Text version of the National Lab Leaders Lightning Round at the opening plenary of the DOE Hydrogen Shot Summit, August 31, 2021.

Dave Turk: All right. Let’s switch over to our final panel and let me thank – this is our national lab directors’ panel. Let me thank our national lab directors for your patience. We saved the best for last. No offence to the other panels as well. But it’s incredibly terrific to be with you all. I’ll do the same thing. I’ll introduce each in turn, ask you a question and we’ll try to finish up here in the next 15 – 20 minutes period of time just to keep everyone close, as close to schedule as possible. For those who work with DOE you know that the heart and soul of DOE is our national labs. It’s referred to as the crown jewels many times, 17 national labs all across the country.

And I have to say now having been deputy secretary for I guess – I don’t know – six months, seven months, something like that, half a year it’s not the physical facilities and the infrastructure in our labs that makes it the crown jewels. As impressive as those facilities are – and I’ve had a chance now to see those facilities at a few of our labs. It really is the people. It’s the people. It’s the incredibly talented people, the public servants who have made a career or at least a few years working on behalf of the broader US effort, the broader global effort, the public effort if I can put it that way, the public service. And it’s the teamwork. And I think our five colleagues here as the lab directors for these five incredibly impressive individual labs just exemplify teamwork across the labs, across DOE and across our country as well. So thank you for all that partnership. Thank you for all that collaboration. It’s going to be incredibly, incredibly important for our Earth Shots more generally and certainly our hydrogen Earth Shot in particular.

All right. Let me start with Martin Keller, Dr. Martin Keller who is the head of the National Renewable Energy Lab, NREL, out in Colorado. Martin if you could tell us a little bit about the facilities at NREL, the capabilities at NREL and particularly the ARIES effort, the Advanced Research Integrated Energy Systems effort that you all have. And I have to say Martin has got some of the best acronyms in the business in terms of what NREL is undertaking, our lab colleagues more generally. Love to get your take Martin on the ability to derisk demonstrations, to integrate megawatt scale electrolyzers on the grid for renewables and bringing it all together especially in the context of the hydrogen Shot. So Martin, over to you.

Martin Keller: Yeah. I want to thank you Dave and thank you so much for this amazing event and also I want a big shoutout for Sunita and the whole team for organizing this. So just a little bit about NREL. So we have about 3,150 people at NREL so we have three campuses that are in Colorado, Alaska and also in DC. And we are working on energy sufficiency, sustainable transportation, renewable power technologies and how can you really make the energy transition happening. So we also have people at three strategic focuses and they’re all really tying very, very well together through this amazing hydrogen Earth Shot. So the first one is what we call integrated energy pathways. So how to bring all this together in the energy transition from transportation, from storage, from all the renewables we’re bringing on to our grid. How do we develop the grid of the future? And [Break in Audio] will provide long duration energy storage, effective coupling between the grid and the transportation industry.

The second big initiative is what we call electrons to molecules. And again this was coming through many presenters today in this event where we said how can we take electrons, electricity and how can we make molecules. And the hydrogen will be a key step on this path to larger molecules. And the third one is what we call circular economy for energy materials. How do we do all of this in a sustainable way.

Deputy secretary you brought up ARIES and ARIES stands for the Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems. This is a new platform at NREL and thank you also for DOE for this investment there where this is really where the rubber hits the road. We are bringing all these technologies together and using this as a facility where it can scale these new technologies up to a system over 20 megawatts. We bring all this together from renewable power, from storage, from electrolyzers, from fast chargers and you have their collaboration with companies. We are bringing them all together and scale this technology in a faster way. We have heard this throughout these presentations today. We need to deploy current technology. We also have fundamental science and new technologies. But we have to make this shorter from bringing this technology with a partnership in industry to our people so we have to scale this technology and ARIES will be a platform where we can bring all these technologies together and scale it and then bring it from there to the consumers.

Dave: Well, thank you very much Martin. And I have to say if you ever get pessimistic about humanity’s ability to achieve such a lofty goal of our climate imperative more broadly or hydrogen Earth Shot, visit a lab. Visit NREL. Visit our other labs. See the facilities. Talk to the incredibly, incredibly talented professionals who are working in this area and Martin that certainly applies the times I’ve come out to visit you at NREL. So thank you for all your leadership at NREL more generally and with this Earth Shot in particular. All right. Let’s shift over to Dr. Brian Anderson who is the head of our National Energy Technology Laboratory in West Virginia. And certainly Brian as you know from your work not only at NETL but also leading the Biden administration’s interagency working group on coal and power plant communities and economic revitalization. That’s a mouthful. I’m sure Martin could come up with a good acronym, a good catchy acronym on that front.

