The White House has announced the selection of seven regional hubs that will receive billions in federal funding to increase the nation’s output of clean hydrogen.
The $7 billion initiative, allocated under a 2021 infrastructure spending bill, aims to produce three million metric tons of hydrogen annually across the seven locations, accounting for nearly one-third of the Biden administration’s 2030 target for clean hydrogen production in the U.S.
The use of clean hydrogen — produced through electrolysis fueled by renewable power — is considered important for reducing the environmental impact of difficult-to-decarbonize processes currently reliant on fossil fuels, such as heavy-duty trucking, chemical processing, steel production, and other heavy industries. The hydrogen power process results in water vapor as its lone byproduct, although critics contend that hydrogen requires large amounts of energy to produce.
White House officials said the funding is expected to generate more than $40 billion in additional private financing and create “tens of thousands” of jobs. The hubs’ hydrogen output, meanwhile, would eliminate an estimated 25 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year — equivalent to the output from more than five million gas-powered cars.
The largest components of the funding package, totaling up to $1.2 billion each, would go to the HyVelocity Hydrogen Hub project near Houston and the Alliance for Renewable Clean Hydrogen Energy Systems in California. Other sites selected for the program included facilities in Illinois, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Washington, and West Virginia.
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