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1 
 

 

News & Views 

The US hydrogen fuel industry today and future 
Seyed Ehsan Hosseini  

In December 2021, the US Department of Energy (DoE) unveiled the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations with $21.5bn in 

federal funding to deploy the advanced green technologies. The most significant portion of the budget, $9.5bn, has been 

dedicated to renewable hydrogen to commercialize innovative technologies and establish four regional hubs and a recycling 

and manufacturing program. Green hydrogen is already the focus of the DoE's energy initiatives, which aims to mitigate the 

cost of renewable hydrogen production by 80% over the next decade. 

he US government has 
dedicated $9.5bn to develop 
green hydrogen as a part of the 

$1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure 
bill. The bill includes $8bn budget for 
the large-scale regional renewable 
hubs; at least one hub would employ 
fossil fuels, one would apply renewable 
energy, and one would use nuclear 
power. The DoE offered $1bn of this 
funding for research and development 
(R&D) in green hydrogen electrolysis, 
and the remaining $500m was 
allocated to the manufacturing and 
recycling of hydrogen. The bill requests 
the federal government to deploy the 
first-ever national hydrogen roadmap 
and strategy for the US. It is expected 
that the bill will help DoE to play a 
crucial role in the climate agenda by 
obtaining 100% carbon pollution-free 
electrical power generation by 2035 
and net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 
[1]. Additional financial support for 
green hydrogen, including a $1.85 
trillion budget, is being negotiated by 
the Democratic-controlled US 
Congress to enact the bill. The bill 
would include $3.5bn in grants for 
domestic manufacturing of hydrogen 
fuel cell and battery electric vehicles, 
along with $200m to support hydrogen 
fueling equipment. But the 
considerable part of the hydrogen 
budget would dedicate to the tax credit 
for hydrogen production technologies 
that are significantly cleaner than the 
traditional steam methane reforming 
(SMR) method. Analyses have 
indicated that tax credit could make 
renewable-based hydrogen production 
cost-competitive or cheaper than SMR-
based hydrogen production techniques 
in certain US markets [2]. The 
renewable hydrogen market has an 
incredible potential to grow 
substantially across the next two 
decades. The zero-carbon emission 
hydrogen utilization in transportation, 

maritime and heavy industry will 
speed up the decarbonization targets 
in the US. The total hydrogen 
production addressable market has the 
potential to pass $1 trillion by 2050 
compared to around $125 billion 
today. Nevertheless, today green 
hydrogen production is extremely 
more expensive than the grey 
hydrogen produced from unabated 
non-renewables, which account for 95-
99% of the world’s hydrogen demand. 
The cost of green hydrogen is $3-8/kg, 
while the grey hydrogen cost is $0.50-
1.70/kg. Currently, just 200 MW of 
electrolyzers are developed globally, 
and not all of them are using green 
energy. The world’s largest operating 
renewable hydrogen project today, in 
Quebec, Canada, is just 20MW. Over the 
past 20 years, the feed-in tariffs and 
national tenders have dramatically 
mitigated the cost of wind and solar 
power generation, and it is believed 
that renewable hydrogen could trace a 
similar path. The consensus view is 
that the US government should 
subsidize green hydrogen in short to 
medium term to reduce its overall cost 
and make it affordable to achieve a 
sustainable market for green hydrogen 
[3]. In this context, Oklahoma has 
formed a partnership with Louisiana 
and Arkansas to accelerate the 
hydrogen economy and create a 
regional hydrogen hub to consider tax 
credits for individuals and businesses 
producing and utilizing green 
hydrogen fuel. These states are 
situated to illustrate the entire value 
chain of hydrogen fuel and are situated 
to tackle the hard-to-decarbonize 
sectors such as transportation, 
industrial sectors and manufacturing. 
To develop hydrogen utilization in 
heavy-duty transportation, the US 
senate works on “hydrogen for trucks 
act” and “Hydrogen for ports Act” 
proposals to incentivize heavy-duty 

vehicle owners to buy hydrogen-
fuelled trucks and deploy the use of 
hydrogen-related technologies in 
shipping applications and ports. 
Approximately 25% of all 
transportation greenhouse gases are 
emitted by heavy-duty vehicles while 
accounting for only a small portion of 
vehicles on the road. However, 
hydrogen fuel cell-powered vehicles 
release no tailpipe emissions, making 
cleaner transportation without 
sacrificing range or reliability. The 
“Hydrogen for Trucks Act” program 
would enable fleet owners to switch to 
zero-emission hydrogen fuel cell 
vehicles, and the “Hydrogen for Ports 
Act” program would develop 
hydrogen-fuelled equipment at ports 
and in shipping applications in a single 
location that can share hydrogen 
infrastructure [4].  
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References 

[1] Home - NS Energy n.d. 
https://www.nsenergybusiness.c
om/ (accessed March 17, 2022). 

[2] Commodity & Energy Price 
Benchmarks | Argus Media n.d. 
https://www.argusmedia.com/e
n (accessed March 17, 2022). 

[3] Recharge | Latest renewable 
energy news n.d. 
https://www.rechargenews.com
/ (accessed March 18, 2022). 

[4] Florida Daily | News From 
Around The State n.d. 
https://www.floridadaily.com/ 
(accessed March 18, 2022).

 

 

 
Open Access Journal https://doi.org/10.55670/fpll.fuen.1.1.7 

 

May 2022| Volume 01 | Issue 01 | Pages 01 

Seyed Ehsan Hosseini 

Department of Mechanical 

Engineering, Arkansas Tech 

University, 1811 N Boulder Ave, 

Russellville, AR, 72801, USA  

seyed.ehsan.hosseini@gmail.com 

 

Future Energy Journal homepage: https://fupubco.com/fuen 

 

 This article is an open-access article 

distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative 

Commons Attribution (CC BY) license 

(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). 

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0907-9427
https://doi.org/10.55670/fpll.fuen.1.1.7
mailto:seyed.ehsan.hosseini@gmail.com
https://fupubco.com/fuen