But there’s an awful lot of interest in Appalachia and many other parts of the country on clean hydrogen including from natural gas. Love to hear your thoughts and you’re a leader in this from your years and years not only at NETL but beyond as well. The challenge of addressing greenhouse gas emissions, producing blue hydrogen, methane emissions, CO₂ emissions. How do we think about that? There was recently a Twitter storm on this a few weeks ago caused by some new analysis and some new discussion out there. Love to hear your take on the pathways to address it. But Brian over to you and thanks again for all your incredible leadership.

Brian Anderson: Well, David thank you so much. And it really comes down to the fact that the primary greenhouse gas emissions under the blue hydrogen scenario or even turquoise are twofold potentially. As you mentioned it’s huge methane emissions that are produced in the upstream production and distribution infrastructure. And then also if we reform methane as the CO₂ separated from the natural gases. So we have a whole portfolio across the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management which is our home of the NETL within the Department of Energy. And we heard earlier today from Jen Wilcox and Fossil Energy and Carbon Management. But so at the lab we’re working on a number of R&D efforts specifically aiming at reducing the emissions across that entire supply chain. And it starts with life cycle assessment. We do a lot of life cycle assessments, understand the potential emissions pathways.

But we also have a lot of internal and external R&D because we are government and government operated laboratory and so we manage a big portfolio not just what we do at the laboratory but also for extramural partners that is focused on reducing methane emissions from production, collection, transportation, infrastructure, even quantification of emissions so that we can tackle the biggest emitters throughout the entire supply chain. Then when it comes to hydrogen production we’re working on a number of aspects in converting natural gas to everything like ammonia as an alternate hydrogen carrier that can done at the natural gas wellhead as well as a pyrolysis pathway so we never emit CO₂ in the end. And we’re leveraging some of our historical expertise in carbon chemistry. We’ve been doing this for 111 years at NETL to be able to fine tune the solid carbon that’s produced through pyrolysis pathway to have extra value to the producer.

And so there’s a lot of associated challenges that include things in subsurface making sure it’s permanently stored that again we’ve been doing that in CO₂ for the last 25 years and have worked with partners across the country to develop regional partnerships to ensure the safe and permanent storage of CO₂ in the subsurface. And then that inherently goes into the EJ conversation, the environmental and energy justice conversation that as you mentioned the executive director of the interagency working group on coal and power plant communities and economic revitalization is to make sure that the communities that have carried our energy water for the last 100 years are not left behind. And this is a great opportunity in the hydrogen space to produce clean hydrogen, capture, sequester the CO₂ and use the hydrogen in the ecosystem as well as the economies in these coal power plant and energy regions that have supported us for so long.

Dave: Well thank you. Thank you very much Brian. I hope that you or maybe Mike or Thomas or one of our labs is working on cloning technology. I feel like we need to clone you Brian given the three or four jobs that you currently have and I’m sure others as well. But thank you for all your incredible leadership, very much appreciated on all fronts.

Brian: I appreciate that and keep me posted on the cloning.

Dave: Absolutely. All right. Let’s shift over to Dr. John Wagner who is the head of our Idaho National Lab. And I had a chance to visit John and his other colleagues at INL in Idaho Falls not too long ago and just an incredible, incredible team. And I have to say John the teamwork really comes from the top there and just the example that you set within the lab and with your other lab directors. So much appreciated on that front. And John certainly as you know nuclear can play a major role in high temperature electrolysis. INL has some unique facilities. Katie got into this a bit, Dr. Katie Hough in her speech, her remarks a little bit ago. These unique facilities integrate thermal resources at INL. I know you’re working on with industry to derisk, to demonstrate the proof of concept here. Love to hear a little bit more about hat from the INL perspective. And again John thanks for all your leadership.

John Wagner: Thank you deputy secretary and yeah, it was a pleasure hosting you for your visit a while back and great to see you again. And thanks for the opportunity to participate today. As you all know Idaho National Laboratory’s department of nuclear energy research development and demonstration laboratory. But we have a broader vision to change the world’s energy future and secure our critical infrastructure including working with several other laboratories to take our lab operations to net zero. On the topic of the day INL began developing high temperature electrolysis as part of our nuclear hydrogen initiative way back in 2005. Now commercially provided stacks and modules are integrated with heat generation sources that emulate nuclear reactors and tested in our integrated energy systems laboratory that you mentioned earlier.

