Riverside City Council voted Tuesday to lease 1.3 acres of surplus city property at 670 Iowa Ave. to a local energy company for the next decade, clearing the way for a hydrogen production and fueling station, electric-vehicle chargers, and infrastructure meant to support hydrogen-powered public transit. The tenant, SPT Energy Base Hub, plans to turn the irregularly shaped parcel into a hub for the city's growing zero-emission ambitions.
The council approved the 10-year lease on Oct. 20, according to The Press-Enterprise, with an option to extend another five years. City staff described the Iowa Avenue site as surplus and irregularly shaped in the report presented to council. Under the deal, the lease won't actually take effect until a year after building permits are issued, or 15 months after the agreement's effective date, whichever comes first, per the city report cited in that coverage.
Money is where the numbers get murky. The Press-Enterprise reported the lease costs $11,361.60 per month, but also cited city estimates putting Riverside's annual take at $136,000 — figures that don't quite square with each other, and the discrepancy hasn't been resolved in the public reporting so far.
Who Is SPT Energy Base Hub
SPT Energy Base Hub is headquartered just down the road at 2990 Myers St. in Riverside, and the company's stated focus spans solar energy, energy storage, electric-grid technology and hydrogen fleet infrastructure, the same report notes. Its plans for the Iowa Avenue site include not just a fueling station but EV chargers and hydrogen production capacity, with an eye toward supporting hydrogen-powered public transit down the line.
The project lands at a moment when Riverside's own transit agency is already deep into its own hydrogen pivot. The Riverside Transit Agency debuted five hydrogen-powered zero-emission buses and a new fueling station at its headquarters in September, marking what the agency has called the start of a shift away from compressed natural gas toward a fully zero-emission fleet, as pressenterprise.com reported at the time.
A Separate Transit Project Already Underway
That RTA fueling station is a different undertaking from the SPT lease. Clean Energy was awarded a contract back in December 2024 to design and build a hydrogen fueling station for the transit agency, described at the time as a private-access, purpose-built facility in Riverside, according to Clean Energy Fuels. It was the company's second hydrogen-fueling transportation project in the Inland Empire, following an earlier station built for the Foothill Transit Agency in Pomona, per Energy Tech. The agency also secured an $8.7 million grant to build hydrogen fueling infrastructure at its Riverside and Hemet facilities, according to the Riverside Transit Agency, part of a plan to replace all 145 of its large compressed-natural-gas buses in phases starting this year.
Riverside's hydrogen build-out is riding a wave of state money and policy support. California announced $95.2 million in funding for the 2026-27 fiscal year to expand electric-vehicle charging and hydrogen refueling sites statewide, including $15 million earmarked specifically for hydrogen refueling, the Orange County Register reported in August. That same quarter, Californians bought 86,857 zero-emission vehicles, about 19.1 percent of new car sales, among them 81 hydrogen fuel-cell cars.
State Rules Push Faster Approvals
Part of what's making projects like SPT's possible is a 2022 state law requiring faster permitting. SB 1291 directs all California cities and counties to set up an expedited, streamlined permitting process for hydrogen fueling stations that meet specific criteria, according to the state's hydrogen readiness guidance from California Business and Economic Development. Statewide, federal data from the U.S. Department of Energy's Alternative Fuels Data Center point to more than 20 hydrogen stations in various stages of planning or construction, though that figure doesn't break out how many are actually operating versus still on the drawing board.
Other hydrogen networks already dot Southern California, including FirstElement Fuel's True Zero stations across Orange, Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties, among other regions, the Orange County Register noted. Whether SPT's planned Iowa Avenue facility will be open to the public or reserved for specific fleet use hasn't been detailed yet, and neither has a construction timeline or expected opening date. For now, Riverside has a signed lease, a new tenant on a formerly vacant lot, and a bet that hydrogen will keep playing a bigger role in how the city moves people and power.
