The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) has announced up to $15 million in federal funding to advance clean hydrogen as an affordable and accessible fuel for electricity generation, industrial decarbonization, and transportation.
The initiative aims to support research and development projects focused on converting feedstocks like coal, biomass, petcoke, household and industrial wastes, and waste plastics into synthesis gas (syngas) to enable low-cost hydrogen production.
“Increasing the use of low-carbon fuels like clean hydrogen in the industrial and power sectors will help meet our ambitious climate goals,” said Brad Crabtree, assistant secretary of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management. He emphasized that advancing technologies that utilize waste and other feedstocks, combined with carbon capture and storage, will lower both the carbon footprint and costs of clean hydrogen production.
Hydrogen can be produced via multiple low-carbon pathways, including natural gas and coal with carbon capture and storage, water splitting using nuclear or renewable electricity, and biomass through biological or gasification processes.
Gasification of coal, biomass, and waste materials—alongside carbon capture—offers a potentially low-cost, low-carbon approach to producing clean hydrogen.
The funding opportunity is seeking applications in two specific areas:
- Entrained Flow Gasification Technologies: This area focuses on demonstrating systems that integrate feedstock preparation, gasification, syngas cleanup, and slag handling.
- Fluidized Bed Gasification Technologies: This area targets systems that address feedstock preparation, tar mitigation for syngas production, and ash handling, with the full integration of relevant unit operations.
These projects aim to push forward the development of technologies that can make clean hydrogen more cost-effective and widely available, helping to achieve the nation's decarbonization targets.
