Hydrogen Industry Alliance Launched to Accelerate Clean Hydrogen Market Development

What is Hydrogen?

Transportation Sector

For transportation, hydrogen can power zero-emissions vehicles through fuel cell technology. Unlike a traditional internal combustion engine used in most cars today, fuel cell vehicles use hydrogen and oxygen to emit water as exhaust, producing no CO2, particulate, or sulfur emissions.
Manufacturing and Industrial Sectors

Hydrogen can be used in the manufacturing and industrial sectors for either power generation or industrial applications. Notably, hydrogen can reach the high temperatures required for industrial heating processes, such as cement and steel manufacturing.
Power Sector

Hydrogen allows the use of existing assets in the power sector for the energy transition, avoiding the high capital costs of new development. In some cases, it can be blended with natural gas and distributed through existing natural gas transport infrastructure. Hydrogen can also play a key role in enabling electric grid stability. It is particularly suitable for long-duration storage

Just as there are many opportunities to utilize hydrogen, there are also many production methods. Each pathway uses different inputs to produce hydrogen, with a wide range of carbon emission-reduction options.

Flexible production allows for the best use of surrounding resources. For instance, in areas with an abundance of natural gas production, methane reformers can be used to produce hydrogen. The carbon emissions from those facilities can be captured and used or stored, resulting in low-carbon hydrogen. Electrolyzer plants offer opportunities in areas with abundant renewable and zero-carbon energy. And, areas with biomass waste feedstocks can combine gasification with carbon capture to produce hydrogen. That combination has the potential to produce hydrogen with net-negative emissions.

How is hydrogen produced today?

What are the hydrogen consumption pathways of the future?

Hydrogen has potential applications in multiple sectors, including road transport, shipping, aviation, buildings, power, and industry.

What is “Clean” Hydrogen?

Hydrogen can be produced from a variety of resources, such as natural gas, nuclear power, biogas, and renewable power like solar and wind. While hydrogen releases no emissions when burned as fuel, hydrogen production methods have varying emissions intensity levels.

The production pathway is what determines whether hydrogen is “clean” or not. Clean, in this context, refers to whether the production pathway results in a significantly large amount of carbon emissions compared to other methods.

Image Source: Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy - Hydrogen Production Pathways

What’s Next For Hydrogen?

The Federal Government has recognized the importance of reaching cost-effective hydrogen production by 2030 and has allocated $9.5 billion through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to support clean hydrogen deployment. Eight billion dollars of that funding will go towards developing areas across the nation where hydrogen producers and consumers are closely located and connected, also known as hydrogen hubs.

To bring clean hydrogen production to scale, the Inflation Reduction Act includes a scaled Clean Hydrogen Production Tax Credit to defray the upfront and operating costs associated with production. The credit is technology neutral and awarded based on carbon intensity, such that the lower the carbon intensity of the hydrogen produced, the greater the credit value. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provides a consistent measure of evaluating how clean hydrogen is.