Panelist Tony Pan, CEO and co-founder of Modern Hydrogen, a startup building devices that produce hydrogen from methane gas, said that federal climate policies such as the Inflation Reduction Act have funded numerous energy projects in red states and will be unpopular to halt. He also noted that, in his particular situation, most of his customers are utilities that are guided more by state than by national rules.
If federal climate support disappears, “as long as states keep up their good work, I still think decarbonization will make progress in the United States, although maybe we’ll lose the race to Europe,” Pan said. “But it’s OK. Competition is good. No matter what, the planet wins.”
