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The Department of Energy plans to spend $750 million to help finance and defray the cost of clean hydrogen energy projects, POLITICO Pro (subscription) reports. 

What’s going on: “The announcement is the latest from the Biden administration aimed at growing the nascent U.S. clean hydrogen industry, backed by funding in both the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The technology is poised to play a key role in cutting emissions from hard-to-decarbonize industries,” according to the article.

• The money from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will go to 52 projects in 24 states to further “electrolysis technologies and improve manufacturing and recycling for clean hydrogen systems and components.”
• The department believes the projects can help reduce the costs associated with clean hydrogen.

The details: Eight projects (getting a total of $316 million) will focus on making electrolyzers, another 10 initiatives (getting $81 million) will support the creation of electrolyzer components and their supply chains and yet another 18 projects (for a total of $72 million of the funds) “will focus on advanced materials” and designs for electrolyzers.

• Additional projects include the manufacture of low-cost fuel cells and the development of technologies to reduce or remove the need for PFAS.

Why it’s important: “DOE expects the selected projects to directly support about 1,500 jobs and enable U.S. manufacturing capacity to produce 14 gigawatts of fuel cells per year—enough to power 15 percent of medium- and heavy-duty trucks sold annually—and 10 GW of electrolyzers per year, or enough to produce 1.3 million tons of clean hydrogen per year.”

Our take: “Manufacturers are again leading the way—working with the Department of Energy to grow domestic clean hydrogen, which will be key to decarbonizing hard-to-abate industries worldwide,” said NAM Vice President of Domestic Policy Brandon Farris.