replace bunker fuel with hydrogen-based fuel, allowing vessels to operate in a much cleaner, more reliable, and resilient way on global waterways.
Any update on the RFPs ARCHES issued for projects?
Well, initially, we issued an RFP to create the hydrogen hub. Awarded $1.2 billion by the federal government to execute those projects, we issued that RFP to gauge the ecosystem and possible responses. To create a statewide ecosystem that balances hydrogen production, hydrogen transportation, and hydrogen use, we selected an initial 37 projects that are dispersed throughout the state to create the foundation, and that's what the DOE awarded.
More importantly, since then, we've received additional proposals for projects that keep rolling in regularly, allowing us to grow that ecosystem. The ARCHES ecosystem is a lot bigger than just the initial projects we gave to DOE. We have a multi-billion-dollar ecosystem potential. As we continue to be focused on strategy and development, we can lead internationally and provide cost-efficient and low-carbon fuel for widespread use for industries that cannot be decarbonized otherwise.
You’ve also referenced that ARCHES would be leveraged by private funding. Are you comfortable with the regulatory rules allowing that collaboration and leveraging?
In California, we have a strong regulatory commitment to carbon neutrality by 2045 and to accelerating decarbonization. Our history of innovation has consistently brought in new technologies, driving down costs through scaling. That’s exactly what we’re doing now—building projects, scaling up.
This isn’t just a proof of concept or R&D; it’s commercialization at scale. We believe this product can rapidly decrease in cost and become the lowest-cost fuel, at least competitive with diesel shortly, and with other traditional fuels not long after.
Reliable off-takers are essential for ARCHES. Who are or will be the off-takers?
We already have 13 transit agencies in ARCHES, with more wanting to participate. The transit agencies love hydrogen buses and hydrogen resources. They see that the total cost of operation is important, and even with a higher cost of hydrogen, they can still achieve economies of scale. If we reduce the price of hydrogen through production—exactly what we aim to do—then it becomes competitive with diesel. Then, game over–the transit agencies will transition to this clean fuel as long as it's available.
Ports and port-side operations also require a lot of hydrogen, making them large off-takers—not just for heavy-duty equipment but also for the trucks transporting goods from the ports. Between Long Beach and LA, 40% of the goods entering the United States come through these two ports. Oakland is also part of the ARCHES ecosystem. Once we start transitioning ships to hydrogen-based fuel, that will be an even larger off-take. Then, of course, we have power plants that need to decarbonize. We know some power plants will continue to operate on a centralized basis, and the leadership of LADWP locally and NCPA in transitioning gas plants to hydrogen fuel is critical. These large off-takers are sending the signal: the market is here, the off-take is here. Now, let’s scale fuel production so we can decrease costs for everybody. We’ve already shown that we can be very effective in pooling technologies and helping original equipment manufacturers scale their production quickly.
Whether we’re going to have fuel cells manufactured here in California or the West, or whether LADWP can help producers of turbines move more hydrogen, the momentum is there. I just learned that LADWP and NCPA sending a strong signal that they want 100% hydrogen-capable turbines has enabled equipment manufacturers to stay on schedule. They’ve now committed to producing those turbines to meet the goals, which again proves that California has a market.
Elaborate on how ARCHES is stimulating the market?
We're also buying 1,000 trucks and 1,000 hydrogen buses for ARCHES, which will be distributed throughout California. Some of the other hubs have also expressed interest in joining our purchase order so we can collectively increase our bargaining power and reduce costs. We believe this will lead to additional equipment manufacturing within the United States and the greater West—and hopefully in California as well. We're very excited about that.
Decarbonizing the transportation sector is priority number one. Getting diesel off the road is critical because diesel is one of the biggest contributors to poor air quality and a major source of greenhouse gases. We want to secure a fossil-free alternative—built in California, made in California, used in California, and supporting California jobs.
Lastly, how might Lancaster’s first public hydrogen project help ARCHES build and scale the marketplace?
Well, I can tell you that we’re working together to develop an ecosystem with Lancaster. Lancaster is partnering with ARCHES, and we see this as a critical relationship—where Lancaster serves as a vehicle for implementation and a test bed to ensure the ecosystem and marketplace are built on the right foundation. From there, we can expand geographically and into other sectors.
Lancaster is focused on agency-to-agency, city-to-city, and public-to-public partnerships. They’ve created a Joint Powers Authority (JPA) structure that works well for that market segment. We’re working closely to ensure its success because it will also help optimize the broader market, bringing in additional players and regions.
