Highlights
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In collaboration with other federal agencies, DOE is developing plain-language information resources written for the general public. These concise and handy resources aim to expand understanding of hydrogen and its potential role in a future clean, affordable, resilient, and equitable economy.
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This groundbreaking strategy document explores opportunities for clean hydrogen to contribute to national goals across multiple sectors of the economy and provides a snapshot of hydrogen production, transport, storage, and end use today with a strategic framework for achieving large-scale production and use of clean hydrogen.
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This report aims to establish a common fact base and ongoing dialogue with the private sector around the path to commercial liftoff for clean hydrogen—and to catalyze more rapid and coordinated action across the full clean hydrogen value chain. It is part of a series of reports that represent a department-wide initiative to strengthen engagement between the public and private sectors to accelerate the commercialization and deployment of key clean energy technologies. The reports provide the private sector and other industry partners a valuable, engagement-driven resource on how and when certain technologies—beginning with clean hydrogen, advanced nuclear, and long duration energy storage—can reach full scale deployment.
Clean Hydrogen – A Versatile Tool for Our Clean Energy Future
Why Clean Hydrogen?
Clean hydrogen is part of a comprehensive portfolio of solutions to ensure a resilient, secure, equitable, and sustainable future that benefits all Americans. It can serve as an energy carrier and an input to several important industrial and chemical processes. Hydrogen is complementary to and supportive of other efforts, such as renewable power generation, electrification of sectors currently dependent on fossil fuels, and energy efficiency improvements.
Clean hydrogen is set to play a vital role in reducing emissions from our most energy-intensive and polluting sectors. These sectors include key economic engines that are essential to the modern American economy and quality of life, such as heavy-duty transportation and industrial and chemical processes like steelmaking and fertilizer production. Clean hydrogen can also support the expansion of clean electricity by providing a means for long-duration energy storage and offering flexibility and multiple revenue streams for all types of clean power generation—including renewables, advanced nuclear, and other innovative technologies. By enabling the development of diverse, domestic energy innovation pathways across multiple sectors of the economy, hydrogen development will strengthen American energy independence and accelerate the renaissance of American manufacturing.
The key advantages of clean hydrogen are:
- Versatility of sources. Unlike traditional energy resources, which are typically geographically constrained, clean hydrogen can be produced virtually anywhere, using a wide range of energy resources—including renewables, nuclear, and fossil energy with carbon capture.
- Versatility of uses. Clean hydrogen has been described as the “Swiss army knife” of energy because it can be used in multiple applications across many sectors of the economy. For example, it can be used in fuel cells to produce electricity and heat with no direct emissions (emitting only water vapor) across a wide range of transportation and stationary-power applications, including energy storage, and it can be used in a number of industrial and chemical processes.
- Reduced greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution. Clean hydrogen can be produced with low or zero greenhouse gas emissions; it can also be used in many applications with no greenhouse gas emissions or air pollution (e.g., when converted to electricity in a fuel cell).
What Is Clean Hydrogen and Where Does It Come From?
Hydrogen can be considered clean when its production process results in low or zero greenhouse gas emissions, including upstream emissions from inputs like methane-based feedstocks or electricity production. It can be produced from renewable or nuclear energy or using fossil energy with carbon capture.
Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe; it is also the simplest and the lightest. Although hydrogen constitutes nearly 75% of all the universe’s matter, only a small fraction of the hydrogen accessible on Earth exists in a pure state (not bonded to other elements). Producing hydrogen typically involves extracting it from other materials—such as water, biomass, or fossil fuels—using an external source of energy. In addition, geologic (or natural) hydrogen—which forms underground through geologic processes—is receiving growing interest, with its potential for extraction and use being examined by industry and governments all over the world.
What Is the u.s. Government Doing to Support the Use of Clean Hydrogen?
The government and the private sector are committing resources and attention to developing the clean hydrogen economy for the benefit of all Americans as well as the broader global community. Historic investments in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) build on long-standing research, development, demonstration, and deployment efforts funded through annual appropriations.
Historic Federal Investment—the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law
Provisions in the BIL include $9.5 billion for hydrogen—with $8 billion for the Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs, $1 billion for electrolysis research, development and demonstration (RD&D), and $500 million for clean hydrogen technology manufacturing and recycling research and development (R&D). These funds work in concert with and supplement long-standing RD&D programs across the federal government, funded through annual appropriations. The BIL also charged the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) with developing the U.S. National Clean Hydrogen Strategy and Roadmap.
Industry-Boosting Incentives—the Inflation Reduction Act
The IRA offers financial incentives to spur deployment and use of clean hydrogen technologies, including the Clean Hydrogen Production Tax Credit, which provides a credit of up to $3 per kilogram of clean hydrogen (this incentive varies based on the carbon intensity of the hydrogen production pathway) and an Investment Tax Credit of up to 30% for new hydrogen-production facilities.
