U.S. natural gas pipeline operator Williams has big plans for its massive energy infrastructure network as the energy transition opens more opportunity for responsibly sourced gas (RSG) and expansion further into renewable energy markets.

The Oklahoma-headquartered company this week reported earnings soared to about $1.5 billion in 2021, up from $208 million a year earlier, breaking company records in transmission capacity and natural gas gathering volumes.

Williams plans to leverage its natural gas know-how to execute its clean energy strategy on the path to net-zero by 2050. The company is already advancing 13 solar projects and recently added battery storage to the mix. Key components of Williams’ sustainability strategy are responsibly sourced gas, renewables and technologies capable of better monitoring and measuring emissions across its assets.

Chad Zamarin, senior vice president of corporate strategic development for Williams, spoke with Hart Energy on the company’s Feb. 22 Analyst Day just before executives set out to ring the closing bell on the New York Stock Exchange. He shared thoughts, which have been edited for length, about RSG, hydrogen and Williams’ clean energy future.

Hart Energy: How do you see the market for responsibly sourced gas evolving in the near term and what is the potential impact for customers?

Zamarin: We’ve been very focused on meeting with our customers on the upstream production side and on the downstream delivery end-use side of the value chain to really understand the needs and the opportunities. When we think about responsibly sourced gas, we’re very focused on being a bridge and infrastructure connection solution that allows us to connect the very cleanest energy supplies, track the energy and emissions profile of those suppliers as it moves across our network, and deliver those supplies to end-use markets.

We’re building a platform that I think will help frame what the opportunity looks like. We’re focused on building an energy ecosystem. We are implementing sensing technology. We will be investing in and implementing satellite technology. We’re already piloting a software platform that will allow us to certify the emissions profile of gas as we receive it, track the emissions profile as gas is moved across our network and deliver a certified, responsibly sourced product to our end-use customer. … That will enable us to work with our customers to focus on where we can find the lowest emissions footprint supplies.

Hart Energy: What does the RSG certification process include for the midstream sector?

Zamarin: You’ve heard probably a lot of folks working with different certification companies on the upstream side of production, and that’s relatively straightforward. They’re producing at point locations and they can measure and monitor the amount of emissions associated with the production activities. Our systems are a bit more complex. When we pick up gas in Wyoming, we may move that gas from multiple different pipeline interconnections and on any given day, that gas may move to different end users.

What we’re focused on is measuring at all of the key transportation points across our system the unique emissions footprint. That will include on the ground sensing technology, measurement technology, satellite technology. We’re going to be implementing operational monitoring systems. All of those capabilities we’ve put in place will allow us to then have third-party certifiers come in, see the data, know that the data is traced to these direct measurement capabilities. We’ll use blockchain technology to tag the gas as it moves through our system with unique environmental attributes received from upstream parties and that we track throughout our network. Then, we’ll deliver that certified gas to our customers on the end-use side.

Hart Energy: In addition to RSG, there’s also some momentum building around hydrogen production. What are your views on hydrogen as a fuel source?

Zamarin: We don’t yet see hydrogen as economic at scale without incentives that help kickstart the hydrogen economy. We are very active in working with the Department of Energy, state governments and elected officials. We’ve announced partnerships with technology providers and universities to help move hydrogen as an opportunity forward. Conceptually, we love the idea of what our infrastructure can do for the United States from an emissions and renewable energy perspective. I’ll give you an example and this is more of long-term vision.

In Wyoming, we operate a very large infrastructure midstream system. We’ve got over a million acres of upstream properties that are dedicated to our assets, and there’s a tremendous wind resource in Wyoming. The problem is Wyoming is very far away from demand that might be able to connect to that wind resource. But our pipelines connect from Wyoming all the way to the Pacific Northwest, in Washington and in Oregon and even knocking on the California doorstep.

The idea is producing hydrogen at scale from wind power generation in a place like Wyoming and then moving that hydrogen in existing pipeline infrastructure to utility customers, frankly, anywhere in the country. You can move it without losing it. You can store it without it depleting. You kind of solve the renewable energy equation using existing infrastructure. We do have some small blending projects that we’re already investing in our system to deliver to our utility customers. But to really get to scale, we think some incentives are needed.

Williams-hydrogen
(Source: Williams 2022 Analyst Day presentation)

Hart Energy: What do you believe is needed to scale up hydrogen production?

Zamarin: Incentives that we saw proposed in the Build Back Better legislation would significantly help support kickstarting hydrogen opportunities at more scale. We have been very close to the government affairs side of this, and I do think there is bipartisan support for moving those elements of the bill forward, likely separately. But to really get to scale, I think we’re going to need to see some of those incentives here put in place.

Hart Energy: Are there any technological advancements needed to make the energy infrastructure more efficient and reliable when it comes to hydrogen or natural gas?

Zamarin: There are and interestingly at Williams, we’ve started a venture capital fund to invest in early clean energy technologies that will be needed to help support, for example, hydrogen opportunities. In general, there’s a lot of work going on to prove out that existing pipeline infrastructure can support hydrogen transportation deliveries at increasingly higher percentages. Generally, we think there’s plenty of runway at low levels: 5%, 10%, 15%, even 20% blending. But I think demonstrating that pipelines can deliver pure hydrogen or higher concentrations of hydrogen is still needed.

On the measurement of hydrogen, we operate such a fungible system today, and gas kind of comes in and just flows fungibly across our network. Solving some of the measurement and end-use applications will be important to try to get hydrogen to scale. We are also investing in and partnering with hydrogen production providers to get utility scale at an affordable level. It’s kind of like we saw with solar. We think hydrogen has an opportunity to move down the learning curve and the cost curve, but it is going to require some additional investment from a technology perspective.

Hart Energy: How is Williams positioning itself to capture potential value in renewables such as solar and wind?

Zamarin: We are in development of around 400 megawatts of solar power projects. We’ve got about a dozen projects that we’ve already advanced through our approval process, and we’ve got several more that are coming along the way. Those initial projects are primarily projects that we’re sitting at existing facilities that we own, where we have the land available to install solar facilities. Any single project ranges from 2 1/2 to 25 or 40 megawatts on the largest end. We are looking at a couple of other large utility scale sites that would be in addition to those, but those are well underway and we expect to be in construction on most of those in 2023 and potentially starting some of the earliest ones in 2022. So solar is well underway.

We also we announced [Feb. 22] as part of our Analyst Day that we expanded that program to include battery storage projects. We see locations across our footprint where it makes a lot of sense to install power optimization and battery storage capabilities where we can help support the grid effectively and store power when it’s at low cost and then deliver it when costs are higher. We’ve got about 150 megawatts of energy storage, battery storage projects that we’ve added to our solar program. I would expect that to continue to grow modestly over time.

Williams-new-energy
(Source: Williams' 2022 Analyst Day presentation)

The solar and RNG projects are right here; they’re right now. As far as wind, we announced a partnership with Orsted, a European company that is a major wind installer around the world. We are working on developing wind projects that would be coupled with hydrogen production. In New Jersey, one of our first hydrogen projects will be coupled with solar power. So, we’re working to demonstrate the compatibility of wind, solar, hydrogen and natural gas infrastructure.