MLG Globe-trots to Europe to Pitch Hydrogen Development for New Mexico, with Her Usual Entourage Tagging Along

“Opportunity to sell New Mexico as a Dynamic and Thriving Place for Hydrogen Industry Investment.” – Michelle Lujan Grisham

According to news reports, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham is off to the Netherlands, another trip to promote hydrogen power development in New Mexico.

Associated Press’ New Mexico office reports:

“In a news release Friday, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said she’ll lead a delegation to an industry summit exhibition in the port city of Rotterdam seeking the “opportunity to sell New Mexico as a dynamic and thriving place for hydrogen industry investment.” She led a similar mission last year to Australia to talk with hydrogen entrepreneurs.“

Lujan Grisham has been traveling internationally luring companies to New Mexico with state investment money and additional tax breaks.

Hydrogen Industry player Stewart Stewart is accompanying the Governor, Caroline Buerkle (the Governor’s Director of Cabinet Affairs), and James Kenney, the Governor’s Secretary of the Environment Department on this trip.

Stewart, an industry ally of Kenney and the Governor, traveled to Australia last October and November for the World Hydrogen Conference. Kenney and Buerkle were also on that “Down Under” trip along with Jason Sandel, an oil and gas industry executive from Farmington area.

Like former Governor Susana Martinez did with Skandera era so-called education reform efforts rejected by the legislature ten years ago, Lujan Grisham is jamming her version of energy development via executive fiat, despite the rejection of her hydrogen hub proposals by legislators.

For several years, Lujan Grisham and her Secretary of the New Mexico Environment Department have been pitching oil and gas industry efforts to move New Mexico into producing hydrogen energy – moves that would ensure the ongoing production of gas wells in order to power the hydrogen energy development.

Environmental groups emphasized in a December 10, 2021, press release, that the New Mexico version of hydrogen production “only increases our State’s dependency on oil and natural gas – the exact opposite of what we should be doing,” as stated by Jonathan Juarez Alonzo, policy lead for YUCCA (Youth United for Climate Crisis Action).

Other organizations, such as the Western Environmental Law Center, echoed those concerns, “Fossil gas hydrogen isn’t a climate solution and it’s problematic to throw state taxpayer subsidies at fossil gas hydrogen developers and their investors under the pretext that this will somehow trickle down to the benefit of New Mexico communities and workers,” wrote Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, the Law Center’s executive director.