Coordinated Federal Action—the Hydrogen Interagency Task Force
Launched in August 2023, the Hydrogen Interagency Task Force is a collaboration among U.S. federal agencies to further advance a whole-of-government approach to executing the national clean hydrogen strategy. Member agencies are working to coordinate activities across the full spectrum of research, development, demonstration, deployment (RDD&D) and many related enabling factors. This includes substantial investment in RDD&D across multiple federal agencies, through annual appropriations—including more than $430 million in DOE funding (in Fiscal Year 2023).
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Clean Hydrogen Initiatives and Programs
Flagship Initiatives
The Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs (H2Hubs) Program is establishing clean hydrogen hubs in different regions across America, which will form the foundation of a national clean hydrogen network. Funded through the BIL, the H2Hubs aim to accelerate the commercial-scale deployment of clean hydrogen, helping to generate clean, dispatchable power, create a new form of energy storage, and decarbonize heavy industry and transportation. Together, the H2Hubs would kickstart a national network of clean hydrogen producers, consumers, and connective infrastructure while supporting the production, storage, delivery, and end use of clean hydrogen. To support this network and ensure its long-term viability, DOE is also investing in an innovative “demand-side initiative,” and has selected a consortium of leading private-sector experts to design and implement demand-side support mechanisms to unlock the market potential of the H2Hubs.
The Hydrogen Energy Shot™ is the first of eight DOE Energy Earthshots™ Initiatives. It aims to reduce the cost of clean hydrogen to $1 per 1 kilogram within a decade. The cost reductions targeted by the Hydrogen Shot would make it possible to replace today’s hydrogen with clean hydrogen, expand existing markets, and create new markets for hydrogen, including for iron and steel production, clean ammonia, and heavy-duty trucking, and for energy storage to help integrate renewables into our power grid.
H2@Scale is a DOE initiative that provides an overarching vision for how clean hydrogen can enable energy pathways across applications and sectors in an increasingly interconnected energy system. The H2@Scale concept is based on hydrogen’s potential to meet existing and emerging market demands across multiple sectors. It envisions how innovations to produce, store, transport, and utilize hydrogen can help realize that potential and achieve scale to drive revenue opportunities and reduce costs.
The DOE Hydrogen Program: Coordinated Research, Development, Demonstration, and Deployment of Clean Hydrogen Technologies
This program includes activities across multiple DOE offices—including Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Fossil Energy and Carbon Management, Nuclear Energy, Electricity, the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains, the Loan Programs Office, the Office of Science, and the Advanced Research Program Agency – Energy. From basic research that answers foundational questions in chemistry to collaborating with private companies to commercialize innovative technologies, these efforts comprise a comprehensive portfolio, which aims to overcome challenges across the following areas.
Hydrogen Production
DOE is pursuing a broad portfolio of hydrogen production pathways, including splitting water, tapping into fossil resources with carbon capture; and extracting hydrogen from biomass and waste-stream resources.
Hydrogen Delivery
To support a wide range of applications, DOE is advancing technologies to enable delivery of hydrogen as a gas in pipelines and high-pressure tube trailers, as a liquid via tanker trucks, and using chemical hydrogen carriers.
Hydrogen Storage
DOE is advancing technologies and systems for storing hydrogen using physical processes—as a compressed gas or cryogenic liquid and using material-based processes that incorporate hydrogen in chemical compounds.
Hydrogen Conversion
DOE conducts a broad portfolio of RD&D to improve conversion of hydrogen into electricity and heat—both through combustion using turbines or reciprocating engines, and through an electrochemical process using fuel cells.
Hydrogen Applications
To enable use of clean hydrogen across multiple sectors, DOE supports the development and demonstration of technologies for using hydrogen use in transportation, chemical and industrial processes, stationary power generation applications, and integrated hybrid energy systems.
Manufacturing
By developing processes and technologies specifically tailored to high-volume manufacturing, DOE is helping to achieve economies-of-scale in manufacturing. These efforts can also lead to additional technology and systems-integration improvements, resulting in even greater cost reductions.
Safety, Codes, and Standards
DOE supports the development and revision of necessary codes and standards to enable safe and economical deployment of hydrogen technologies. These efforts include research to improve understanding of the physical and chemical properties of hydrogen, close coordination and collaboration with code and standard development organizations, and global collaboration to harmonize international standards.
Commercial Scale Demonstration and Deployment Support
DOE also supports large-scale demonstrations and deployments. These include cost-shared investments in the Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs, as well as loan guarantees for commercial hydrogen installations.
Press Releases
From Our Blogs
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- Fossil
- Clean Energy
- Carbon Capture
- Decarbonization
- Hydrogen
October 25, 2024 -
- Hydrogen
- Fuel Cell Technologies
- Clean Hydrogen Production Tax Credit (45V)
- Commercial Implementation
- Sustainable Transportation
October 24, 2024
