To Our Stakeholders
Energy is at the nexus of the most pressing challenges of our time—from climate change to threats to energy security and economic resilience and the ongoing need to reduce pollution in our air, waterways, and ecosystems. Thanks to coordinated efforts across government, industry, and civil society, the energy sector has gone a long way toward transitioning to more sustainable technologies and practices. This is especially true with clean hydrogen, which has emerged as an essential tool for addressing challenges across multiple sectors of our
economy and has seen accelerating growth and progress in recent years.
Clean hydrogen is part of a comprehensive portfolio of solutions to achieve net-zero-carbon emissions by 2050, as well as create American jobs, energy security, and technology leadership. It has a particularly important role to play in addressing the hardest-to-decarbonize sectors of our economy, while providing cleaner air and economic opportunities for communities across America. It can also support the expansion of low- or zero-carbon electricity by providing a means for long-duration energy storage and offering improved flexibility and revenue for all types of clean power generation—including renewable and nuclear power. Clean hydrogen provides an opportunity to leverage all our nation’s energy resources in the transition to a net-zero and sustainable future, including renewables, nuclear power, or fossil and other carbon-based feedstocks (with carbon capture).
Realizing the full potential of clean hydrogen, however, will take a continued commitment to research, development, demonstration, and deployment (RDD&D). While the growth in large-scale deployment projects— such as the Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs and other industry investments—are essential to achieve scale, grow the supply chain, and reduce costs, their ultimate success will rely in large part on continued advances achieved through coordinated RDD&D efforts. Advancing a coordinated strategy for RDD&D is particularly important—and challenging—for clean hydrogen because it involves virtually every sector of the economy and it can be produced, stored, delivered, and used in such a large number of ways. A successful strategy will need to integrate efforts in renewable, nuclear, and fossil energy—and coordinate across end uses in multiple sectors of the economy.
To meet this challenge, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has developed a Hydrogen Program Plan. This plan provides a strategic framework that incorporates RDD&D efforts of the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management, Office of Nuclear Energy, Office of Electricity, Office of Science, Loan Programs Office, Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains, Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, and the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy to advance the production, transport, storage, and use of hydrogen across different sectors of the economy.
In 2023, several Federal agencies developed the U.S. National Clean Hydrogen Strategy and Roadmap, a comprehensive, nationwide framework for accelerating the production, processing, delivery, storage, and use of clean hydrogen. This 2024 update to the Hydrogen Program Plan explains how DOE offices collaboratively work to implement the strategies outlined in the U.S. National Clean Hydrogen Strategy and Roadmap. This 2024 revision also includes updated supporting data and analysis, a description of the historic Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs, information about the ambitious DOE-wide goals known as the Hydrogen Shot™, and examples of DOE-wide efforts to establish a strong workforce and environmentally just practices in the transition to a hydrogen economy.
This comprehensive document represents DOE’s commitment to develop the technologies that can enable a hydrogen transition in the United States. It also underscores the importance of collaboration both within DOE and with our stakeholders in industry, academia, and the states to achieve that goal.
We hope you will find the Hydrogen Program Plan valuable and constructive, and we look forward to working with you to unlock and expand the remarkable potential and benefits of hydrogen.
Jennifer M. Granholm
Secretary of Energy