Orange Cove is a small Fresno County town nestled against the Sierra foothills surrounded by citrus orchards, as it has been for well over a century. The usual worries in this Valley farming are things like the weather, the price of crops or the vicissitudes of life.
Now, the city’s residents are debating its energy future. In the spotlight is a plan by Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas) to generate hydrogen gas locally using solar power, then blend it in with the natural gas that residents and businesses use for space heating, hot water and cooking.
It is being promoted as a demonstration project in the attempt to help wean the state off fossil fuel consumption by using hydrogen, a cleaner burning fuel. While Orange Cove’s mayor and City Council are all-in on the project, many unanswered questions remain, as residents try to fully understand the details and how the pilot program will impact them.
This is part of a statewide effort under the supervision of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). It decided in 2022 to move ahead with a trial run.
Five cities served by the state’s major utilities companies will take part in the pilot project to determine whether blending hydrogen with natural gas is an effective path toward the state’s goal of a 100% renewable energy grid by 2045.
Proponents feature Oahu, Hawaii, as a good model. The city has been successfully using a blend containing 15% hydrogen since 1974. There are other locations in the world where the hydrogen/natural gas blend has been adopted.
In Orange Cove, SoCalGas will build a solar-powered hydrogen-producing plant. It will start with a blend of 0.1% hydrogen and build up to 5%.
The expected cost is $64 million. Costs will be spread out by all the company’s customers. Households can expect to see an increase of $0.13 increase in their monthly bill in the first year going down to $0.04 afterward.
The company states that older stoves and heaters in homes are compatible with the gas blend and has promised to inspect appliances in the homes of residents to ensure they will work safely. The company also pledges to conduct regular leak checks of its systems along with real-time air monitoring to detect leaks coupled with an automatic shutdown mechanism and emergency response plan.
So that’s the theory of the case. It all sounded good. So good, in fact, that Orange Cove leaders jumped in without many of the city’s 10,000 residents knowing much about the plan at all.
Then on Aug. 25, 2025, the CPUC finally held a public participation hearing in Orange Cove to make its presentation and invite public input. Several dozen people attended, a mix of local residents and people representing SoCalGas and a variety of businesses and civic groups.
The pilot project was broadly explained by the company, without much detail. It was pitched as an opportunity for local jobs, to put Orange Cove on the map as a clean energy leader and become a gateway to high-tech education for the city’s youth connecting with local colleges.
Political reps and institutional and business groups roundly endorsed the plan. But among many Orange Cove residents there was skepticism and outright opposition, along with many questions that went unanswered.
Legal problems with the project were raised by Jaime Zweifler-Katz, an attorney for the Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, representing Orange Cove United, a group of residents.
He cited three major problem areas: lack of informed consent by the community, indoor air pollution and compatibility of existing residential appliances to the hydrogen blended gas. He stated neither the utilities nor the city told residents about the risks associated with hydrogen blending.
Regarding indoor air pollution, he cited a study by Professor Alistair Lewis that hydrogen could double the amount of nitrogen oxides in older homes with older appliances. That would include many Orange Cove homes.
Another question is whether those older appliances work with the gas blend. If not, many residents would be forced to buy new appliances or go electric. That would be a big lift for people in this working-class farm town.
In conclusion, Zweifler-Katz stated that there are other pathways for the state to achieve clean energy goals without hydrogen blending and its associated risks. He urged the CPUC not to approve this pilot for a project he characterized as a dangerous experiment lacking community support.
Alma Figueroa, a 40-year resident of Orange Cove, had strong words against the project. “Speaking on behalf of myself, my family and the vast majority of the Orange Cove residents, we strongly oppose the hydrogen blending experiment. Human beings should not be used as guinea pigs to fill the pockets of corporations.”
She warned that older homes and appliances could be at risk of leaking and pipeline corrosion. Figueroa added her concern that the city’s aging infrastructure would not be capable of handling the hydrogen blended gas. Her comments echoed the worries that other longtime Orange Cove residents expressed.
They’re not alone in their distrust of the hydrogen blending experiment in California. In 2024, a broad coalition of environmental groups and consumer advocates filed a petition to the CPUC to dismiss these projects.
According to the Sierra Club, “The five projects would cost over $200 million in ratepayer money on hydrogen experiments in residential homes, college campuses and commercial buildings across California.
“The utilities’ proposed projects also fail to meet the CPUC’s minimum requirements for clean hydrogen, leak detection and stakeholder engagement.
“These proposals come after two previous failed attempts by investor-owned utilities to get CPUC approval for hydrogen blending.”
Michael Colvin of the Environmental Defense Fund underlined a potential danger in blending. “Because hydrogen functions as an indirect greenhouse gas, blending hydrogen into the existing gas pipelines can lead to climate harm since those older pipes will be more prone to leaks.”
Even the CPUC has admitted that hydrogen blends above 5% could require modifications of appliances such as stoves and water heaters to avoid leaks and malfunction.
Critics of the plan contend that dismissing these pilot projects would allow the state to concentrate on more effective climate strategies that would also clean the air and align with California’s climate goals.
A Minneapolis utility company estimated that a blend of up to 5% green hydrogen could reduce carbon pollution by as much as 1,200 tons annually, the equivalent of removing 254 gas-powered cars.
People in Orange Cove now are confronting the problem of whether the 18-month experiment and what comes after is worth the trade-off in uncertainty, cost and the potential risks.
The CPUC is expected to decide on utility applications in early 2026.
