The U.S. Department of Energy announced today that it will allocate $750 million to a series of projects aimed at dramatically reducing the cost of clean hydrogen, supporting areas including advanced electrolysis technologies and improved manufacturing and recycling capabilities for hydrogen systems and components. clean, supporting the government's ambition to significantly increase US clean hydrogen production capacity over the next few years.
The announcement follows the Biden administration's launch in June 2023 of the U.S. National Clean Hydrogen Strategy and Roadmap, with the goal of significantly increasing the production, use and distribution of low-carbon hydrogen for use in consumer industries. energy intensive and including a goal to scale up U.S. clean hydrogen. production and use to 10 million metric tons by 2030, and up to 50 million tons by 2050.
Hydrogen is seen as one of the key building blocks of the transition to a cleaner energy future, especially for sectors struggling to reduce emissions, where renewable energy solutions such as wind or solar are less practical.
About 10 million metric tons (MMT) of hydrogen are currently produced in the US and approximately 94 million metric tons globally, although the vast majority is extracted using fossil fuels, which create pollutants and GHG emissions. Hydrogen production in the USA, for example, is mainly based on the extraction of natural gas through the steam reforming of methane and currently generates around 100 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year.
Developing clean hydrogen capacity, such as green hydrogen, which uses renewable energy to power the process of extracting hydrogen from other materials, will require massive investments in areas including infrastructure, electrolysis, transportation and storage.
The new DOE allocations will be funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, which allocates $9.5 billion for clean hydrogen, including $1 billion for research, development, demonstration, and deployment (RD&D) activities to reduce the cost of hydrogen produced by electrolysis and $500 million for research and development of improved processes and technologies for the manufacture and recycling of clean hydrogen systems and materials.
The new funding will support 52 projects in 24 states and includes $316 million allocated to projects focused on manufacturing low-cost, high-output electrolyzers, $150 million for advanced manufacturing of fuel cell stack and assembly designs, $ $82 million for fuel cell supply chain development, $81 million for electrolyzer components and supply chain development, $72 million for advanced technology and component development projects, and $50 million for a recovery consortium and recycling.
According to the DOE, the projects are expected to enable 14 gigawatts of annual fuel cell manufacturing capacity, enough to power 15% of medium- and heavy-duty trucks sold each year, and 10 gigawatts of electrolyzers per year. , enough to produce an additional 1.3 million tons of clean hydrogen annually.
US Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm said:
“The projects announced today — funded by the President’s Investing in America agenda — will boost our progress and ensure that our leadership in clean hydrogen will be felt across the country for generations to come.”
