Mississippi Today
‘Green hydrogen’ company looks to make Mississippi a leader of new renewable venture
The special geology of Mississippi is again giving the state a stab at playing a key role in the energy sector, this time for a burgeoning renewable power source called “green hydrogen.”
The company Hy Stor Energy, founded in 2019, is looking to take advantage of the state’s salt domes, which provide valuable underground pockets for gas storage. Hy Stor will store its hydrogen in different salt domes around the state, Chief Executive Officer Laura Luce said, but will primarily operate in Perry and Smith counties. The company is looking to start production by the end of 2026, she said.
“We’re really at the beginning of this green hydrogen revolution,” Luce said. “We really see the next three to 10 years where you’re going to have a lot of infrastructure be brought up and expanded and this industry stood up, and we’re confident that Mississippi is going to be the leaders in that industry.”
The technology behind renewable hydrogen has been around for about a century, Luce explained. The energy source materializes through a process called electrolysis, which uses electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. But it wasn’t until the last few years that both the United States and the Europe began heavily investing in the technology. As part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed in 2021, the federal government appropriated $9.5 billion for clean hydrogen development.
In a roadmap the U.S. Department of Energy released in 2023, the agency explained that “clean hydrogen,” as it’s also referred to, can be a key tool in meeting the country’s goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050. The plan says that clean hydrogen can reduce economy-wide emissions — targeting sectors like transportation, metal production, and fertilizer — by 10% over the next 30 years.
Last month, the DOE announced up to $500 million in funding for a “green steel” project, which would include producing iron in Perry County using clean hydrogen from Hy Stor. That facility, which would be operated by Swedish company SSAB, would then send the iron to Iowa to be made into steel. While the agency is still negotiating an exact award amount, the DOE projected that the project would create 540 permanent jobs as well as 6,000 construction jobs.
Hy Stor plans to use energy from other renewable sources, like solar and wind, to produce the green hydrogen, Luce said.
“The sun and the wind, even though they’re tremendous resources, they’re not available 24/7,” she said. “They’re available on an intermittent basis. So by taking those and converting them to hydrogen, now I have something that is dispatchable on minutes notice.”
Luce said the “epicenter” of Hy Stor will start out by a salt dome in Richton, near the proposed SSAB facility, with a pipeline connecting down to Port Bienville in southwest Mississippi.
An array of political leaders in the state have backed the project in letters to the DOE, including Gov. Tate Reeves, the State Oil and Gas Board, and the Mississippi Public Service Commission.
Even before Hy Stor, Mississippi’s geology has opened up the state to a number of energy sector investments. For instance, companies have long used the state’s salt domes to store natural gas. Mississippi has also recently positioned itself to become a hub for carbon storage, something that could be especially abundant in Gulf states because of the spaces between subsurface rocks.
The cost of the green hydrogen project will be steep, though. Luce said that the first phase of the project will cost over $10 billion, and that Hy Stor will look to enter into 10-, 20- or 30-year agreements with industrial customers to finance the operation. So far, she added, Hy Stor hasn’t received any federal or state government funding, but it will look for potential support from the DOE as well as renewable energy tax credits.
As far as who will buy the green hydrogen, Luce said Hy Stor’s initial customers in its first couple years of operations will include plastic, maritime and other transport companies, in addition to the proposed green steel project.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Mississippi Today
On this day in 1956
Dec. 25, 1956
Fred Shuttlesworth somehow survived the KKK bombing that took out his home next to the Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.
An arriving policeman advised him to leave town fast. In the “Eyes on the Prize” documentary, Shuttlesworth quoted himself as replying, “Officer, you’re not me. You go back and tell your Klan brethren if God could keep me through this, then I’m here for the duration.’”
Shuttlesworth and Bethel saw what happened as proof that they would be protected as they pursued their fight against racial injustice. The next day, he boarded a bus with other civil rights activists to challenge segregation laws that persisted, despite a U.S. Supreme Court decision that ordered the city of Montgomery, Alabama, to desegregate its bus service.
Months after this, an angry mob of Klansmen met Shuttlesworth after he tried to enroll his daughters into the all-white school in Birmingham. They beat him with fists, chains and brass knuckles. His wife, Ruby, was stabbed in the hip, trying to get her daughters back in the car. His daughter, Ruby Fredericka, had her ankle broken. When the examining physician was amazed the pastor failed to suffer worse injuries, Shuttlesworth said, “Well, doctor, the Lord knew I lived in a hard town, so he gave me a hard head.”
Despite continued violence against him and Bethel, he persisted. He helped Martin Luther King Jr. found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and was instrumental in the 1963 Birmingham Campaign that led to the desegregation of downtown Birmingham.
