At today’s H2@ Scale project kickoff meeting in Chicago, EERE’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Transportation Steven Chalk announced the release of a request for information (RFI) soliciting stakeholder feedback on opportunities to enable high volume production and multi-sector use of hydrogen.
Hydrogen is an energy carrier and a feedstock used in industrial applications today including petroleum refining, ammonia production for fertilizers, and steel production, and can also be used in fuel cells to generate power for homes or to drive cars, buses or trucks. With the help of this RFI, hydrogen use could be expanded and made more affordable across multiple applications such as energy storage, running large turbines at power plants, supporting grid flexibility and enabling baseload operation of nuclear plants, as well as increased renewable power generation.
The objective of this RFI is to assess the domestic resources compatible with large-scale hydrogen production, as well as to identify pathways to effectively leverage these resources for near- and long-term use in major industries. Responses to this RFI will provide DOE insight into the technical and economic barriers associated with these production pathways and end-uses to help establish a more focused and relevant H2@ Scale research portfolio.
"The H2@ Scale initiative is looking at ways that hydrogen can help make nuclear and fossil baseload plants more economical, and increase the flexibility and utilization of variable resources like solar and wind," said Chalk. "Greater use of all of our domestic energy resources increases the nation’s energy security and resiliency."
This RFI supports the H2@Scale initiative vision to enable affordable, reliable, and secure energy through hydrogen production from domestic fossil, nuclear, and renewable resources and hydrogen utilization across multiple sectors.
RFI Topics include:
- Domestic Hydrogen Supply Expansion/ Diversification
- Demand-Sector Market Expansion
- Leveraging Current Industries and Infrastructure
- H2@ Scale H-Prize Competition Concepts
- Innovative Approaches for Enabling H2@ Scale
Responses are due October 31, 2018, at 5:00 PM Eastern Time.
This RFI builds on last month’s H2@ Scale RFI on reducing regulatory barriers with hydrogen infrastructure.