DOE awards nearly $34M to industry, university-led research into hydrogen
Continuing federal investment into the concept of clean hydrogen, the United States Department of Energy (DOE) announced nearly $34 million in awards this week for 19 industry and university-led research projects on technology solutions to make hydrogen fuel more widely available and affordable.
“Clean hydrogen is one of our most versatile tools to slash emissions and forge a carbon-free pathway for a sustainable clean energy future,”U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said. “With today’s announcements, DOE is supporting the continued advancement of clean hydrogen technology making it cheaper to produce and easier to deploy, all while creating good-paying jobs in the process.”
The projects will support both technologies and infrastructure for hydrogen production, transport and storage, with potential benefits for electricity generation, industrial decarbonization and transportation. Hydrogen can be used in a fuel cell or gas turbine to create electricity with only water and heat as byproducts, and can be created from zero-emissions electricity generated by wind, solar, geothermal and nuclear, along with the conversion of natural gas and sustainably sourced biomass with carbon capture and storage elements.
Most hydrogen currently produced in the U.S. comes from natural gas, though, and without the capture and storage of CO2, meaning its current iterations bring significant emissions. DOE therefore eyes cleaner forms of hydrogen production as a critical path to addressing climate change and achieving a net-zero emissions economy by 2050.
Selected projects will focus on three areas: developing technologies to produce clean hydrogen at lower costs and energy; investigating means of producing hydrogen with biomass, effluent waters from oil and natural gas development and production, and other wastes; and growing options for safe and efficient hydrogen transport and storage. All will be managed by DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), under the guidance of the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM).
