The U.S. Department of Energy announced up to $31 million in funding to advance the H2@Scale concept. The focus of H2@Scale is to enable affordable and reliable large-scale hydrogen generation, transport, storage, and utilization in the United States across multiple sectors.
“Hydrogen is an energy carrier that can unite our Nation’s abundant energy resources,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry. “This funding opportunity and the H2@Scale Initiative will help the Department achieve our goals of strengthening energy security, resiliency, and a strong domestic economy.”
By producing hydrogen when power generation exceeds load, electrolyzers can reduce curtailment of renewables and contribute to grid stability. Hydrogen produced from existing baseload (e.g., nuclear power) assets can also be stored, distributed, and used as a fuel for multiple applications. Such applications include transportation, stationary power, process or building heat, and industrial sectors such as steel manufacturing, ammonia production and petroleum refining. Key challenges to the H2@Scale concept include affordability, reliability, and performance of emerging hydrogen and fuel cell technologies.
Topics under this funding announcement to advance H2@Scale include:
Topic 1: Advanced hydrogen storage and infrastructure R&D (up to $9M) including novel materials or hydrogen carriers for transporting and storing hydrogen, and materials for hydrogen infrastructure components.
Topic 2: Innovative concepts for hydrogen production and utilization (up to $12M) including advanced water splitting materials, affordable domestic hydrogen production technologies, co-production of hydrogen for additional sources of revenue, and reversible fuel cell technologies.
Topic 3: H2@Scale Pilot - integrated production, storage, and fueling systems (up to $10M) including innovative approaches that successfully integrate and optimize the complete system encompassing hydrogen production, storage, distribution, and use.
Concept papers are due April 8, 2019 and full applications are due May 22, 2019. More information, application requirements, and instructions can be found on the EERE Funding Opportunity Exchange web site.