A statue of Shuttlesworth can be seen outside the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, and Birmingham’s airport bears his name. The Bethel church, which was bombed three times, is now a historic landmark.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1865
Dec. 24, 1865
Months after the fall of the Confederacy and the end of slavery, a half dozen veterans of the Confederate Army formed a private social club in Pulaski, Tennessee, called the Ku Klux Klan. The KKK soon became a terrorist organization, brutalizing and killing Black Americans, immigrants, sympathetic whites and others.
While the first wave of the KKK operated in the South through the 1870s, the second wave spread throughout the U.S., adding Catholics, Jews and others to their enemies’ list. Membership rose to 4 million or so.
The KKK returned again in the 1950s and 1960s, this time in opposition to the civil rights movement. Despite the history of violence by this organization, the federal government has yet to declare the KKK a terrorist organization.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
An old drug charge sent her to prison despite a life transformation. Now Georgia Sloan is home
CANTON – Georgia Sloan is home, back from a potentially life-derailing stint in prison that she was determined to instead make meaningful.
She hadn’t used drugs in three years and she had a life waiting for her outside the Mississippi Correctional Institute for Women in Pearl: a daughter she was trying to reunite with, a sick mother and a career where she found purpose.
During 10 months of incarceration, Sloan, who spent over half of her life using drugs, took classes, read her Bible and helped other women. Her drug possession charge was parole eligible, and the Parole Board approved her for early release.
At the end of October, she left the prison and returned to Madison County. The next day she was back at work at Musee, a Canton-based bath products company that employs formerly incarcerated women like Sloan and others in the community facing difficulties. She first started working at the company in 2021.
“This side of life is so beautiful. I would literally hold on to my promise every single minute of the day while I was in (prison),” Sloan told Mississippi Today in December.
Next year, she is moving into a home in central Mississippi, closer to work and her new support system. Sloan plans to bring her daughter and mother to live with her. Sloan is hopeful of regaining custody of her child, who has been cared for by her aunt on a temporary basis.
“This is my area now,” she said. “This has become my family, my life. This is where I want my child to grow up. This is where I want to make my life because this is my life.”
Additionally, Sloan is taking other steps to readjust to life after prison: getting her driver’s license for the first time in over a decade, checking in monthly with her parole officer and paying court-ordered fines and restitution.
In December 2023, Sloan went to court in Columbus for an old drug possession charge from when she was still using drugs.
Sloan thought the judge would see how much she had turned her life around through Crossroads Ministries, a nonprofit women’s reentry center she entered in 2021, and Musee. Her boss Leisha Pickering who drove her to court and spoke as a witness on Sloan’s behalf, thought the judge would order house arrest or time served.
Instead, Circuit Judge James Kitchens sentenced her to eight years with four years suspended and probation.
He seemed doubtful about her transformation, saying she didn’t have a “contrite heart.” By choosing to sell drugs, Kitchens said she was “(making) other people addicts,” according to a transcript of the Dec. 4, 2023, hearing.
“I felt like my life literally crumbled before my eyes,” Sloan said about her return to prison. “Everything I had worked so hard for, it felt like it had been snatched from me.”
She was taken from the courtroom to the Lowndes County Detention Center, where she spent two months before her transfer to the women’s prison in Rankin County.
Sloan found the county jail more difficult because there was no separation between everyone there. But the prison had its own challenges, such as violence between inmates and access to drugs, which would have threatened her sobriety.
She kept busy by taking classes, which helped her set a goal to take college courses one day with a focus on business. Visits, phone calls and letters from family members and staff from Musee and Crossroads were her lifeline.
“I did not let prison break me, I rose above it, and I got to help restore other ladies,” Sloan said.
She also helped several women in the prison get to Crossroads – the same program that helped her and others at Musee.
Sloan credits a long-term commitment to Crossroads and Musee for turning her life around – the places where she said someone believed in her and took a chance on her.
Pickering, Musee’s CEO, said in the three years she’s known Sloan, she’s watched her grow and become a light for others.
The bath and lifestyle company has employed over 300 formerly incarcerated women in the past dozen years, but Pickering said not everyone has had the same support, advocacy and transformation as Sloan. Regardless, Pickering believes each person is worth fighting for.
When Sloan isn’t traveling for work to craft markets with Pickering, she shares an office with her Musee colleague Julie Crutcher, who is also formerly incarcerated and a graduate of Crossroads’ programs. She also considers Crutcher a close friend and mentor.
Sloan has traveled to Columbus to see her mother and daughter whom she spent Thanksgiving with. She will see them again for Christmas and celebrate her daughter’s 12th birthday the day after.
Her involvement with the criminal justice system has made Sloan want to advocate for prison reform to help others and be an inspiration to others.
“I never knew what I was capable of,” Sloan said. “I never knew how much people truly, genuinely love me and love being around me. I never knew how much I could have and how much I could offer the world.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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