ARCHES was created to facilitate California’s transition to renewable, clean hydrogen (H2) energy while ensuring environmental and energy justice and equity, quality of life for our citizens and communities, and good green high-road careers for our workers.

ARCHES is the result of an unprecedented collaboration between state government, higher education, labor and an environmental NGO based upon a shared belief in the benefits that hydrogen brings to California and its communities, including cleaner air, lower GHG emissions, greater energy security, and greater economic and workforce prosperity.

Recognizing past inequities and the ongoing harms that fossil fuels have inflicted upon many of our communities, ARCHES is committed to ensuring a just and equitable transition to renewable hydrogen energy in California.

That requires maximizing the benefits to those in our disadvantaged communities (DACs), especially in and around ARCHES project sites. To that end, ARCHES engaged broadly from the outset with organized labor and community organizations to understand their concerns and address them in the planning to maximize benefits and avoid problems downstream. The inputs from those groups have influenced every aspect of ARCHES, from its community-oriented principles and deeply representative governance structure, which includes labor, communities, cities and local governments, tribal nations, and environmental/EJ groups, to its community-oriented project selection criteria and extensive Community Benefits (CB) Plan.