DOE announces $750M for clean hydrogen projects

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced $750 million for 52 projects across 24 states to reduce the cost of clean hydrogen and “reinforce America’s global leadership in the growing clean hydrogen industry,” the DOE stated. The projects are intended to help advance electrolysis technologies and improve manufacturing and recycling capabilities for clean hydrogen systems and components. They are projected to directly support more than 1,500 new jobs.

Managed by DOE’s Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office (HFTO), the projects represent the first phase of implementation of two provisions of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which authorizes $1 billion for research, development, demonstration and deployment activities to reduce the cost of clean hydrogen produced via electrolysis and $500 million for research, development and demonstration of improved processes and technologies for manufacturing and recycling clean hydrogen systems and materials.

The projects are expected to enable U.S. manufacturing capacity to produce 14 gigawatts of fuel cells per year, estimated to be enough to power nearly 15% of medium- and heavy-duty trucks sold each year. They will also enable capacity to produce 10 gigawatts of electrolyzers per year, capable of generating an additional 1.3 million tons of clean hydrogen per year — sufficient growth in production in a single year to fuel nearly 170,000 long haul trucks, the DOE said.

In addition, by driving cost reductions for electrolyzers and fuel cells, the DOE believes these projects will improve the business case for the use of clean hydrogen in heavy-duty transportation, industrial applications and as an energy storage medium, where it can help mitigate the impact of fluctuations in supply and demand and reduce strain on the electrical grid. The projects will further support the long-term viability of DOE’s Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs and other emerging commercial-scale deployments by helping to address the underlying technical barriers to cost reduction that can’t be overcome by scale alone.

Together with the Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs (H2Hubs), tax incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act and ongoing research, development and demonstration in the DOE Hydrogen Program, the investments —which total $1.6 billion (including recipient cost sharing) — are expected to help achieve the DOE’s Hydrogen Shot goal of reducing the cost of producing clean hydrogen to $1 per kilogram.

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