DOE Unveils New Clean Hydrogen Strategy
WASHINGTON — Clean hydrogen is part of the latest effort to slow climate change, according to a new strategy released Monday by the Department of Energy.
The 97-page U.S. National Clean Hydrogen Strategy and Roadmap outlines a plan for developing clean hydrogen in an attempt to decarbonize the United States and its economy.
“In fact, it can do so much that it’s been called the Swiss Army Knife of clean energy solutions,” said John Kerry, the special presidential envoy for climate, in a video released by the DOE on Monday.
The plan is broken down into three main components:
1. Emphasis on High-Impact Areas of Industry
These areas include the industrial sector, heavy-duty transportation and long-duration energy storage. This is a significant part of the strategy because there are limited alternatives to decarbonization in these industries.
2. Cost Reduction
The plan outlines several ways to cut the cost of clean hydrogen, including “stimulating private sector investments” and encouraging supply chain development.
The DOE’s Hydrogen Shot, or 111 plan, which was released in June 2021, aims to curb the cost of creating clean hydrogen through reducing 1 kilogram of hydrogen to $1 within one decade.
3. Utilizing Regional Networks
The roadmap calls for investment in regional networks to spread out the infrastructure. The plan also states it will prioritize job creation, reduce environmental impacts and facilitate development through contracts, manufacturing and investment.
The goal of this strategy is to “develop a technologically and economically feasible national strategy and roadmap to facilitate wide scale production, processing, delivery, storage and use of clean hydrogen,” according to the roadmap.
By 2050, it aims to achieve a net-zero emissions economy.
BP, a major oil and gas company, has developed its own strategy to work toward becoming net zero by 2050. The company plans to supply its refineries and grow to meet consumer demand, with goals of producing between 0.5-0.7 million tonnes per year of primarily green hydrogen by 2030.
Specific clean hydrogen sites are already underway, such as the Intermountain Power Project in Utah; the Clean Energy Complex in Louisiana; a hydrogen production plant in Texas built by Air Products and AES; and a clean hydrogen plant in New York built by Plug Power.
These signal the beginning of the DOE’s Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs program, which will put large-scale clean hydrogen producers near high-priority clean hydrogen consumers.
The bipartisan infrastructure law, passed in November 2021, ensures clean hydrogen will be an ongoing priority to slow climate change, as it allocates $9.5 billion directly to the clean hydrogen sector.
The public and private energy sectors will collaborate on building clean hydrogen infrastructure under this strategy.
A point of emphasis for the plan is to slow climate change while creating jobs.
The strategy states that the use of clean hydrogen could lead to almost a 10% decrease in economy-wide carbon emissions by 2050 and projects “100,000 net new direct and indirect jobs” could be added by 2030.
“President Biden understands that growing America’s clean hydrogen capability can spur good-paying union jobs, support local economic development and help decarbonize industries long seen as ‘hard to decarbonize,’” said Ali Zaidi, assistant to the president and national climate advisor, in a written statement. “This roadmap will align the private and public sectors on a shared path to drive faster toward a cleaner, more secure energy future.”
According to the roadmap, the plan was initially released in September 2022 for public comment from “stakeholders in industry, academia and the nonprofit sector, as well as state, local and tribal governments.”
The completed strategy contains input from all of these groups and will be updated at least every three years to retain relevance in the sector.
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