You left out the DOE Hydrogen Shot program: https://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/docs/hydrogenprogramlibraries/pdfs/hydrogen-program-plan-2020.pdf
The first Energy Earthshot, launched June 7, 2021—Hydrogen Shot—seeks to reduce the cost of clean hydrogen by 80% to $1 per 1 kilogram in 1 decade .
Currently, hydrogen from renewable energy costs about $5 per kilogram. Achieving the Hydrogen Shot’s 80% cost reduction goal can unlock new markets for hydrogen, including steel manufacturing, clean ammonia, energy storage, and heavy-duty trucks. This would create more clean energy jobs, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and position America to compete in the clean energy market on a global scale. These efforts would ensure that environmental protection and benefits for local communities are a priority.
Over the past 20 years, DOE has invested more than $4 billion in a number of hydrogen and related areas, including hydrogen production from diverse domestic sources, hydrogen delivery and storage, and conversion technologies including fuel cells and turbines. These research efforts, in collaboration with industry, have resulted in a number of successes such as advanced production systems capable of producing carbon-free hydrogen for less than $2 per kg with carbon capture and storage. DOE funded R&D has also reduced the cost of transportation fuel cells by 60% and quadrupled durability, and has resulted in over 1,100 U.S. patents issued and over 30 commercial technologies in the market.
The key technical challenges for hydrogen and related technologies are cost, durability, reliability, and performance, as well as the lack of hydrogen infrastructure. To achieve widespread commercialization, hydrogen
utilization technologies must enter larger markets and be able to compete with incumbent technologies in terms of life-cycle cost, performance, durability, and environmental impact. Non-technical barriers also need to be
addressed, such as developing and harmonizing codes and standards, fostering best practices for safety, and developing a robust supply chain and workforce.
Fossil Resources
Fossil fuels such as natural gas or coal are the source of most of the hydrogen currently produced in the world. Today, approximately 95% of the hydrogen in the United States is produced by catalytic steam-methane-reforming (SMR) in large central plants fed by the existing natural gas infrastructure. Partial oxidation of natural gas (or other hydrocarbons), autothermal reforming (converting natural gas, steam, and oxygen to syngas), andgasification of coal (or coal/biomass/waste-plastic blends)—all with CCUS—are other options leveraging domestic resources. Combining fossil-based processes with CCUS offers a promising near-term option for carbon-neutral hydrogen production, and using CCUS when co-firing fossil-based feedstocks with biomass offers the potential for carbon-negative hydrogen as an additional environmental benefit. Other emerging approaches include the direct pyrolysis of methane into hydrogen and solid carbon co-products. Advanced production systems have been developed that are capable of producing carbon free hydrogen for less than $2/kg with CCUS. For example, industry has demonstrated a fully integrated hydrogen production facility at the Port Arthur CCUS project at the
Valero Refinery. While SMR and gasification with CCUS are mature industrial technologies that can produce hydrogen for a cost of less than $2/kg today, ongoing RD&D in the areas of catalysis, separations, controls, polygeneration, capital cost reductions, process intensification, and modularization with advanced design methods (e.g., parametric design), including through the use of artificial intelligence, can further reduce the cost of fossil-based hydrogen production. Research advances in gasification and reforming technologies with CCUS, including reductions in capital and operating costs, target carbon-neutral hydrogen production at less than $1/kg.
Biomass and Waste-Stream Resources
Domestic biomass and waste-stream resources, with the potential for over a billion dry tons of feedstock annually,46 can be leveraged for sustainable hydrogen production. Applicable categories of feedstocks include primary biomass energy sources such as poplar, willow, and switchgrass, as well as biogas produced from anaerobic digestion of organic residues from sources such as landfill, agricultural waste, and municipal solid waste. Primary biomass can be gasified using well-established technologies, or even co-fed with coal or waste plastics in the gasification process. It can also be processed into bio-derived liquids for subsequent reforming into hydrogen and, when coupled with CCUS, could potentially produce carbon-negative hydrogen. Biogas, with additional cleanup requirements, can be reformed to produce hydrogen using a process similar to SMR. Certain waste-stream feedstocks can be used to produce hydrogen through biological-based processes such as fermentation and microbial assisted electrolysis, or through novel thermal and non-thermal plasma-based processes. The cleaning up of waste streams that occurs in these processes is an additional benefit. Depending on feedstock availability and cost, some approaches—including gasification and steam reforming of biomass and waste-streams—may be economically competitive in the near term. To enable broader adoption, RD&D is needed to address challenges for both near- and longer-term technologies, including improvements in conversion efficiency (e.g., through advanced catalysis and separations, as well as process intensification) and reductions in the costs of pre-treating and transporting feedstocks.
Water-Splitting Technologies
There are a number of processes that split water into hydrogen and oxygen using electric, thermal, or photonic (light) energy from diverse, sustainable domestic sources (such as solar, wind, nuclear, and others). Lowtemperature electrolyzers (including liquid-alkaline and membrane-based electroyzers) that use electricity to split water offer near-term commercial viability, with units available today at the multi-megawatt (MW) scale. These electrolyzers can be coupled to the electric grid, or integrated directly with distributed-generation assets to produce hydrogen for various end uses. The cost of hydrogen produced from lowtemperature electrolysis depends strongly on the electricity cost: it currently ranges from $5–$6/kg-H2 for electricity pricing in the
$0.05–$0.07/kWh range. The availability of lower-cost electricity— for example, in the $0.02–$0.03/kWh range from emerging wind and
solar assets—coupled with ongoing advancements in electrolyzer
