The U.S. Department of Energy has announced the 2015 Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer (SBIR/STTR) Phase 2 Release 1 Awards, including three Office of Science projects focusing on hydrogen production from electrolysis and hydrogen systems supporting fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs).

DOE's key hydrogen objectives are to reduce the cost of producing and delivering hydrogen to less than $4 per gallon of gasoline equivalent (gge) to enable fuel cell vehicles to be competitive with gasoline vehicles. Key fuel cell objectives are to reduce fuel cell system cost to $40/kW and improve durability to 5,000 hours (equivalent to 150,000 miles of driving) for automotive fuel cell systems by 2020. Projects selected for negotiation include:

• Tetramer Technologies, LLC of Pendleton, South Carolina, will improve PEM electrolyzer ion exchange membranes to develop a lower cost, higher performance method of commercially generating on-site hydrogen, a valuable new source of energy for the United States, by electrolyzing water.
• GVD Corp. of Cambridge, Massachusetts, will develop improved plastic and elastomer seals coatings to enable reliable performance of hydrogen systems supporting FCEVs.
• Giner, Inc. of Newton, Massachusetts, will address the high capital and operating costs of electrolysis by working to commercialize advanced water electrolysis catalysts that are more active and require a significantly less amount of precious metal than those used in conventional PEM electrolyzers.

Learn more about the Energy Department's broader efforts to develop affordable, efficient fuel cell and hydrogen technologies on EERE's Hydrogen and Fuel Cells page.