A green mirage: how the hydrogen industry fuels environmental injustice in Antofagasta, northern Chile

In the last couple of years, few technologies have been championed by advocates of “green growth” more than industrial hydrogen. The argument is simple. Among many ways of producing hydrogen, one – electrolysis – requires two ingredients: high purity water and electricity. When that electricity comes from renewable energy sources, the resulting energy vector is labelled as “green” or “renewable” hydrogen. This hydrogen has become the “missing piece” that promises to decarbonise industry sectors that are hard to electrify, and gained prominence in the post-covid recovery plans, especially in Europe.

The promise of hydrogen, however, does not stand up to examination when we take a more holistic approach in our analysis. First, and from a purely capitalist approach, hydrogen is hugely inefficient in its life-cycle. Current plans include the prospect of producing hydrogen very far away – for instance, in the north of Chile – from where it will be used (in the case of Chile, mostly European countries), which means that energy is lost at every stage of the process. Indeed, the current enthusiasm for green hydrogen emerged around 2020 under the expected decrease in the cost of renewable energy, as well as of the electrolysers used for the synthesis of hydrogen. In other words, the bet is that eventually renewable energy will be so cheap that it will be worth fabricating hydrogen this “green” way and enable it to compete with the cheaper fossil hydrogen (which encompasses 99% of the hydrogen in use today). But the expectation of renewable energy becoming “cheap” is unlikely to be fulfilled. Corporations investing in these technologies will not give up their profits. And even more important, this search for “cheap nature” risks an even more aggressive approach from the renewable energies industry.

Secondly: is hydrogen serving the principles of a just and popular energy transition? To answer this, Chile offers a useful case study. The Chilean state has embraced the creation of this new industry with pioneering enthusiasm. Today, two regions of the country – Magallanes in the far south and Antofagasta in the north – have been prioritised for the promotion of investments in green hydrogen.

Here I focus on Antofagasta to show how the promise of green growth – which I consider the ideological matrix underlying green hydrogen techno-optimism – hides the current injustices of our global economic system. And, more importantly, I show how the emergent hydrogen industry risks reproducing and deepening them in the future. Antofagasta is a large region, with several long-standing cases of socio-ecological disasters, most linked to energy and mining. Largely a desert, Antofagasta hosts the largest copper mine in the world (Escondida, owned by BHP, Rio Tinto and JECO), and the only lithium extraction plants in Chile. The large demand of energy and water from these two industries has led to the exhaustion of rivers and salt flats, creation of toxic landscapes of mining tailings, the concentration of fossil-based energy plants and desalination plants, among many other social and environmental impacts. These have been reported by different organisations in national and international instances.

In this landscape of environmental devastation, local communities are facing the arrival of new players: larger and larger solar and wind energy projects, and, more recently, massive green hydrogen projects. This lane of infrastructural intervention is increasing pressure in the region which I will explain using two examples of projects currently under environmental evaluation: the “Planta de Producción de Hidrógeno Verde para el Distrito Minero de Calama” of Susterra and “INNA - Proyecto Integrado de Infraestructura Energética para la Generación de Hidrógeno y Amoníaco Verde”, proposed by AES Chile.

The first project is based on one of the promises of green hydrogen and of green growth more broadly: to make mining “green”. As decarbonisation scenarios circulate, many predict that this process will increase the demand for certain materials, including lithium and copper. Today, mining is one of the main emitters of greenhouse gases in Chile (17% of national emissions), which puts this need at odds with the larger objective of reducing global warming. The solution seems simple: use hydrogen-fueled trucks for mining, and sell “green copper” to the world. This perspective overlooks the larger and more significant impacts of mining at the local level, where communities see the expansion of tailings and the complete exhaustion of underground water and other water bodies like rivers. An example of rejection of this expansion comes from the Coordinadora por la Defensa del Río Loa y la Madre Tierra, that gathers people from Calama and the larger Loa river basin, which is crossed by different mines. In a recent open meeting, I learned of their concern about Susterra’s proposal to use wastewater from the city of Calama to synthesise green hydrogen - water that should be treated and returned to the Loa river. They are also concerned by the security risks of a plant of this kind. Moreover, they wonder why and for whose benefit this plant would be constructed, as the hydrogen produced would have no benefit or use for them as inhabitants of that land. The meeting was also a space for attendees to learn more about the environmental evaluation process, and how they, as citizens, can give their perspective and ask for information and clarification. The Coordinadora is also using other legal tools to defend their territory. They are currently preparing a collective demand against the Chilean state for the abandonment they have suffered and the health and environmental damage they have endured. They are currently gathering signatures to present the case in court.