They’re also connected to INL’s digital grid simulation environment and our human system simulation laboratory with a mock control room. This also helps us connect up with facilities at NETL and NREL. Also provides a platform to prove the performance of high temperature electrolysis along with nuclear reactor integration and control concepts. This testing is absolutely critical to our efforts to scale up performance and the success of the DOE, NE, VRE, EERE supported demonstration projects that exist in nuclear power plants which involves several of the nuclear facilities. This effort as well as work being conducted at the other laboratories will help us reduce the cost of building and operating these electrolysis plants and could significantly improve the economic performance particularly of the existing nuclear power plants but also advanced reactors in the future. We believe these programs will help DOE achieve the hydrogen cost reduction goal that we’ve all been talking about today. But we also believe it will help the nation achieve environmental justice.

I think everybody here probably understands nuclear energy’s carbon footprint is one of the lowest on the grid. Because of that nuclear generated hydrogen will have a minimal carbon footprint. We can build advanced nuclear reactors at the site of oil refineries and other industrial users and by doing so we can reduce carbon emissions and other pollutants released from combustion processes. Also there’s a significant opportunity to build hydrogen production and related industries in areas surrounding the existing nuclear power plants, some of which are located in economically depressed areas or near tribal lands. These projects will not only produce a cleaner environment but also help spur economic development and education, creating jobs and the training needed to work in the associated industries, something that acting assistant secretary for nuclear energy Katie Hough referred to earlier in terms of place based opportunities. Now I’ll say while participating in the request for information from the hydrogen office it became clear to us that hydrogen hubs tied to nuclear power plants will benefit these areas and the people who live there for decades to come. Thanks for the opportunity to make some remarks.

Dave: Well, thank you very much John and thanks again for the just outstanding leadership and partnership. And I’ll turn now to another colleague who exhibits, exudes leadership and partnership and just an incredibly decent human being, Mike Witherell from Lawrence Berkley National Lab. Recently celebrating I think Mike 90 year anniversary which is incredibly impressive. You think about the history of accomplishment over 90 years that LBNL has had and congratulations to you and all your past, current and future colleagues in the leadership from LBNL Mike. You’re a key partner as well in a number of consortia including the recently launched H2New effort that involves Martin and the NREL team as well, driving down the cost of electrolysis. Love to get your take Mike on the basic science needs in this effort. As has been mentioned many times there’s a lot of work we need to do here and love to hear your thoughts on that. Please Mike.

Mike: Thanks David. As you know along with our partner labs here Berkely Lab has a very strong record of developing science solutions for great national challenges. That’s what we do in energy and climate crisis, environment health and advanced manufacturing. For all this target R&D our superpower rests in the national user facilities, giving us and other labs that have them something that no other institutions really can bring to this research ecosystem. And another space, a perfect example of this is Jennifer Doudna who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry last year. She uses the advanced light source and the joint genome institute continuously in discovering new cast chains and developing new technologies.

We also have significant expertise in life cycle analysis and behavior analytics which we need to develop the policies and business incentives along with technologies to make sure the energy transition benefits everyone. And we also have, California state has funded projects on local energy justice issues. Like at our place monitoring black carbon produced by trucks and trains in west Oakland as they’re on their way to the port which is relative to our need for clean hydrogen as the Hyundai participant on the last panel mentioned. The key to rapid deployment of all clean energy technologies is to accelerate the design, build, test, learn cycle to a rate we have not seen before certainly in this hydrogen space. So we have people, basic science researchers working at the bench with applied scientists, technology developers, technoeconomic analysts and we apply this to energy storage and aviation biofuels, upcycling plastics, direct carbon capture and especially to clean hydrogen production.

So as you mentioned in this space Adam Weber is codirector of the million mile fuel cell truck consortium here. And we’re part of three other hydrogen multi lab consortia focusing on water splitting, electrolysis and hydrogen storage. So as we’ve heard a lot today our research needs to focus like a laser urgently on questions like how we design material systems that work together for stable active electrolysis. How can we mitigate the processes that rapidly degrade large hydrogen production systems? Those are the things we really need to be putting our attention on. Thank you.

