The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $34 million to 19 industry- and university-led research projects to advance clean hydrogen solutions.
This will make clean energy more available and affordable fuel for electricity generation, industrial decarbonization, and transportation.
The electricity generated from clean hydrogen will help reach the Biden-Harris Administration’s goals of achieving a zero-carbon American power sector by 2035 and a net-zero emissions economy by 2050.
“Clean hydrogen is one of our most versatile tools to slash emissions and forge a carbon-free pathway for a sustainable clean energy future. 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,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm.
The Need for Clean Energy
Hydrogen is a clean fuel that may be used in a gas turbine or a fuel cell to generate power with only the byproducts of heat and water.
Clean hydrogen can be created by converting leak-tight natural gas and sustainably supplied biomass into electricity without emissions from wind, solar, geothermal, or nuclear energy sources.
However, the roughly 10 million metric tons of hydrogen produced in the United States are made up of more than 95% natural gas, which results in large emissions because carbon dioxide is not captured and geologically stored.[1]
For this reason, improving clean hydrogen generation is crucial to combating climate change.
The chosen projects will be managed by DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), governed by the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM).
The selected projects will focus on:
- Exploring ways to produce hydrogen using biomass, effluent waters from oil and natural gas development and production, and other wastes.
- Developing technologies that could assist in producing clean hydrogen at a lower cost and with less energy.
- Expanding options for safe and effective hydrogen transport and storage across the country.
Exploring New, Clean Methods of Producing Hydrogen
With the selections made today, FECM will have unveiled more than $122 million in 72 projects since January 2021 in an effort to investigate novel, eco-friendly ways to create hydrogen and enhance the efficiency of hydrogen-fueled turbines.
These initiatives support DOE’s Hydrogen Shot initiative, which aims to develop new, clean hydrogen pathways in the United States by reducing the price of clean hydrogen by 80% to $1 per kilogram in ten years.
Achieving commercial-scale hydrogen deployment is essential for creating a robust clean energy economy in the United States and supporting our long-term decarbonization goals, as stated in the U.S. National Clean Hydrogen Strategy and Roadmap.
By 2030, the hydrogen economy, which is expanding in America, is predicted to provide 100,000 net new direct and indirect jobs.
In order to attain net-zero emissions throughout our economy, FECM works to reduce the negative effects of fossil fuels and industrial processes on the environment and the climate.
Among the top technology work areas are carbon capture, carbon conversion, carbon dioxide removal, transport and storage, hydrogen production with carbon management, methane emissions reduction, and essential mineral production.
References
- Department of Energy, ‘DOE Awards $34 Million to Advance Clean Hydrogen’, 17 August 2023, https://www.energy.gov/articles/doe-awards-34-million-advance-clean-hydrogen[↩]
