The U.S. Department of Energy has announced up to $64 million in funding to advance innovations that will build new markets for the H2@Scale initiative. The money will go to supporting research and development, and concepts that will encourage market expansion and increase the scale of hydrogen production, storage, transport, and use.
While the United States produces 10 million tons of hydrogen annually, a significant increase in hydrogen supply and demand will be required to fully realise hydrogen benefits across the economy. Hydrogen can add value to sectors such as steel and ammonia production and accelerate the integration of renewables in the energy system. Opportunities also exist in large-energy use applications for mobility, such as trucks, rail and marine, as well as in energy storage.
The funding from the DOE will be broken down as follows
- Electrolyser Manufacturing R&D (up to $15M): Lowering the cost of hydrogen produced from megawatt- and gigawatt-scale electrolyzers by improving large-scale, high-volume electrolyzer manufacturing in the U.S.
- Advanced Carbon Fibre for Compressed Gas Storage Tanks (up to $15M): Reducing the cost of hydrogen and natural gas storage tanks by developing low-cost, high-strength carbon fibre and scaling up to industry-relevant scales.
- Fuel Cell R&D and Domestic Manufacturing for Medium and Heavy Duty Transportation (up to $10M): Advancing the development of domestically manufactured fuel cell components and stacks that meet the cost and performance needs of trucks and other emerging heavy duty applications.
- H2@Scale New Markets R&D – HySteel (up to $8M): Enabling the use of hydrogen in steel manufacturing applications, aligned with FCTO and H2@Scale priorities for fostering new markets for hydrogen.
- H2@Scale New Markets Demonstrations in Maritime and Data Centers (up to $14M): Developing first-of-a-kind demonstrations to jumpstart emerging new market opportunities for hydrogen in maritime and data centre applications.
- Training and Workforce Development (up to $2M): Creating cohesive, strategic, and well-coordinated regional efforts to develop the skills necessary to support the growing hydrogen and fuel cell industry.
Concept papers are due February 25, 2020 and full applications are due April 20, 2020