Dave: Well, thank you Mike for your leadership, your partnership, all the consortium that you’re involved in. Many, many thanks for all of that. All right Thomas, Dr. Thomas Zacharia. This is our last speaker of this opening two and a half hour plenary session. Thank you for your patience and thanks for the incredible leadership. Oakridge National Lab is such a leader in all sorts of different areas and all sorts of different capabilities that you and your colleagues can bring to the table when it comes to the Hydrogen Shot in particular whether it’s the unique facility at Oak Ridge for demonstrating the scale up of carbon fiber used in carbon hydrogen storage tanks among other applications. You’ve got the Tennessee Valley Authority and other potential partners nearby in terms of potential demonstration projects and this hub concept that’s been raised again and again in the course of our conversation. So we’d love to hear your lab’s priorities, how you’re thinking about this. And you have the privilege of being our last speaker Thomas so let’s hear some good words of wisdom which I know you’re more than capable of. Thomas?

Thomas Zacharia: Thank you deputy secretary for the kind introduction. And again I’d like to add my shout out to Sunita for organizing this outstanding summit. As with all my colleagues at sister laboratories obviously we are proud of what we do in support of the Department of Energy mission. ORNL has always focused on translational science bringing together use inspired fundamental science with applied research to accelerate technology development and deployment. That is sort of our signature we steward as with Mike and others while leading scientific use of facilities such as Spallation Neutron Source and Oak Ridge leadership computing facility. You mentioned the carbon fiber technology facility just a moment ago essentially to tackle some of our world’s greatest challenges.  

And I will mention three ways we support the goal of affordable clean hydrogen. At the carbon fiber technology facility we are working to decarbonize the freight system by producing low cost carbon fiber material that cuts the cost of storing hydrogen on heavy duty vehicles by 30 percent, returning abundant hydrocarbon and coal resources into carbon fibers for structural components not just in transportation sector but also aerospace, wind energy as well as thermal and insulation, CO₂ absorption as well as hydrogen storage. One of the things that we do is we partner with private companies. In this case we are partnered with Ramaco Carbon, a Wyoming company for the conversion of coal to high value advanced carbon products and materials. And in February as San Diego startup Dash 2 Energy licensed a patented hydrogen storage container technology for a separate gaseous hydrogen storage system.

Now you mentioned TVA, in the area of production we are partnering with private companies and TVA particularly at its new Johnsonville site for at scale demonstration of blue hydrogen using gas turbine along with carbon capture as well as green hydrogen using solar power. And finally we are applying advanced computing to deployment and discovery by using summit to help Shell’s technology center in Houston to design liquid metal bubble column reactors to produce solid carbon and hydrogen from methane without CO₂ emissions. So one of the things that we really try to do is to take all the way from basic science through applied technology programs and working with industry to scale up and demonstrate. So thank you for the opportunity to share.

Dave: Well, thank you. Thank you Thomas and a big, huge thanks to you, to Mike, to Brian, to Martin and to John for the leadership and I can’t underscore this enough, partnership. The partnership that you all personally show your other lab colleagues working together with us at DOE headquarters, working with industry, working with everyone else. So much appreciating all that partnership from all of you which we need even more to be successful on this hydrogen Earth Shot. All right. That concludes this panel. I just have two more functions and then I’ll turn it over to Sunita. One is just a big thanks, a big thanks to everyone who has participated so far. Incredibly impressive group of folks, an embarrassment of riches, again we heard from global leaders like our own secretary, Secretary Granholm here at the department, Secretary Cary who is leading the global effort on climate change, Senator Mansion, the most important senator these days and incredible leader and partner for us certainly at the Department of Energy, Bill Gates, the list goes on and on, producers, scientists, entrepreneurs, lab directors we just heard from, incredibly rich discussion.

Three key themes if I could just draw out themes and I’m not going to elaborate on these but just some of the buzz words that I’ve heard. One is everyone, I think just about everybody mentioned collaboration and partnership and that’s what this Earth Shot really is about is partnering, collaborating to try to have a shot, a real shot at getting to that incredibly ambitious target that we need to on hydrogen, clean, low cost hydrogen. Secondly scale, ecosystems, having an integrated energy system, really thinking about how these pieces come together came up again and again, again just underscoring the importance of the first point, collaboration and partnership. And then either explicitly or implicitly the other big take away I took is this historic moment. This is an opportunity. We’ve got momentum.

This is an opportunity for all of us to work together to partner, to collaborate, to achieve that scale. And that’s the opportunity in front of us. So without any further words from my end let’s get to work. Let’s roll up our sleeves. Let’s get into the further parts of this discussion at this incredibly important summit. I’ll turn it back over to Dr. Sunita Satyapal who is going to take it from here. And thanks Sunita to you as was just echoed by our lab directors and many others, to you personally, to the team here at DOE working across a variety of different offices on this incredibly important, incredibly, incredibly important hydrogen Earth Shot.

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