The second project, INNA, offers a different approach. It is a “package” project of wind and solar plants, transmission infrastructure, a desalination plant, a plant for the synthesis of hydrogen and its subsequent transformation to ammonia (for easier marine transport), and a mega port for the export of ammonia. This monumental project, that would cover more than 3,000 hectares of land, chose one of the few sectors of the coast of Antofagasta that has not yet borne the brunt of extractive and productive infrastructures. For the indigenous Chango people who live near the area and who use the coast for fishing, as well as for other communities that live off the sea and land, the project is seen as a death sentence. The larger concerns are around the impact of the project infrastructure on the delicate biodiversity of the area, which could be fatal for some species and particularly detrimental for coastal life. Among its many flaws in environmental law, Chile does not have a proper regulation of desalination plants, which means the synergic and accumulative impacts of this form of infrastructure is understudied and therefore unknown. Different social-environmental organisations and concerned citizens have gathered to oppose this project, and it is still under state evaluation. People from the coastal town of Taltal have gathered to inform the larger community about the dangers and uncertainties of the project, inviting others to participate in the public consultation that is opened for every large project. Like the case in Calama mentioned above, taking part in the environmental evaluation process through the citizen’s participation tool has been central to articulate a broader rejection to the advancement of this industry in the region of Antofagasta. Even the scientific community, usually absent in this sort of debate, has raised the alarm: the solar and wind plants would be built near the ESO’s Paranal Observatory. Astronomers have joined the public discussion and gathered signatures to stop the approval of the project. The unique dark skies of the region are, as the ESO scientists suggest, a form of “irreplaceable heritage for humanity”. It is also worth considering that this project, oriented towards overseas exports, would exist in a place where many rural communities have no access to drinking water and electricity. 

In both cases, the damages of previous extractive activities continue to exist not just unaddressed, but also sometimes not even understood or properly measured. The unique biodiversity of the region also remains heavily understudied. For instance, only a few years ago, a new colony of Chinchilla lanigera thought extinct in that area of the country, was found in the coast of Taltal (where INNA would be). Overall, what the communities potentially affected by these two and many other projects fear highlights the most basic tenet of ecological economics and degrowth: that energy systems are embedded in nature and in societies, in particular places that have their own history, and their own ecosystem limits. And that, overall, there is no such thing as “empty land” that can innocuously be made into a “battery” for sustaining people half a world away. Of special importance for debates over decarbonisation in the Global North, the situation in Chile shows that “green” labels may be appealing, but are often misleading. In this case, the support for green hydrogen as a route to green capitalism reflects the need of the large companies that control our economies to perpetuate their dominance, while paying lip service to legitimate environmental concerns.

Unfortunately, impacted communities and emergent social movements have an uphill battle against the weaponisation of “investment” as the ultimate public good that must be pursued at all costs. The INNA project, worth 10 billion USD, was the second largest investment to enter environmental evaluation in Chile, ever. The first one was also a green hydrogen project, located in Magallanes. This has given the industry enormous political leverage, as the government seeks to present itself as “investment-friendly” and “pro-growth”. Politicians of all the political spectrum publicly support green hydrogen as a path to the desired decoupling of economic growth from carbon emissions. Together with lithium, hydrogen has been designated by the government as one of the six “strategic industries” central to the pro-growth agenda. This means, among other things, the promotion of reforms to reduce “bureaucracy” (namely, the loosening of rigour) in the environmental evaluation of projects of this kind. Still, the people that live and love their land will continue to defend it.

This post builds on the research done by the author at Fundación Tantí in 2024, which can be found here.

This article is part of a series on movements for social and environmental justice worldwide. Find out more and read the other pieces of the series here.