In a huge hangar in Quonset Point, Rhode Island, welders are aiming blazing torches at sheets of aluminum. The hulls of three new ships, each about 27 meters long, are taking shape. The first will hit the water sometime in the spring, ferrying workers to service wind turbines off the New England coast.
The US barely has an offshore wind sector for these vessels to service. But as the Biden administration accelerates a plan to decarbonize its power generation sector, turbines will sprout along its coastline, creating demand for services in shipyards and manufacturing hubs from Brownsville, Texas, to Albany, New York.
Senesco Marine, the shipbuilder in Rhode Island, has almost doubled its workforce in recent months as new orders for hybrid ferries and larger crew transfer vessels have come in. โEverybody tells me recession in America is inevitable,โ says Ted Williams, a former US Navy officer who is now the companyโs chief executive. โBut itโs not happening in shipbuilding.โ
Franklin Chang-Dรญaz gets into his car, turns on the radio, and hears the news about another increase in the price of gasoline. But he sets off knowing that his trip wonโt be any more expensive: His tank is filled with hydrogen. His car takes that element and combines it with oxygen in a fuel cell that works like a small power plant, creating energyโwhich goes into a battery to power the carโand water vapor. Not only will Chang-Dรญazโs trip cost no more than it did yesterday, it will also pollute far less than a traditional gasoline-powered car would.
Chang-Dรญaz would like to have a public hydrogen station nearby whenever he needs to fill his tank, but that isnโt possible yet, either in his native Costa Rica or in any other Latin American country. He ends up instead at the hydrogen station he built himself, as part of a project aimed at demonstrating that hydrogen generated with renewable energy sourcesโgreen hydrogenโis the present, not the future.
A physicist, former NASA astronaut, and the CEO of Ad Astra Rocket Company, Chang-Dรญaz has a clear vision. Green hydrogen, he believes, is a fundamental player in lowering emissions from transportation and converting regions that import fossil fuelsโsuch as his small Central American countryโinto exporters of clean energy, key to avoiding the catastrophic effects of global warming.