CENTRALIA, Wash. -- November 12, 2026 -- The Lewis County Hydrogen Alliance, Inc. (LCH2) has been awarded an additional $1 million from TransAlta Centralia Board Funding, LLC to advance the Lewis County Clean Energy Campus, lifting total grant support to $1.4 million. By FairsOnline's calculation, the new award is 2.5 times the roughly $400,000 provided before it and makes up about 71% of the total.
The money comes through the Energy Technology Board under the Centralia Coal Transition Grants program.
Grant money now covers site control, permitting and financing work
The new funding pays for site control, engineering, permitting, feedstock-supply and product-offtake agreements, and project-financing work. The first stage covered feedstock and logistics, the site-selection pathway, concept-level process engineering and permitting. That work supported a recommendation to advance, according to LCH2.
LCH2 Executive Director Ken Cavallon said the first round is complete and "now our job is execution." He listed the next steps as securing the site, advancing engineering and permits, formalizing supply and offtake, and building a financeable commercial project.
Planning case targets 1,000 tonnes of residuals a day and 50 MW of compute
The full-campus vision would turn regional forestry residuals into hydrogen, clean carbon coproducts and dispatchable electricity. An AI Advanced Compute Complex would sit alongside the energy infrastructure. At full buildout, the current planning case targets about 1,000 wet metric tonnes of forestry residuals per day and a 50-megawatt advanced-compute IT load.
LCH2 sets a management target of more than 220 family-wage jobs. The company says this is a project target, not an independently completed economic-impact forecast.
LCH2 did not disclose the total project cost.
LCH2 seeks forestry, offtake and capital partners for the next stage
The alliance invites forestry and logistics companies, energy and infrastructure partners, prospective hydrogen and carbon-product customers, technology providers and capital partners to engage. Those are the counterparties for the supply, offtake and financing agreements the grant is meant to advance.
TransAlta's Chris Fralick, Executive Vice President, Generation and Chief Operating Officer, said the grant program was created to help communities build durable economic and energy opportunities. He described the project as aligned with that purpose.
LCH2 says the near-term work is development, not full-campus construction. It says future buildout depends on site control, engineering validation, permits, commercial agreements and project financing.